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Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning pp 195–225Cite as

ALEF: From Application to Platform for Adaptive Collaborative Learning

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Abstract

Web 2.0 has had a tremendous impact on education. It facilitates access and availability of learning content in variety of new formats, content creation, learning tailored to students’ individual preferences, and collaboration. The range of Web 2.0 tools and features is constantly evolving, with focus on users and ways that enable users to socialize, share and work together on (user-generated) content. In this chapter we present ALEF—Adaptive Learning Framework that responds to the challenges posed on educational systems in Web 2.0 era. Besides its base functionality—to deliver educational content—ALEF particularly focuses on making the learning process more efficient by delivering tailored learning experience via personalized recommendation, and enabling learners to collaborate and actively participate in learning via interactive educational components. Our existing and successfully utilized solution serves as the medium for presenting key concepts that enable realizing Web 2.0 principles in education, namely lightweight models, and three components of framework infrastructure important for constant evolution and inclusion of students directly into the educational process—annotation framework, feedback infrastructure and widgets. These make possible to devise and implement various mechanisms for recommendation and collaboration—we also present selected methods for personalized recommendation and collaboration together with their evaluation in ALEF.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A basic component for education delivery is a learning object. For learning object we adopt a broader definition by IEEE, which defines a learning object as any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training [15].

  2. 2.

    Browser-Based User Modeling and Personalization Framework, http://brumo.fiit.stuba.sk

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is based on publications that present partial results of our research in the field of adaptive and intelligent web-based educational systems, all mentioned in References. It was partially supported by the grants VEGA 1/0675/11/2011-2014, KEGA 028-025STU-4/2010, APVV-0208-10 and it is the partial result of the Research & Development Operational Programme for the project Research of methods for acquisition, analysis and personalized conveying of information and knowledge, ITMS 26240220039, co-funded by the ERDF.

The authors wish to thank colleagues from the Institute of Informatics and Software Engineering and all students (in particular members of PeWe group, pewe.fiit.stuba.sk) for their invaluable contributions to the work presented in this chapter either by discussions or participating in ALEF implementation and experiments. Special thanks deserve former members of ALEF team Pavol Michlík, Vladimír Mihál and Maroš Unčík for their direct contribution to ALEF design and implementation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Informatics and Software Engineering, Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Ilkovičova, 842 16, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Mária Bieliková, Marián Šimko, Michal Barla, Jozef Tvarožek, Martin Labaj, Róbert Móro, Ivan Srba & Jakub Ševcech

Authors
  1. Mária Bieliková
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  2. Marián Šimko
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  3. Michal Barla
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  4. Jozef Tvarožek
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  5. Martin Labaj
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  6. Róbert Móro
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  7. Ivan Srba
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  8. Jakub Ševcech
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mária Bieliková .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Agro-Know, Athens, Greece

    Nikos Manouselis

  2. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Welten Institute – Research Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology, Open University of the Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Hendrik Drachsler

  3. Department of Computer Science, VUB & KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Katrien Verbert

  4. aDeNu Research Group, Artificial Intelligence Department, Computer Science School, UNED, Madrid, Spain

    Olga C. Santos

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Bieliková, M. et al. (2014). ALEF: From Application to Platform for Adaptive Collaborative Learning. In: Manouselis, N., Drachsler, H., Verbert, K., Santos, O. (eds) Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0530-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0530-0_10

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