Making general-purpose adaptive hypermedia work

Adaptive hypermedia systems (AHS) have typically been geared towards one specific application or application area, in most cases related to education. The AHA (Adaptive Hypermedia Architecture) system is a Web-based adaptive hypermedia system specifically intended to serve many different purposes. As such AHA must be able to perform adaptation that is based on the user's browsing actions, regardless of the interpretation of browsing as learning. A general purpose adaptive hypermedia system must be able to handle cycles in adaptation rules and non monotonic user model updates. (An educational system in which a user's knowledge about a hierarchical concept structure can only increase is much simpler.) This paper describes how AHA handles these aspects and indicates how other adaptive hypermedia systems may be turned into more general-purpose tools as well.