Evolving spelling exercises to suit individual student needs

The principle of evolving educational content – stepwise and stochastic refinement of educational problems on the basis of a student's previous success – is extended and evaluated for the domain of spelling. Experimental results, generated by an implementation in a classroom setting, show that the principle of evolving educational content is not only sensitive to an individual student's ability but it also allows the student to take novel paths through an open-ended problem space. Learning outcomes are confirmed both quantitatively and qualitatively, and indicate that the technique transfers to a pedagogically challenging domain. We present how a problem space can be generated to effectively and automatically encompass a wider range of educational domains with little designer intervention.