JISC

The project proposes to build an ELF toolkit based around an eProfile server (ELF Producer) that will maintain individuals personal profiles and will support the social networks and relationships that exist between these users. This toolkit will be demonstrated in the context of how it can be used to support the formation and establishment of online learning communities, and will include the development of an innovative TouchGraph based client application (ELF Consumer). Some of this functionality (eg. FOAF profiles) is already available in other open source systems, such as eLGG (see elgg.net) which includes user profiling alongside many other functionalities. However, this is not in a form which is suitable for the ELF. We intend to produce a stand-alone light-weight profile server that can be incorporated into the ELF framework, and can easily be tailored and combined with other ELF components, such as resource repositories and community services, to form new e-learning applications and services.

Aims and Objectives

The project has the following aims and objectives:

• to build an ELF toolkit based around an eProfile server (ELF Producer) that will maintain individuals personal profiles and will support the social networks and relationships that exist between these users.
• the eprofile server should be stand-alone and light-weight such that it can be incorporated into the ELF framework, and can easily be tailored and combined with other ELF components, such as resource repositories and community services, to form new e-learning applications and services.
• to demonstrate this with an innovative TouchGraph based client application (ELF Consumer)

Project Methodology

Our intention is to use the friend-of-a-friend vocabulary (FOAF) , together with existing user vocabularies, to create a toolkit for the discovery and formation of new research communities.
Underlying the system will be the concept of social networks that represent both users and existing learning communities/resources.  Two types of relationships will be emphasized: user to user, and user to community/resource.  Discovery will be possible by traversing these social networks. Users will enter keywords describing the relevant learning areas sought, e.g. ‘Bluetooth positioning’.  The system will then return the relevant results as a clickable social network containing nodes that represent either individual users or learning communities.  Navigating over a node will display a user’s, or community’s, profile together with any links to the relevant information space.  Clicking on an individual node will expand the node’s social network hence allowing additional nodes to be discovered.  We believe that this approach will allow extremely large numbers of users and communities to be visualized in a manner where users are not overwhelmed with irrelevant results, together with allowing users to narrow down discovery by clicking through the various parts of a social network they find relevant.

Implications/ Deliverables/ Stakeholders

The project will lead to the creation and implementation of a new tool to support community formation. This will:

1. Improve our understanding of how FOAF can be used to support e-learning users.
2. Lead to greater sharing of effective practice between communities of learner and practitioners. This should be particularly important for both initial teacher training and continuous professional development.
3. Help to develop a standard metadata schema for describing user communities and  accessing distributed and shared resources. It is important for user groups to have an agreed, valid and easy-to-use metadata scheme.
4. Create an architecture/tool that interoperates with other systems, is extendible and is acceptable to the relevant user communities (including developers).

The underlying principles of community and peer sharing are new to current practice, and the creation of the system should stimulate a debate about new approaches, and enable teachers and learners to experience and judge their effectiveness.

This project has now completed. For information on the project, please go to the project website (link given at the top of this page) and see the final report linked to at the very end of this page.