Title: Exploiting trust into e-learning: adding reliability to learning paths

Authors: V. Carchiolo, D. Correnti, A. Longheu, M. Malgeri, G. Mangioni

Addresses: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle Telecomunicazioni, Facolta di Ingegneria, Universita degli Studi di Catania, viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle Telecomunicazioni, Facolta di Ingegneria, Universita degli Studi di Catania, viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle Telecomunicazioni, Facolta di Ingegneria, Universita degli Studi di Catania, viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle Telecomunicazioni, Facolta di Ingegneria, Universita degli Studi di Catania, viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle Telecomunicazioni, Facolta di Ingegneria, Universita degli Studi di Catania, viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy

Abstract: The personalisation of learning paths according to personal profiles is one of the major advantages of computer assisted learning. However, the choice of most suitable learning resources is sometime a controversial question due to different e-learning providers| assessment about each other and their learning resources. In this work, an approach to address this issue is presented, by exploiting the idea of trustworthiness associated to both learning objects as well as to peers in a P2P e-learning scenario. In particular, trust relationships among peers allows to select which ones of them can be considered more authoritative in answering a query within a given topic (described by shared ontologies), whereas trust about learning objects allows to select most reliable resources. We test our proposal on an e-learning network based on MERLOT and ARIADNE data. Results show the effectiveness of trust in e-learning context.

Keywords: trust; e-learning; course personalisation; peer-to-peer systems; P2P networks; electronic learning; online learning; learning paths; personal profiles; computer assisted learning; learning resources selection; trustworthiness; ontologies; learning objects.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTEL.2009.030777

International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 2009 Vol.1 No.4, pp.253 - 265

Published online: 05 Jan 2010 *

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