Title: Educational resources recommendation system based on agents and semantic web for helping students in a virtual learning environment

Authors: Olavo Holanda; Rafael Ferreira; Evandro Costa; Ig Ibert Bittencourt; Jean Melo; Mario Peixoto; Willy Tiengo

Addresses: Group of Optimization of the Web - GrOW, Federal University of Alagoas, Lourival Melo Mota Ave. Maceió, 57072-970, Brazil. ' Group of Optimization of the Web - GrOW, Federal University of Alagoas, Lourival Melo Mota Ave. Maceió, 57072-970, Brazil. ' Group of Optimization of the Web - GrOW, Federal University of Alagoas, Lourival Melo Mota Ave. Maceió, 57072-970, Brazil. ' Group of Optimization of the Web - GrOW, Federal University of Alagoas, Lourival Melo Mota Ave. Maceió, 57072-970, Brazil. ' Group of Optimization of the Web - GrOW, Federal University of Alagoas, Lourival Melo Mota Ave. Maceió, 57072-970, Brazil. ' Group of Optimization of the Web - GrOW, Federal University of Alagoas, Lourival Melo Mota Ave. Maceió, 57072-970, Brazil. ' Group of Optimization of the Web - GrOW, Federal University of Alagoas, Lourival Melo Mota Ave. Maceió, 57072-970, Brazil

Abstract: This work proposes an agent-based system for helping students in the knowledge building process by providing them with recommendations of papers and blogs. The interaction starting point involves a blog context focused on a specific domain. Then, the teacher posts a topic in this blog and students express their opinions about this topic. Afterwards, the system monitors the interaction process aiming to mine the discussion to extract important attributes and information. Then, the recommender system retrieves relevant material to support dynamic interactions in the learning environment. Thus, two situations were defined one, being that the system helps the students by finding and recommending relevant and related blogs. The other, being that the system helps students by recommending papers from a digital library to provide them with formal opinions about the target topic, aiming at enriching their learning experiences. The proposed system with a case study and empirical results are described.

Keywords: recommendation systems; VLEs; virtual learning environments; semantic web; intelligent agents; educational resources; blogosphere; social media; blogging; social networking; networks; agent-based systems; student support; knowledge building; blog posts; student opinions; interaction processes; discussion mining; attribute extraction; information extraction; dynamic interactions; relevant blogs; related blogs; digital libraries; academic papers; formal opinions; target topics; learning experiences; Brazil; universities; higher education; recommenders; recommender systems; e-communities; electronic communities; internet; world wide web; virtual communities; web based communities; online communities; virtual learning communities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2012.048056

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2012 Vol.8 No.3, pp.333 - 353

Published online: 20 Aug 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article