Ubiquitous Collaborative Learning in Knowledge-Aware Virtual Communities

In this paper, we applied peer-to-peer (P2P) and instant messenger (IM) approaches to provide a seamless integration of learning resources. The learning resources contain three categories, namely learning collaborators, content, and services. This seamless learning environment aimed for knowledge sharing in collaboration supported virtual learning communities. Content found by peer-to-peer network refers to the sources of explicit knowledge; while the discussion and interaction details recorded in instant messenger network is the source of tacit knowledge. Interaction occurred in social network can be bi-parties communication, message exchange, file sharing, and knowledge sharing. Results of this study demonstrate that the applied knowledge sharing mechanism helps learning collaborators find right content and related knowledgeable collaborators who are willing to share their knowledge