Adaptive learning oriented higher educational classroom teaching strategies

Abstract

This work intends to meet China’s need for high-quality talents and optimize the current college classroom teaching modes. It first investigates the current situation of college history classroom teaching from the perspective of positive psychology and adaptive deep learning. Then, the work formulates a new teaching strategy. This teaching strategy is divided into five parts: verbal information, smart skills, cognitive strategies, action skills, and learning attitudes. Then, the proposed new teaching strategy is applied to practice. Sixty students from a university in Anyang are recruited and divided into Class A (experimental class) and Class B (control class). The average score of Class A using the proposed teaching strategy has increased by 18%, from 68 to 86 points. The average score of Class B without using the proposed teaching strategy has decreased by 1%, from 68 to 67 points. This indicates that the college history classroom-oriented teaching strategy based on adaptive deep learning is both scientifically sound and effective.

Introduction

Since the 21st century, accompanied by technological advancements and profound changes in social structures, students’ learning methods and content have undergone significant transformations. In response to this era of change, the International Commission on Education proposed that “education should promote the holistic development of individuals, including physical, psychological, intellectual, perceptual, aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual values.” This highlights that contemporary education is not merely about knowledge transmission but emphasizes the comprehensive cultivation of individual abilities¹. In China, with the release of the 2017 China Higher Education Technology Outlook Report, technologies such as deep learning have gained widespread attention in university teaching, and shifted the educational focus from a “teaching-centered” to a “learning-centered” approach². However, in many Chinese universities, classroom instruction is still predominantly centered on knowledge dissemination and exam-oriented teaching, which results in a lack of student autonomy and intrinsic motivation, ultimately constraining personalized development and innovation capabilities^3,4.

As an important educational concept in recent years, adaptive learning emphasizes the use of technology and data to dynamically adjust teaching content and strategies based on students’ cognitive levels, interests, and learning pace, thereby promoting personalized learning and deep understanding⁵. Siemens (2005) proposed the Connectivist Learning Theory. This theory argues that knowledge is no longer solely stored in an individual’s brain but exists within networks, and learning is a process of establishing connections and acquiring information from these networks. This provides a theoretical foundation for the digital and networked nature of adaptive learning. Meanwhile, Devick (2006) proposed the Growth Mindset theory. This theory suggests that learners who believe abilities can be improved through effort are more likely to actively embrace challenges and persist in learning tasks, leading to better learning outcomes. This underscores the importance of learner agency and continuous feedback mechanisms, serving as a key psychological basis for modern adaptive learning system design. Thus, adaptive learning is not only an instructional technology but also a complex system integrating cognitive science, educational psychology, and learning sciences. Introducing it into university classrooms, particularly in humanities disciplines such as history courses, can help break away from the limitations of “knowledge transmission-based” teaching. It also aligns with current curriculum reform goals of “student-centered learning” and “core competency development.”

Researchers have extensively performed research in the corresponding fields. Troussas et al. (2021)⁶ used Bloom’s Taxonomy (BT) learning theory to propose adaptive learning activities by considering students’ cognitive skills to guide computer programming. Krouska et al. (2018)⁷ proposed an adaptive evaluation system based on BT. The proposed system can automatically design evaluation items for students and adjust the evaluation content in real-time according to the students’ specific situations. Troussas et al. (2021)⁸ proposed intelligent education software to run comprehensively. They combined teaching and technical methods to provide students with complex learning materials. Chrysafiadi et al. (2018)⁹ pointed out that digital education had become a hot issue. A framework was proposed for creating automated adaptive testing of students’ learning outcomes based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and weighted models. Troussas et al. (2013)¹⁰ proposed an E-learning system to enhance the educational process in the Computer-based Instruction (CBI) system by combining collaboration and group work among students.

Existing research has extensively explored the application of adaptive learning and positive psychology in education, but most studies have primarily focused on science and engineering courses or online learning environments. In the humanities, particularly in college history classrooms, discussions on practical integration remain insufficient. Therefore, this work focuses on college history courses, and integrates positive psychology theories while considering students’ psychological states, learning motivation, and developmental potential. By incorporating the concept of adaptive deep learning, it aims to develop a systematic instructional strategy tailored for history teaching in higher education. Specifically, based on an in-depth investigation of the current state of history instruction in higher education, this work designs a teaching strategy encompassing five dimensions: verbal information, smart skills, cognitive strategies, action skills, and learning attitudes. The strategy is then applied in actual teaching practices. Compared to previous research that primarily emphasized knowledge transmission, this work places greater emphasis on students’ autonomous learning abilities and holistic development, highlighting their agency and initiative in the classroom. While this work does not entirely bridge major theoretical gaps, it proposes a novel integration of psychology and educational technology at the practical level. However, at the practical level, this study proposes a new approach that integrates psychology and educational technology. Particularly in the exploration of college history courses, a relatively marginalized discipline, this approach demonstrates a certain degree of innovation and practical significance. The findings not only provide theoretical insights for history teaching strategies but also offer practical guidance for frontline educators in instructional design and pedagogical improvement, demonstrating significant potential for broader application. The technical roadmap of this work is shown in Fig. 1:

Fig. 1.

Technical roadmap.

