Enriching Lifelong User Modelling with the Social e-Networking and e-Commerce “ Pieces of the Puzzle ”

Lifelong User Modelling (LUM) is a long-term vision which is a critical element in achieving lifelong personalized learning. One of the key factors for enabling LUM is making the user models scrutable, a feature used for allowing users to inspect and alter the modelling process. A Scrutable User Modelling Infrastructure (SUMI) is proposed in this paper, which attempts to include in the LUM picture two unexplored pieces of the puzzle: the social enetworking and the e-commerce domains. SUMI gathers the various user models constructed from several (life-long) user interactions with a diversity of providers from the social e-networking and e-commerce domains, passes the control to the owners of the user models by providing scrutability and privacy privileges, and enables exchanging of user information via SUMI, among services from these two domains and educational personalization systems.