Artificial Intelligence For Adaptive Pedagogical Scenario Design In E-Learning : Roles, Challenges And Perspectives

Abstract

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), is transforming the design and delivery of digital learning environments. At the same time, adaptive e-learning seeks to move beyond the traditional one-size-fits-all approach by dynamically adapting learning resources, activities and pathways to learner characteristics and needs. In such environments, pedagogical scenarization represents a fundamental process because it organizes pedagogical activities, learning objects, interactions and assessments according to defined learning objectives. However, the design of adaptive pedagogical scenarios remains a complex and time-consuming task that traditionally depends heavily on teachers and instructional designers. This theoretical article examines the potential role of AI in the scenarization of adaptive pedagogical objects for adaptive e-learning. It first clarifies the concepts of Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, adaptive e-learning, pedagogical objects and pedagogical scenarization. It then analyzes the different roles that AI can play throughout the scenario design process, including learner-profile analysis, learning-objective interpretation, activity generation, pedagogical-object selection, scenario generation, adaptation, personalization, assessment and feedback generation. The article further examines the relationship between human expertise and AI capabilities and discusses whether AI can replace human intervention in pedagogical scenarization. Based on this analysis, a conceptual Human-AI Adaptive Scenarization Framework is proposed. The framework positions AI as an intelligent assistant capable of generating and adapting pedagogical scenarios while maintaining human pedagogical supervision and validation. Finally, the article discusses the opportunities, limitations, ethical issues and future research directions associated with AI-assisted adaptive scenarization.