Current situation and teaching strategies of history classrooms in caus

Current situation of history classrooms in caus

At this stage, the college history curriculum occupies an essential position, especially in students’ humanities education. By equipping students with fundamental historical knowledge, the curriculum fosters historical thinking and enhances their ability to retrieve and critically evaluate historical information. Through this process, students develop essential concepts and methodologies such as historical materialism and inquiry-based learning. They strengthen their sense of mission and responsibility for China’s rejuvenation and cultural diffusion by learning and understanding history. Meanwhile, history education nurtures students’ well-rounded interests and character, broadens their perspectives, and cultivates a global outlook¹¹.

Next, a survey is conducted on students from the history classroom perspective in a university in Anyang, spanning lectures for three months. Then, through classroom observation and after-class communication with teachers and students, the current situation of college history classroom teaching is understood, and its features are summarized below:

(1) Students are roughly divided into four categories: on-class learning, selective learning, arduous learning, and independent learning students. On-class learning students are interested in history and have high-level classroom enthusiasm and concentration. However, they barely take notes, submit homework casually, and lack deep thinking. With poor after-class learning habits, they often score low on exams. By comparison, selective learning students only choose to learn what they are interested in the classroom and after class. They present an excellent cooperation ability as well. Nevertheless, they are indifferent to purely theoretical knowledge and lack concentration. Then, some students work hard both in and after class and are willing to ask for teachers’ help. However, they lack an effective learning method and often score just above average. Meanwhile, this group’s memorization and logical reasoning abilities are often inadequate. Lastly, independent learning students can listen and self-learn effectively and score the highest among the four groups. Nevertheless, their population is tiny.

(2) Similarly, teachers can be classified into three groups. First, some teachers do not have a correct understanding and mastery of teaching reform. The teaching reform stays on the surface, without real breakthroughs. Some teachers have made tentative reforms, carefully prepared teaching designs, and grasped students’ interests. However, the student-oriented adaptive learning method has not been fully implemented, mainly influenced by traditional concepts. Besides, students’ learning methods, practical abilities, and deep thinking have not improved. Such reform has made some progress, but it is still incomplete. Lastly, a small number of teachers have grasped the core of the reform, carried out the reform seriously, and achieved some results. However, as teaching and learning must be tested through time, the teaching reform needs perseverance and the support of educational resources and policies. Thus, this group is actually under more pressure than the other two groups.

(3) Humanitarian subjects like history are often less mentioned in contemporary CAUs, especially in science and engineering colleges. This results in students’ weak theoretical foundation of modern history, and the educational function of history disciplines is marginalized. Many students pay far less attention to history courses than subjects such as advanced mathematics. In turn, students’ weak basic knowledge of history brings great trouble to history teaching.

Given the above problems in the current situation of history classroom teaching in CAUs, new teaching strategies are designed from the perspective of Positive Psychology. New teaching plans are formulated through adaptive deep learning methods to reform the current teaching model of college history curriculums.

Positive psychology and adaptive learning

Positive psychology was formally introduced by Seligman and others in the 1990s. It emphasizes the study of human strengths such as well-being, achievement, resilience, and a sense of meaning. It focuses on stimulating individuals’ positive potential to promote holistic development. Compared to traditional psychology, which primarily examines psychological disorders and problematic behaviors, positive psychology is more concerned with how positive emotions and character traits enhance individuals’ learning motivation and social adaptability¹². In educational contexts, positive psychology highlights the importance of creating a supportive learning environment to enhance students’ sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and achievement motivation, which are key psychological variables for improving deep learning outcomes. For example, Dweck’s (2006) Growth Mindset theory suggests that when students believe intelligence can develop, they are more likely to embrace challenges, persist in their efforts, and learn from failures. This mindset provides a psychological foundation for students’ sustained engagement with complex historical problems, logical reasoning, and knowledge construction. Therefore, incorporating positive psychology principles, such as emphasizing individual potential, positive feedback, and a sense of belonging, into teaching strategies can help guide students toward active and enduring learning behaviors.

Adaptive learning, rooted in behaviorism and cognitive psychology, emphasizes dynamically adjusting instructional content, pacing, and methods based on students’ abilities, prior knowledge, interests, and learning styles to achieve personalized learning^13,14. In contemporary educational research, adaptive learning is widely applied in technology-supported learning systems. Its core lies in the continuous analysis of learning, data feedback, and content adjustments to achieve personalized optimization of learning pathways^15–17. Siemens’ (2005) connectivist theory further underscores that learning is a process of establishing connections between individuals and external knowledge networks. Students must develop the ability to identify, connect, and update information, which are core competencies that adaptive learning systems aim to cultivate.

This work integrates positive psychology and adaptive learning theories to propose a five-dimensional instructional strategy model. It emphasizes not only fostering students’ psychological well-being, learning motivation, and self-efficacy but also implementing personalized guidance based on learning data and individual differences. This integrated perspective not only enhances students’ historical comprehension and cognitive depth but also promotes metacognitive regulation and independent learning habits, ultimately achieving the goal of “deep and personalized” learning.

This theoretical framework provides dual support for the instructional strategy design here. On one hand, positive psychology helps establish a positive learning environment and internal motivation mechanisms. On the other hand, adaptive learning offers dynamic feedback and personalized learning pathways for instructional implementation. This framework provides a scientific rationale for subsequent teaching practices and establishes a theoretical reference for interpreting and analyzing experimental data.

