Adaptive multimedia presentations enabling universal access in technology enhanced situational learning

Successful situational learning, with continuous media support, requires both sophisticated technological and appropriate psychological concepts to enable learners, independently of age, to easily access continuous media learning objects (CMLO), which must be properly adapted to their actual needs, demands, requirements and previous knowledge. Current technological approaches fail to cover all relevant aspects concurrently. For example, systems providing adequate media management either are insufficiently adaptable and learning management systems lack sufficient support for continuous media. This paper addresses three main issues: (1) an analysis of adaptive situational learning with continuous media, identifying the shortcomings of some current solutions; (2) outline of an integrated approach for adaptive multimedia presentations enabling universal access for situational learning; and (3) a description of the multimedia module repository (MEMORY) system implementing this approach, the basic idea being to define multimedia presentations as dynamic processes, comparable to a computer program.