LTfLL > overview > 6.2 – The LTfLL Informal Learning Support Service to Locate Content and Peers

6.2 – The LTfLL Informal Learning Support Service to Locate Content and Peers

Download: LTfLL-Service-Description

Problem: Learners have problems locating content on the web that is appropriate for a given learning task.  It is difficult to identify which resources can be trusted to be of sufficient quality, especially for beginners. Moreover, learners often operate in isolation, because neither teachers, nor peers are available to offer support all the time.

 

Solution: The LTfLL Common Semantic Framework (CSF) supports stakeholders in identifying, retrieving and exchanging the relevant learning material for a given learning task. The CSF includes  the Formal Learning Support System (FLSS) related to task 6.1 and the Informal Learning Support System (iFLSS) related to task 6.2. The iFLSS supports the knowledge discovery process through an ontology enhanced with the vocabulary of the

Community of Practice (CoP) and by recommending material on the basis of the content, tags and users belonging to the CoP. Communication is facilitated through the use of social networks and new communities of learners can be established through the recommendations provided by the system.

  

Story: I need to refresh my knowledge of Java for the implementation part of my thesis. I attended a course in the first year of the program but I have forgotten many details. My tutor told me he can recommend some online courses and books. Rather than waiting for his mail, I decide to use the Common Semantic Framework (CSF) that will help me find relevant content and people with its search system that is based on tags and users. I enter my query and various resources are returned, such as textual material (from Delicious), videos (from YouTube), and slides (from Slideshare). I can also get information on whether other people have used this content and whether I can get in touch with them. I restrict the search to people in my own network and that of my tutor. Some of these social contacts are proficient in Java development and I can contact them when I need assistance. The CSF returns as a result of my query also a fragment of an ontology which shows the relation between the terms of my query and other terms. In this way, I can find additional material and discover new related resources.

 

 

 

Key functionalities

Preparation
- Define topic

- Select ontology fragment
- Enrich the fragment on the basis of tags
- Crawl data  from social network sites


Learner employs the iFLSS

The learner has to find relevant content for his learning task. He can use the ontology browsing functionality of the CSF to improve his knowledge on the domain of the topic. The learner can also use this browsing functionality to retrieve documents. In addition to the browsing based search, the learner can search for relevant materials in two other ways. The first option is to employ semantic search on the basis of the domain ontology. The second search functionality is based on the structure of the social network and the tags attached to resources. In addition to the document itself, the retrieved results indicate the peers associated with these resources which are part of his social network, enabling the learner to contact these persons. The result  of this search is trusted because it has the guarantee of a peer recommendation. The different search possibilities are all available and the learner can freely switch to one another according to his needs. The ontology, tags, annotations and links to resources are stored in the semantic repository.

Required techniques and data:

Common with CSF 6.1:

·                Domain ontology on Computing

·                RDF repository

·                Search service

·                Graph visualization (ontology and network)

 

Unique:

·                2 million triples crawled from Delicious

·                structured information from DBpedia (used for  automatic enrichment of LT4eL ontology)

·                various similarity measures (used for  automatic enrichment of LT4eL ontology)

·                ontologies related to social networks and/or semantic web (SIOC, FOAF, SKOS, SCOT, MOAT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Validation

Our validation goals in round 2 are to investigate the extent to which the:

·      Services help the learners to locate relevant learning material that is used in the context of a learning task on the basis of:

·      An ontology enriched with social tags

·      Tags and resources provided by the CoP

·      Learner gets a better view of how a concept is related to other concepts within a domain and becomes aware of the vocabulary of the domain

 

We will validate the software in the domain of Computing in English with 6 Computer Science students and six non-CS students (Dutch and Romanian learners). The learners will use the search and recommendation services based on social networks, ontologies and tags to find relevant materials. The employed validation instruments will be questionnaires, interviews and manual rating of results. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis will be undertaken. The students will be asked to connect to one another using different social networking applications and then to use these applications to provide bookmarks for links they find useful or to add presentations or videos that are of interest to them. After using these applications, the students will be asked to use the CSF services in order to obtain recommendations of resources and peers and also to search relevant content in their network.

 

 
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