I would like dotLRN to eventually be an Adaptive Learning Environment (or what I prefer to call a Intelligent LMS). An ILMS would change the way it presents its courses based on the information it has about the student. The student profile is then a key issue here.
Maybe the scope Al is looking at at this stage is smaller, but I think this issue should be looked at, it could give dotLRN a huge competitive difference with every other LMS. I think that the architecture of this user-profile package will have a huge impact on how we (at least in my group) can progress on this.
The base - extended - local architecture is a first step. I think that "courses" will also want to extend the user model. For example, if I have a course on OpenACS, I could first ask (or formally assess) if the student knows about PLSQL, TCL and other requirements. If he does, Those "modules" (or learning objects) could be skipped.
Another example (or use case), if a student finds it easier to learn by listening to video (and it is available) how do we highlight it over the text, so he uses it. If he prefers text (e.g. he is not native speaker and finds hard to understand spoken English), how do we use that to improve his learning experience?
Another example, if a profesor wants to motivate students to participate in the bboards, and he finds that some topics are more interesting to some groups than others, how can we customize the course to highlight those subtopics?
A lot of the student model can be "learned", by gathering information about what he reads and does in the ILMS. This is where the automatic document classification system -that I posted about a few days ago- comes in.
An introduction to adaptive learning environments is in:
http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/~elmurphy/emurphy/ale.html