User Modelling and User Adaptive Systems

User Modelling and User-Adaptive Systems is a relatively new research activity within the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Group at Leeds. It started with several projects on Intelligent Tutoring Systems and grew to include broader applications of Artificial Intelligence to derive models of users (inlcuding preferences, interests, conceptual understanding, etc) and to employ these models to build systems that tailor their behaviour to individuals and groups.

Members include permanent staff, postdoc fellows and research students (some of whom are visitors from collaborative groups) with complementary background in Artificial Intelligence, Social Sciences, and Educational Systems. The research involves the application of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning methods, such as ontologies, commonsence reasoning, fuzzy sets and certainty factor, and is structured under three topics:

• Interactive Learning Environments;
• Student and Group Modelling in Web-Based Learning Systems;
• User Modelling on the Semantic Web.

The group is establishing internationally and is being involved in a number of international activities, including the organisation of conferences and workshops, and associate membership to two EU Networks of Excellence. Several projects are conducted in active collaboration with leading international groups.

Contact: Dr Vania Dimitrova, School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
e-mail: vania@comp.leeds.ac.uk, tel: +44 113 343 1674