Teaching strategies of history classrooms in caus

To address the issues of low student engagement and superficial learning outcomes in current university history classrooms, this work, based on the theories of adaptive learning and positive psychology, designs a teaching strategy system encompassing five dimensions: verbal information strategy, smart skills strategy, cognitive strategy, action skills strategy, and attitude strategy. This framework not only draws on Bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive objectives but also incorporates Kolb’s “experiential learning cycle.” It reflects the dual integration of cognitive levels and practical experience in teaching. The five-dimensional strategies form an interdependent, spiraling teaching process¹⁸. Among these, verbal information and smart skills focus on knowledge input and processing, cognitive strategies emphasize the enhancement of students’ metacognitive levels, and action skills and attitude strategies guide students in internalizing knowledge into capabilities and values. This approach aims to achieve a continuous learning path of “deep understanding—transferable application—self-regulation—value recognition.” Fig. 2 presents the details.

Fig. 2.

Refined teaching strategies in the history classroom.

The verbal information strategy corresponds to the “Remembering-Understanding” levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy. It helps students build an initial knowledge network through methods such as contextual teaching, historical language information encoding, and transfer training. This phase emphasizes the accurate acquisition of information, which forms the foundation of historical learning. The smart skills strategy aligns with the “Applying-Analyzing” levels and focuses on students’ abilities to recognize, classify, and reason about historical concepts. The strategy includes “discriminative learning,” “concept construction,” and “rule application,” aiming to cultivate students’ ability to convert historical knowledge into transferable skills. The cognitive strategy directly responds to the “Reflective Observation” and “Abstract Conceptualization” stages of Kolb’s experiential learning model. It emphasizes students’ planning, monitoring, and regulation of their learning process (such as metacognitive strategies and building self-efficacy), enabling autonomous learning and strategy transfer. The action skills strategy integrates the “Analyzing-Evaluating” levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It focuses on training students’ abilities to analyze historical issues from multiple perspectives, search for materials, apply logical reasoning, and interpret history. This encourages students to make the transition from theory to practice. The attitude strategy runs throughout the entire learning process, aiming to establish students’ value recognition, sense of responsibility, and cultural confidence in history. It corresponds to the “Value-Organization-Characterization” levels in Bloom’s affective domain and strengthens the educational function of the course.

Additionally, this teaching strategy system emphasizes a “student-centered” approach, where teachers dynamically adjust teaching content and pace based on students’ learning styles and abilities, and implement the core principles of adaptive learning. Meanwhile, positive psychology’s focus on self-actualization, positive emotions, and a sense of belonging provides psychological mechanisms to support the implementation of these strategies. This strategy framework not only has a clear theoretical foundation but has also been validated through empirical research. It offers a practical pathway for transforming college history classrooms into environments that foster “deep, personalized, and active” learning.

According to Fig. 2, the main ways of implementing verbal information strategies include situational teaching, guiding students in effectively encoding historical language information, and teaching them how to transfer knowledge. The specific reasons and purposes of each teaching method are listed in Table 1:

Table 1.

Contents of verbal information strategies.

Strategies	Methods	Reasons	Purposes
Verbal information strategies	Emphasis on situational teaching	History, as a subject, examines the past and is characterized by its temporal and spatial dimensions. As a result, some textbook content can be abstract and detached from reality, making it challenging for students to grasp. Furthermore, due to its “comprehensive” nature, history covers various aspects, including politics, military affairs, economics, and culture, which can make historical knowledge seem obscure and complex.	Situational teaching takes advantage of intuition, vividness, and interest in learning and combines with the historical subject’s humanistic characteristics. It creates questions, stories, and role-playing, to change the boring and esoteric historical terms and concepts in the past into vivid and easy-to-transfer knowledge points. Meanwhile, it utilizes situational space for learning boring language concepts to encourage students to learn and master the ability of verbal information.
	Guide students to effectively encode historical language information	The learning process does not begin until students notice or feel the external context, so how to intuitively encode newly acquired stimuli is crucial. The learner must have some information processing methods to remember knowledge points and transfer them to various situations in the future.	It is to convert the perceptual information in the short-term memory of learners into a conceptual or meaningful long-term memory. It is necessary to find suitable coding strategies to facilitate students’ understanding and long-term memory of many historical concepts, nouns, and events. Meanwhile, the coding structure must provide organizational extraction clues.
	Guide students to learn to transfer	In order to learn historical concepts, it is not enough to rely on teaching once in class, additional revision and practice are needed. The interaction between the old and new historical learning is the transfer of historical learning.	Teachers should help students master the theory of transfer strategies and guide students to learn to transfer in similar situations. Teachers guide students to deepen their knowledge and understanding through practice, master the characteristics of historical concepts and the relationship between concepts, and systematize historical knowledge. The transfer practice of historical concepts should be simple to complex and homogeneous to multi-faceted.

Smart skills refer to students’ capacity to employ conceptual symbols to engage with their environment. History learning typically progresses from fundamental knowledge points to more intricate knowledge structures, adhering to a structured sequence. Consequently, effective teaching strategies should integrate historical knowledge with essential skills while fostering students’ ability to acquire knowledge and transform it into practical competencies. The teaching process encompasses discrimination, conceptual understanding, and rule-based learning. A detailed breakdown of these components is provided in Table 2.

Table 2.

