N. Sanjay Rebello

Amirreza Mehrabi, Jason W. Morphew, Breejha Quezada et al.

Adaptive learning often diagnoses precisely yet intervenes weakly, yielding help that is mistimed or misaligned. This study presents evidence supporting an instructor-governed feedback loop that converts concept-level assessment evidence into vetted micro-interventions. The adaptive learning algorithm contains three safeguards: adequacy as a hard guarantee of gap closure, attention as a budgeted constraint for time and redundancy, and diversity as protection against overfitting to a single resource. We formalize intervention assignment as a binary integer program with constraints for coverage, time, difficulty windows informed by ability estimates, prerequisites encoded by a concept matrix, and anti-redundancy enforced through diversity. Greedy selection serves low-richness and tight-latency regimes, gradient-based relaxation serves rich repositories, and a hybrid method transitions along a richness-latency frontier. In simulation and in an introductory physics deployment with one thousand two hundred four students, both solvers achieved full skill coverage for essentially all learners within bounded watch time. The gradient-based method reduced redundant coverage by approximately twelve percentage points relative to greedy and harmonized difficulty across slates, while greedy delivered comparable adequacy with lower computational cost in scarce settings. Slack variables localized missing content and supported targeted curation, sustaining sufficiency across subgroups. The result is a tractable and auditable controller that closes the diagnostic-pedagogical loop and delivers equitable, load-aware personalization at classroom scale.

Amirreza Mehrabi, Jason Wade Morphew, Breejha Quezada et al.

Adaptive learning often diagnoses precisely yet intervenes weakly, producing help that is mistimed or misaligned. This study presents evidence supporting an instructor-governed feedback loop that converts concept-level assessment evidence into vetted microinterventions. The adaptive learning algorithm includes three safeguards: adequacy as a hard guarantee of gap closure, attention as a budgeted limit for time and redundancy, and diversity as protection against overfitting to a single resource. We formulate intervention assignment as a binary integer program with constraints for coverage, time, difficulty windows derived from ability estimates, prerequisites encoded by a concept matrix, and anti-redundancy with diversity. Greedy selection serves low-richness and tight-latency settings, gradient-based relaxation serves rich repositories, and a hybrid switches along a richness-latency frontier. In simulation and in an introductory physics deployment with 1204 students, both solvers achieved full skill coverage for nearly all learners within bounded watch time. The gradient-based method reduced redundant coverage by about 12 percentage points relative to greedy and produced more consistent difficulty alignment, while greedy delivered comparable adequacy at lower computational cost in resource-scarce environments. Slack variables localized missing content and guided targeted curation, sustaining sufficiency across student subgroups. The result is a tractable and auditable controller that closes the diagnostic pedagogical loop and enables equitable, load-aware personalization at the classroom scale.

Tianlong Zu, John Hutson, Lester C. Loschky et al.

Cognitive load theory (CLT) provides us guiding principles in the design of learning materials. CLT differentiates three different kinds of cognitive load -- intrinsic, extraneous and germane load. Intrinsic load is related to the learning goal, extraneous load costs cognitive resources but does not contribute to learning. Germane load can foster learning. Objective methods, such as eye movement measures and EEG have been used measure the total cognitive load. Very few research studies, if any, have been completed to measure the three kinds of load separately with physiological methods in a continuous manner. In this current study, we will show how several eye-tracking based parameters are related to the three kinds of load by having explicit manipulation of the three loads independently. Participants having low prior knowledge regarding the learning material participated in the study. Working memory capacity was also measured by an operation memory span task.