Complex learning tasks may be exhausting, tiring and sometimes even
frustrating. Learners do need assistance. This is particularly true in
technology enhanced learning where learners are frequently missing
personalized guidance by some human teacher. The authors carefully distinguish
adaptability, i.e. the possibility to adapt a system to varying needs and
context conditions, from adaptivity, i.e. this system's ability to adapt its
appearance and behavior to identified current needs autonomously. Among many
others, the central necessity is to meet a learner's goal(s).
High dimensional adaptivity is introduced, studied, implemented, and tried out
towards better assistance to a large variety of learners under manifold
circumstances in meeting the users' respective learning goals. The paper
presents the concept of dimensions in adaptivity, illustrates the usefulness
of the approach in an existing e-learning application, and explains several
techniques in some more detail. Emphasis is put on novel opportunities enabled
by innovative technologies. The DVDconnector technology, for instance, allows
for the integration of large-size media like full-screen movies into online
services. The content drawn from the DVD can be sashayingly dovetailed with
online e-learning. DVD script programming makes even DVD content dynamic; it
may be assembled and presented in dependence on learner needs. The aim of the
paper is to provide a little contribution to the community's common endeavour
to make our e-learning systems and services considerably more adaptive.