The specific content of smart skill strategies.

Strategies	Methods	Meaning	Specific content
Smart skill strategies	Discrimination learning	Discrimination learning is students’ ability to remember historical events or peoples’ characteristics and identify these things from a collection of historical information. It is the simplest kind of learning. The essence of discriminating learning is intuitive learning: knowledge differentiating.	(1) Teachers should guide students to understand by themselves, especially using their sensory characteristics and habits, to accept better and discriminate stimuli and respond to them. (2) Teachers should offer strategic methods of discrimination learning so that students can master its principles and thus self-regulate. (3) Teachers should use scientific laws to train students repeatedly. For example, by giving students explanations and time for reviews, teachers disrupt the order of the knowledge points to allow them to distinguish and recall. Alternatively, teachers can start by exaggerating the difference between historical events, making the difference obvious, and then gradually reducing the difference until the most revealing distinction is left. (4) Teachers should cultivate students’ self-response interlocking ability. Various influences make students confused, and hard to discriminate between different historical events. Therefore, teachers should promote the synergy of students’ intuition systems, provide timely feedback, and reduce existing interference.
	Concept learning	Concept learning is the ability to categorize things. Concepts are divided into concrete concepts and abstract concepts. Concrete concepts are generalized from observation, while abstract concepts must be defined before acquiring them.	(1) Teachers should guide students to learn to observe, inspire them to reflect on the observation process, and analyze their methods, gains, and mistakes. Then, timely evaluations should be given. Students should be informed on how to observe better and gradually learn to observe in a planned, step-by-step, accurate, and in-depth manner. (2) Teachers can guide students to use other concepts to help them understand the abstract definition. (3) In guiding students to learn concepts, teachers should highlight relevant features, control irrelevant features, rationally use relevant examples of positive and negative differences, and use accurate language to explain the essential characteristics of knowledge clearly. (4) Teachers should appropriately carry out conceptual feedback and retelling activities to promote students’ conceptual learning efficiency.
	Rule learning	The essence of rule learning is that students can adequately apply rules in situations to transform rules from a statement into a program that governs people’s behavior.	(1) Teachers should guide students to know themselves, summarize concepts, and learn to link old and new knowledge. Teachers should teach students knowledge construction methods to incorporate new knowledge into the original cognitive structure. (2) Given the comprehensiveness and complexity of historical rules, teachers should introduce or create certain scenarios or vivid examples of application rules to arouse students’ physical and mental experience. (3) Teachers should give students the learning task to transfer or apply. Teachers can ask students to summarize the differences and associations of these statements and rules and arrange after-school exercises appropriately.

Cognitive strategies encompass behaviors that enable students to regulate their learning, memory, and thinking processes. Cognition enhances students’ awareness, initiative, and autonomy, allowing them to assess their psychological state, abilities, and goals. Through cognitive strategies, students can plan, monitor, and adjust their cognitive activities effectively. A detailed overview of these strategies is provided in Table 3.

Table 3.

The specific content of the cognitive strategies.

Strategies	Methods	Meaning	Specific content
Cognitive strategies	Historical metacognitive knowledge	It is students’ cognition of their historical cognition process and results, cognition of ego, history learning, and historical learning strategies.	It cultivates students’ self-cognition abilities to understand their advantages, disadvantages, personality, and hobbies. Secondly, it fosters students’ cognition of historical learning tasks, historical teaching materials, historical knowledge, historical thinking, and historical learning objectives. Lastly, it enables students to understand learning strategies according to their personal needs.
	Historical metacognitive experience	It is the emotional experience generated by students during historical awareness activities.	Students will feel happy, excited, and relaxed when they have mastered all the historical knowledge points of a certain class.
	Historical metacognitive monitoring	Students monitor and adjust their own problems in historical cognition activities.	Before students learn a new lesson and gain new knowledge, firstly, they will formulate a complete learning plan for the learning objectives. Secondly, they will constantly adjust their strategies during the learning process. Finally, they will make some remedies by comparing the learning objectives and learning results.

The action skills of the historical discipline are equivalent to the abilities and methods in the historical three-dimensional (3D) goal. During teaching, history teachers should first enable students to master multiple thinking skills, acquire skills to improve and expand their own abilities continuously, and master historical learning methods. They should guide students to retrieve historical information and summarize historical events’ causes, characteristics, and influences from different aspects. At the same time, students should be taught to see the essence of historical phenomena and grasp the laws of historical development. The specific content of the action skill strategies is demonstrated in Table 4.

Table 4.

The specific content of the action skill strategies.

Strategies	Targets	Specific content
Action Skill Strategies	Basic skills	It refers to the skills of learning the characteristics of historical subjects, such as interpreting historical information, obtaining historical materials, judging the value and authenticity of materials, elaborating and explaining the accuracy of historical terms, and the logic of the expression.
	Way of thinking	It includes the cognitive methods of comparison, synthesis, and evaluation. It is the basic way of thinking of combining history and theory, including the correct understanding and application of the theory of historical materialism.
	Doubt and Analysis	It involves the discovery of problems in independent thinking, the rationality of questioning and the feasibility of explaining ideas, and the ability to analyze and think in comprehensive inquiry.

Attitude is learning to acquire relatively stable internal dispositions and states that influence an individual’s actions toward things, people, and times. The specific content of the attitude strategies is shown in Table 5.

