Using the <set> construct in the course document, courses can supply a range of alternatives for a particular lesson or exercise, or for an entire section of the course. Course adaptation is the mechanism by which a particular alternative is selected for a student, based on that student's attributes.
The adaptation policy for a course is specified by a expected effectiveness function. This function takes as input 1) a set of derived student attributes and 2) a set of content attributes, that produces a real number representing the expected effectiveness of that content for that student. The Teachpoint server will generally select the alternative with the highest expected effectiveness.
The expected effectiveness function is represented by an XSL script that takes as input a document of the form
<effectiveness_factors>
<student>
...
</student>
<content>
...
</content>
</effectiveness_factors>
and that generates a document of the form
<expected_effectiveness>0.73</expected_effectiveness>
An example of an expected-effectiveness script can be found in authoring/expected_effectiveness.xsl. This script expects the derived student attributes to include reading_level and interest_level, and the content attributes to include verbal_level and detail_level. It computes the sum-of-squares distance
(reading_level - verbal_level)2 + (interest_level - detail_level)2
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