Design and evaluation of a smart learning environment to provide context-aware personalised support across spaces and environments

Smart Learning Environments (SLEs) are systems intended to provide learners with context-aware and personalised support across spaces and environments in a wide range of learning situations. However, existing SLEs only attain a subset of these features, thus limiting their broader adoption. To address this limitation, a new SLE called SCARLETT is proposed following certain architectural characteristics, intended to offer all four features. Following a learning design created by teachers, SCARLETT collects information on student interactions with environments, tools, and devices supporting a learning situation, allowing to evolve a unique model for each student. Additionally, it gathers information about the student's context. Based on these, SCARLETT offers personalised and contextualised support to each student. SCARLETT support can be configured by teachers for different learning situations as, thanks to adapters, it can integrate multiple third-party technologies. The evaluation of SCARLETT was carried out following an interpretative research paradigm in three authentic learning experiences with 283 students and 3 teachers. The results indicate a positive perception of the personalised context-aware support that the students received across different spaces. Moreover, both teachers and students were favourable to the adoption of the system. Further empirical findings provide insights into the impact of SCARLETT's architectural characteristics.