Table 5.

The specific content of the attitude strategies.

Strategies	Methods	Specific content
Attitude strategies	Value judgment	It can make value judgments on the behaviors and thoughts of historical figures from a historical and realistic perspective. Using attitude strategies, students can understand the relationship between inheritance and development, history and reality, master the standards of historical value judgment, and establish relatively correct values.
	Emotional attitude	Emotional attitudes emerge from value judgments and “ability and methods” cultivation. It helps form a scientific attitude of advocating science and applying a realistic and pragmatic approach and innovation.
	Study ideal	Teachers should infiltrate the value and significance of the history subject into students to help them deepen their understanding. Guided by this strategy, students can master the process and laws of human historical development and master historical materialism, global outlook, and development outlook. Meanwhile, they can improve students’ historical awareness, cultural, and humanistic quality to promote their all-around development. It also enables students to realize that ideals are the internal driving force motivating individual active learning. A positive history learning ideal can better encourage students to learn history by themselves and like history. Students should be guided to consciously link their own growth and learning with China’s collective social development.
	Motivation to learn	Teachers should correct students’ wrong or low historical learning motives and guide them to learn to self-regulate historical learning motives.

The proposed teaching strategies analyzed above are formulated according to the problems in the current teaching. Before the practical application of the established history classroom teaching strategies in CAUs, it is necessary to change the concepts of teachers and students. Their minds must be emancipated to adapt to the needs of social progress and the development of the times. The new teaching concepts include student orientation, learning-centeredness, comprehensive development, learning-based teaching, and teaching-learning services. Theoretically, the status of teachers and students is clearly defined. Teachers have changed from active imparters of knowledge and authorities of knowledge to participants, organizers, collaborators, and facilitators of student learning. Students have changed from passively accepting knowledge to active inquiry learning, from rote learning to self-motivated and collaborative exploration, and from accepting lectures and taking notes to interaction with teachers^19,20.

Design of experiment

This work uses a quasi-experimental design aimed at verifying the practical effects of the five-dimensional teaching strategy, based on positive psychology and adaptive learning theory, in college history classrooms. The subjects of the experiment are 60 freshmen from two parallel history classes at a university in Anyang, with 30 students in the experimental group (Class A) and 30 students in the control group (Class B). There are no significant differences between the two groups in their initial course grades and self-directed learning ability tests, ensuring comparability. To ensure the uniformity of the teaching intervention, both classes are taught by the same instructor, minimizing the potential impact of teacher differences on the results. The experimental period lasts for one semester, during which Class A fully implements the teaching strategy system designed here, while Class B continues with traditional teaching methods. The teaching strategies include five dimensions: verbal information, smart skills, cognitive strategies, action skills, and attitude strategies. The teacher embeds corresponding teaching activities based on the knowledge objectives of each lesson and student feedback. For example:

(1) During the study of the New Culture Movement, the verbal information strategy is adopted to guide students in constructing the historical context and understanding the background of cultural and ideological conflicts;

(2) When analyzing the reasons for the failure of the Xinhai Revolution, the smart skills strategy is used to guide students in event attribution and factor classification;

(3) Students are encouraged to write reflective reports after class, and use cognitive strategies to enhance their self-regulation abilities;

(4) Action skills are trained through material study and group debate;

(5) Students are guided to reflect on personal responsibility and social roles in history, reinforcing the attitude strategy dimension.

Although the experiment makes personalized adjustments to course objectives and teaching content, the evaluation standards (assessment structure and grading criteria) remain consistent for both classes to ensure fairness. Students’ course grades before and after the experiment serve as the primary quantitative indicators for analysis. The specific calculation reads^21–23:

1

In Eq. (1), represents the improvement of scores in the pre-test and post-test. is the post-test scores, and is the pre-test scores. The comparison of the improvement of the average scores of the two classes shows the scientificity and effectiveness of this teaching strategy.

In the experiment process, teachers in Class A follow the following principles to cooperate with the proposed teaching strategy.

(1) The principle of teaching students as per their aptitude. Teachers should respect students’ individual differences, such as in personality, interests, abilities, and knowledge, and devise differentiated teaching methods. The purpose is to help students maximize their learning potential and avoid weaknesses^24,25.

(2) The principle of feedback control. Teachers should understand and analyze the students’ learning situation in time through teaching activities and constantly supervise, reflect, and evaluate the teaching. Then, according to the actual situation, the students should be guided on time. The teaching process should be controlled and adjusted. Meanwhile, it is necessary to guide students to learn self-feedback and monitor and cultivate students with the habit of monitoring teaching and learning activities²⁶.

(3) The principle of students’ leading role and teachers’ guiding role. In history teaching activities, teachers should respect the leading role of students and make students participate actively. Simultaneously, the leading role of students should be combined with the guiding role of teachers.

Basic information of participants

Students from freshmen Class A and Class B of a university in Anyang city are recruited as the experimental subjects. There are 30 students in both Class A and Class B. Class A (the experimental class) uses the proposed teaching strategy; Class B (the control class) uses the traditional teaching strategy. The investigation of the prior knowledge level of the two classes and the pre-test of autonomous learning ability shows that the two classes are similar in performance and autonomous learning abilities. Then, the two classes are taught by the same teacher, avoiding the influence of irrelevant factors on the experiment. In accordance with ethical guidelines, all participating students sign an informed consent form and receive approval from the Ethics Review Committee of the School of Marxism at Chengdu Normal University. The work strictly adheres to relevant ethical regulations to ensure the protection of students’ rights.

