Reliable peers and useful resources: Searching for the best personalised learning path in a trust- and recommendation-aware environment

The evolution of the Web 2.0 and the intensive use of peer-to-peer networks allow us to access more and more information from disparate data sources than in the past, thus making life-long learning more effective. In this scenario, a critical issue still remains to be addressed: the reliability of resources, whether they can be recommended as useful and the reliability of peers, whether it is possible to trust them as providers. We propose to integrate these concepts with e-learning, proposing a model for searching for personalised and useful learning paths suggested by reliable (trusted) peers. We performed simulations on the Merlot data set enhanced with information extracted from Advogato, Epinions and Ariadne data sets, testing the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

[1]  Hector Garcia-Molina,et al.  The Eigentrust algorithm for reputation management in P2P networks , 2003, WWW '03.

[2]  Athanasios K. Tsakalidis,et al.  Shaping online learning communities and the way adaptiveness adds to the picture , 2005, Int. J. Knowl. Learn..

[3]  Munindar P. Singh,et al.  A Social Mechanism of Reputation Management in Electronic Communities , 2000, CIA.

[4]  Olga C. Santos,et al.  An Overview of aLFanet: An Adaptive iLMS Based on Standards , 2004, AH.

[5]  Don Schauder,et al.  The Webworkforce - a learning repository to support educators, trainers and Information Technology courses , 2003, ACE.

[6]  Vincenza Carchiolo,et al.  A model for a web-based learning system , 2007, Inf. Syst. Frontiers.

[7]  Fabio Vignoli,et al.  Complex-network theoretic clustering for identifying groups of similar listeners in p2p systems , 2007, RecSys '07.

[8]  A.D.C. Rasgado,et al.  A Language and Algorithm for Automatic Merging of Ontologies , 2006, 2006 15th International Conference on Computing.

[9]  Tore Risch,et al.  EDUTELLA: a P2P networking infrastructure based on RDF , 2002, WWW.

[10]  Juan Ramón Pérez Pérez,et al.  Adaptation in current e-learning systems , 2008, Comput. Stand. Interfaces.

[11]  Peter Brusilovsky,et al.  A Framework for Adaptive E-Learning Based on Distributed Re-usable Learning Activities , 2002 .

[12]  Steffen Staab,et al.  EDUTELLA: Searching and Annotating Resources within an RDF-based P2P Network , 2002, Semantic Web Workshop.

[13]  David Pearch Snyder.  Peer‐to‐Peer Networking and Lifelong Learning , 2001 .

[14]  ChengXiang Zhai,et al.  Probabilistic Models for Expert Finding , 2007, ECIR.

[15]  Vincenza Carchiolo,et al.  Reliable Personalized Learning Paths: The Contribution of Trust to E-Learning , 2008, WSKS.

[16]  Josep Lluís de la Rosa i Esteva,et al.  Opinion-Based Filtering through Trust , 2002, CIA.

[17]  Matteo Dell'Amico.  Neighbourhood maps: decentralised ranking in small-world P2P networks , 2006, Proceedings 20th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium.

[18]  Erik Duval,et al.  LOMster: Peer-to-peer Learning Object Metadata , 2002 .

[19]  Rajeev Motwani,et al.  The PageRank Citation Ranking : Bringing Order to the Web , 1999, WWW 1999.

[20]  Jon Crowcroft,et al.  A survey and comparison of peer-to-peer overlay network schemes , 2005, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[21]  Ling Liu,et al.  PeerTrust: supporting reputation-based trust for peer-to-peer electronic communities , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[22]  Jennifer Golbeck,et al.  Trust and nuanced profile similarity in online social networks , 2009, TWEB.

[23]  Mor Naaman,et al.  Methods for extracting place semantics from Flickr tags , 2009, TWEB.

[24]  Martin Wolpers.  Towards P2P-based information systems for E-learning using semantic web technologies (Keynote Address) , 2003, CAiSE Workshops.

[25]  Susumu Yamasaki,et al.  A Framework for Adaptive e-Learning Systems in Higher Education with Information Visualization , 2007, 2007 11th International Conference Information Visualization (IV '07).

[26]  Julita Vassileva,et al.  Course sequencing techniques for large-scale web-based education , 2003 .

[27]  D. Aspin,et al.  Lifelong learning: concepts and conceptions , 2000 .

[28]  Maria Virvou,et al.  Modelling the student to individualise tutoring in a web-based ICALL , 2003 .

[29]  Johann Laister,et al.  Social Aspects of Collaborative Learning in Virtual Learning Environments , 2007 .

[30]  Hisham Al-Mubaid,et al.  Designing and managing intervention methods to promote Self-Regulated Learning , 2008 .

[31]  Ramanathan V. Guha,et al.  Propagation of trust and distrust , 2004, WWW '04.

[32]  Hyunjang Kong,et al.  A new methodology for merging the heterogeneous domain ontologies based on the WordNet , 2005, International Conference on Next Generation Web Services Practices (NWeSP'05).

[33]  Bobby Bhattacharjee,et al.  Using Trust in Recommender Systems: An Experimental Analysis , 2004, iTrust.

[34]  Graham Vickery,et al.  Participative Web And User-Created Content: Web 2.0 Wikis and Social Networking , 2007 .

[35]  R. Poell,et al.  Customising learning programmes to the organisation and its employees: how HRD practitioners create tailored learning programmes , 2005 .

[36]  Lora Aroyo,et al.  Ontological Support for Web Courseware Authoring , 2002, Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

[37]  Marianne Winslett,et al.  PeerTrust: Automated Trust Negotiation for Peers on the Semantic Web , 2004, Secure Data Management.

[38]  Stephen Marsh,et al.  Formalising Trust as a Computational Concept , 1994 .

[39]  Christian Gütl,et al.  A Generic Solution Approach for Integrating Adaptivity into Web-based E-Learning Platforms , 2007 .

[40]  James A. Hendler,et al.  Reputation Network Analysis for Email Filtering , 2004, CEAS.

[41]  Erik Duval,et al.  Reusable learning objects: a survey of LOM-based repositories , 2002, MULTIMEDIA '02.

[42]  Jennifer Golbeck,et al.  Investigating interactions of trust and interest similarity , 2007, Decis. Support Syst..

[43]  Paolo Avesani,et al.  Controversial Users Demand Local Trust Metrics: An Experimental Study on Epinions.com Community , 2005, AAAI.

[44]  Deborah L. McGuinness,et al.  An Environment for Merging and Testing Large Ontologies , 2000, KR.

[45]  Wilson Vicente Ruggiero,et al.  An Approach to Personalisation in E-learning , 2007, Seventh IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2007).

[46]  P. Sztompka.  Trust: A Sociological Theory , 2000 .

[47]  Juan-Zi Li,et al.  Expert Finding in a Social Network , 2007, DASFAA.

[48]  Siani Pearson,et al.  A Privacy-Enhanced Peer-to-Peer Reputation System , 2003, EC-Web.

[49]  Ah-Hwee Tan,et al.  Learning user profiles for personalized information dissemination , 1998, 1998 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks Proceedings. IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (Cat. No.98CH36227).

[50]  Yolanda Gil,et al.  A survey of trust in computer science and the Semantic Web , 2007, J. Web Semant..

[51]  Becky Gibson,et al.  Enabling an accessible web 2.0 , 2007, W4A '07.

[52]  Alfredo Garro,et al.  Personalizing learning programs with X-Learn, an XML-based, "user-device" adaptive multi-agent system , 2007, Inf. Sci..