The design and implementation of an adaptive e-learning system Herman Dwi Surjono, Ph.D. hermansurjono@uny.ac.id College of Engineering, Yogyakarta State University Abstract This paper describes the design and implementation of an adaptive e-learning system that provides a template for different learning materials as well as a student model that incorporates five distinct student characteristics as an aid to learning: primary characteristics are prior knowledge, learning style and the presence or absence of animated multimedia aids (multimedia mode); secondary characteristics include page background preference and link colour preference. The use of multimedia artefacts as a student characteristic has not previously been implemented or evaluated. The system development consists of a requirements analysis, design and implementation. The design models including use case diagrams, conceptual design, sequence diagrams, navigation design and presentation design are expressed using Unified Modelling Language (UML). The adaptive e-learning system was developed in a template implemented using Java Servlets, XHTML, XML, JavaScript and HTML. The template is a domain-independent adaptive e-learning system that has functions of both adaptivity and adaptability. I. Introduction There are many web-based learning and e-learning systems available on the Internet, but they provide only the same plain hypertext pages to all students regardless of individual ability. In many current web-based courses, the course material is still implicitly oriented for a traditional on-campus audience consisting of homogeneous, well prepared and well motivated students. However, web-based courses are used by a much wider variety of students than any campus-based courses. These learners may have very different goals, backgrounds, knowledge levels and learning capabilities. A web-based course designed for a specific group of students, like a traditional course, may not fit other students. Therefore the course material needs to be flexible so that different students may get different materials and an order of presentation that depends upon their own characteristics. Adaptive e-learning systems (AES) try to solve these problems by altering the presentation of material to suit each individual student (Brusilovsky, 1996). Adaptive e-learning systems combine ideas from hypermedia systems and intelligent tutoring systems to adapt the systems to the particular student. They use a model of the student to collect information about his or her goals, preferences and knowledge, and use this Surjono, Herman, The design and implementation of an adaptive e-learning system, The International Symposium Open, Distance, and E-learning (ISODEL 2007), Denpasar, Indonesia, 13-15 November 2007