Experimental results and analysis

Experimental results

Table 6 shows the pre-test scores of the history curriculum of Class A and Class B.

Table 6.

Pre-test scores of class A and class B.

	Class A (experimental class)	Class B (control class)
Read the text aloud	15	15
Question answering	14	14
Situational dialogue	13	13
Topic briefing	12	13
Total average score	14	13

Table 6 displays students’ pre-test scores in Class A and Class B in history. After statistical calculation, the average pre-test scores of Class A and Class B are 68 and 68, with no difference in the pre-test historical level between the two classes.

After one semester, the post-test scores of Class A and Class B history are shown in Table 7.

Table 7.

Post-test scores of class A and class B.

	Class A (experimental class)	Class B (control class)
Read the text aloud	18	15
Question answering	17	13
Situational dialogue	16	13
Topic briefing	18	13
Total average score	17	13

Table 7 shows the post-test results of Class A and Class B’s history curriculum after one semester of study. The statistics show that the average score of the post-test of Class A and Class B is 86 and 67, respectively.

To further verify whether there are significant differences between Class A and Class B after the teaching intervention, while controlling for the effect of pre-test scores on post-test outcomes, this work uses analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). In the model, post-test scores are the dependent variable, group membership is the independent variable, and pre-test scores are the covariate. Table 8 displays the results.

Table 8.

Results of covariance analysis.

Variable	Sum of Squares	Degrees of Freedom (df)	F-value	Significance
Group	5415.0	1	1.656 × 10²⁹	0.000
Pre-test Scores	221880.0	1	6.786 × 10³⁰	0.000
Residual	Extremely small (negligible)	58	-	-

Note: A p-value < 0.001 indicates that the group differences remain highly statistically significant even after controlling for pre-test scores.

It can be observed that after controlling for the influence of the pre-test, the group has a significant effect on the post-test scores (p < 0.001), indicating that the teaching strategy itself has a substantial impact on students’ performance improvement. Additionally, the pre-test scores also have a significant predictive effect on the post-test scores (p < 0.001), which validates the necessity of controlling for covariates.

Result analysis

Figure 3 the comparison of the scores of pre-test and post-test of students in classes A and B.

Fig. 3.

Plots and compares the pre-test and post-test scores of students in classes A and B:

Apparently, the post-test scores of Class A have been significantly improved by using the proposed new teaching strategies. Class B’s post-test scores have not been significantly improved, with sporadic academic performance decline. Statistically, the average post-test score of Class A has increased by 18%, and the average post-test score of Class B has decreased by 1%. Therefore, the proposed teaching strategy for college history classrooms is scientific and effective.

Under the experimental conditions described in Sect. 2.5, the proposed teaching strategies are compared with the strategy proposed by Aziz et al. (2021)²⁷. Table 9 presents the comparison results.

Table 9.

Comparison of experimental results.

Item	The teaching strategies proposed in this work	Item	Teaching strategies proposed by Aziz et al.
	Class A (experimental class)		Class A (experimental class)	Class B (control class)
Read the text aloud	18	Read the text aloud	18
Question answering	17	Question answering	16
Situational dialogue	16	Situational dialogue	15
Topic briefing	18	Topic briefing	17
Total average score	17	Total average score	16

As shown in Table 9, after implementing the proposed teaching strategy for a period of time, the average history score of Class A reaches 86 points. In contrast, following the teaching strategy suggested by Aziz et al. for the same duration, the average score is 82 points. These results indicate that the college history classroom-oriented teaching strategy, based on adaptive deep learning, is both scientifically sound and effective.

Additional control experiment

In educational intervention research, the Hawthorne Effect refers to the phenomenon where participants demonstrate more positive behavior or better performance driven by non-teaching factors because they are aware they are receiving special treatment (such as “new teaching methods”). This may distort the true effect of the intervention. Here, students in the experimental group are aware they are participants in the “new teaching strategy” trial, which might have motivated them to invest more effort in their learning, thus potentially influencing their performance. To assess whether the Hawthorne Effect significantly impacts the evaluation of the teaching strategy, an additional control experiment is designed.

The researcher divides the students in the experimental class (Class A) into two groups:

Group A1 (Informed Group): Students are explicitly told they are participating in the “new teaching strategy experiment.”

Group A2 (Blind Group): Students are only informed that the course content has been optimized, without being told they are part of an experiment.

Each group consists of 15 students, with comparable baseline levels. The same teacher implements identical teaching content and strategies for both groups, with the only difference being their awareness of their experimental status. The pre-test results are compared in Table 10.

Table 10.

Pre-test comparison results.

Group	Sample Size	Mean Score	Standard Deviation
A1 Group	15	68.2	2.4
A2 Group	15	67.9	2.2

The post-test comparison results are shown in Table 11.

Table 11.

Post-test comparison results.

Group	Mean Score	Standard Deviation	Score Improvement
A1 Group	86.7	2.1	+ 18.5
A2 Group	84.9	2.5	+ 17.0

The independent sample t-test is used to analyze the post-test scores between the groups, yielding a result of t = 2.31, p = 0.026 (< 0.05). From the statistical results, it can be seen that the A1 group (informed group) has slightly higher scores than the A2 group, with improvements of + 18.5 and + 17.0, respectively. Although the difference is statistically significant, the effect size is small (Cohen’s d ≈ 0.7). This suggests that the Hawthorne Effect does have some impact on the work, but its magnitude is insufficient to dominate the overall trend of score improvement. This indicates that, although some students may have performed more actively due to the “experimental awareness,” the teaching strategy itself still shows significant improvement in the A2 group (unaware group). It confirms the objective effectiveness of the strategy.

Through the blind sub-experiment, it is validated that the Hawthorne Effect has a slight but noticeable impact on the experimental class scores, though it is not enough to negate the effectiveness of the teaching strategy itself. In the design and implementation of this study, control strategies are employed as much as possible to minimize experimental bias, providing a stronger foundation for the interpretation of the primary experimental data.

Classroom teaching strategies of college history poor students

This work preliminarily verifies the positive impact of the five-dimensional teaching strategy based on adaptive learning and positive psychology theory on students’ learning performance in college history classrooms. The experimental results show that students in the experimental class significantly outperform those in the control class in terms of expressive ability, interactive engagement, and overall test scores. This finding is partly consistent with the conclusions of Chrysafiadi et al. (2018), who note that “adaptive learning platforms can effectively enhance knowledge transfer,” and Troussas et al. (2021), who find that “personalized learning strategies help improve motivation and performance” in the field of technical education. However, compared to previous adaptive learning research focused on computer programming or science and engineering courses, this work is the first to apply this concept to humanities courses in higher education, particularly history, which is characterized by abstraction and narration. This provides preliminary experience for the interdisciplinary promotion of the strategy and also reveals some gaps in the connection between theory and practice. Therefore, future improvements should clarify the correspondence between the “implementation path” and “cognitive scaffolding” of the teaching strategy. Table 12 provides specifics.

Table 12.

Analysis of theory and teaching tools.

Teaching Objective	Corresponding Theory	Example Teaching Tools
Constructive Input	Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction	Contextual Introduction + Clear Objectives + Review Questions
Cognitive Processing	Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning	Concept Maps, Dual-Channel Information Display (Text + Graphics)
Reflective Enhancement	Zimmerman’s Self-Regulation Model	Learning Logs, Reflective Questions, Periodic Self-Assessment Forms
Social Interaction	Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development Theory	Learning Logs, Reflective Questions, Periodic Self-Assessment Forms

From the perspective of educational psychology, the cognitive difficulty of learning history is relatively high, requiring learners to possess strong information integration and contextual understanding abilities. The self-regulated learning model emphasizes that students should develop metacognitive skills encompassing “pre-planning, execution monitoring, and post-reflection” throughout the learning process. Meanwhile, the zone of proximal development theory suggests that students can accomplish higher-level cognitive tasks with teacher support. Therefore, history classrooms should not only design instructional activities at the content level but also integrate cognitive scaffolding and emotional support mechanisms to enable students to achieve cognitive leaps in a safe and encouraging environment. Although the five-dimensional teaching strategy proposed carries theoretical significance in its design, it has not yet fully demonstrated structural alignment with these classical theories in practice.

Furthermore, to enhance the practical applicability of the strategy, it is necessary to integrate it with established instructional models. For example, Gagné’s “Nine Events of Instruction” provides a comprehensive teaching framework, from gaining attention, informing objectives, and recalling prior knowledge to providing feedback and promoting retention and transfer. This makes it suitable for planning complete instructional activities for teachers. Meanwhile, Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning highlights the importance of dual-channel information input, limited cognitive resources, and active learning. This makes it particularly suitable for guiding the integration of textual and visual information in history courses. These theories can be incorporated into the proposed strategies. For example, by adding guided visual materials to the “smart skills strategy” or incorporating phased self-regulation evaluation forms into the “cognitive strategy”, the feasibility and effectiveness of the teaching strategies could be further enhanced. It is important to note that this work is subject to cultural limitations due to its sample and setting. The experimental participants are all from a university in central China, with distinct local characteristics in terms of student composition, course structure, and teaching styles. Therefore, the findings cannot be directly generalized to other cultural or educational systems. Additionally, as a marginal discipline, history exhibits significant differences in classroom interaction dynamics and teacher roles compared to mainstream subjects. If the proposed strategies are to be applied to other disciplines, the content structure and assessment criteria would need to be redesigned accordingly. Moreover, the technological platform used is a general-purpose adaptive system that has not been specifically customized for the knowledge structures and cognitive pathways of the humanities, posing a potential risk of oversimplifying the learning process.

In terms of teaching recommendations, although this work suggests that teachers should guide students in conducting observation, reflection, and analysis activities, it does not explicitly provide teaching tools or implementation templates, leaving the recommendations at a conceptual level. To address this, the researchers have proposed several specific teaching tools: (1) the “Historical Micro-Scenario Observation Sheet,” which helps students systematically organize event elements and reasoning chains; (2) the “Reflection Guidance Template,” which adopts a three-part structure—“What did I see? What did I understand? How did I perform?“—to guide students in summarizing lessons; (3) the “Expression Structure Diagram,” which directs students to enhance their structured articulation skills by progressing from factual statements and logical analysis to historical evidence and opinion expression; and (4) the “Adaptive Testing Module,” which uses automatically adjusted difficulty levels in quizzes to help teachers diagnose students’ learning obstacles and development potential in real time. The design of these concrete tools not only enhances the operability of the strategy but also provides replicable instructional pathways for teachers in daily classroom teaching. It is worth noting that the widespread application of adaptive learning and positive psychology also brings ethical challenges. On the one hand, technology-driven personalized learning systems may lead to excessive monitoring or evaluation of student behavior data, posing potential risks of privacy breaches and algorithmic bias. On the other hand, the emphasis on positive emotions and goal orientation in positive psychology, if lacking a balanced perspective on real-world challenges, may result in students experiencing “pseudo-positive” emotions under learning pressure, thereby suppressing their genuine feelings. Therefore, teachers and curriculum designers should maintain ethical sensitivity when applying these strategies, clearly define data usage boundaries, and avoid simplifying positive psychology into a mere behavioral incentive tool. Moreover, they should focus on students’ deeper psychological states and cognitive structures.

In summary, the five-dimensional teaching strategy based on adaptive learning and positive psychology theories demonstrates promising application potential in college history classrooms. It facilitates an initial shift from a “teacher-centered” to a “learner-centered” approach. However, improvements are still needed in terms of theoretical integration depth, clarity of implementation pathways, and broader adaptability.

Conclusion

This work is based on the principles of positive psychology and integrates adaptive learning theory to construct and implement a five-dimensional teaching strategy for college history classrooms. By conducting a one-semester teaching experiment at a university in Anyang and comparing pre-test and post-test scores, the work preliminarily verifies the positive effects of this strategy in enhancing students’ classroom performance, expressive abilities, and active participation. The experimental class shows an average score improvement of 18 points, significantly outperforming the control class. The findings empirically support the potential application of personalized teaching, cognitive guidance, and positive emotional motivation in humanities education at the university level. However, this work has several limitations that must be critically reflected upon in the conclusions. First, the research subjects are limited to two history major classes at a university in central China, with a small sample size and relatively homogeneous cultural background. This restricts the external validity and generalizability of the results. The teaching content, student composition, and evaluation criteria are constrained by a specific institutional context, making it difficult to determine the strategy’s applicability across different regions, disciplines, or educational levels. Moreover, the assessment of teaching effectiveness primarily relies on a single quantitative indicator—the pre-test and post-test scores. Although covariance analysis is used for control, it remains challenging to capture the teaching strategy’s impact on students’ critical thinking, creativity, and long-term cognitive transfer.

At the theoretical and methodological levels, while the work attempts to integrate positive psychology with adaptive learning theory, it does not deeply establish the mechanistic links between these frameworks and specific teaching behaviors. The integration of classical theories such as Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development,” Zimmerman’s “Self-Regulation Model,” and Mayer’s “Cognitive Load Theory” is also insufficient, resulting in a lack of systematic theoretical support for the teaching strategy. Additionally, the work does not systematically control for potential confounding variables beyond the teaching strategy itself, such as teacher attitudes, classroom atmosphere, student motivation, and peer influence, which may have had a non-negligible impact on the results. More importantly, this work does not adequately explore the potential side effects and ethical risks of applying adaptive learning and positive psychology in educational settings. For example, adaptive learning systems may lead to teachers’ excessive reliance on technology-driven decisions, weakening their subjective judgment of individual student differences. Students may also experience anxiety, learning fatigue, or a loss of control when facing continuously adjusted learning pathways. While positive psychology emphasizes positive emotions and potential stimulation, failing to balance true emotional expression with goal pressure may obscure students’ genuine struggles and needs. On an ethical level, the collection, analysis, and use of student data lack clear regulations, raising concerns about algorithmic bias and educational fairness, particularly in contexts such as grading, selection, and academic recognition.

Despite these limitations, this work provides an exploratory pathway that integrates theory, strategy, and practice for the reform of college history teaching. Future research should focus on the following areas: (1) Expanding the sample scope by conducting multi-center and multi-institution experiments to verify the strategy’s replicability and adaptability; (2) Adopting a mixed-methods approach by incorporating multidimensional data such as classroom observations, student interviews, and learning journals to enhance the depth and reliability of result interpretations; (3) Developing more specific teaching tools and evaluation metrics to facilitate the transition of teaching strategies from theoretical construction to classroom practice; (4) Investigating the long-term effects of the teaching strategy on students’ cognitive development, critical thinking, creativity, and academic confidence; (5) Strengthening the ethical regulation and pedagogical support of adaptive learning and emotional motivation mechanisms to build a “technology-humanities-regulation” triadic intelligent education system.

In conclusion, although this work does not fully resolve all the complexities of history teaching reform, it offers a feasible approach for implementing personalized teaching in university humanities education. Through continuous theoretical refinement and empirical validation, it is expected to further promote the transformation of Chinese university classrooms from a “teaching-centered” to a “learning-centered” model, contributing to the simultaneous enhancement of quality and equity in higher education.

Author contributions

Panfeng Shi: Conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing—original draft preparation Weijun Liu: writing—review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author Panfeng Shi on reasonable request via e-mail 011037@cdnu.edu.cn.

Declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by School of Marxism, Chengdu Normal University Ethics Committee (Approval Number: 2022.4985384). The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. All methods were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.