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This paper presents a federated search and social recommen- dation widget. It describes the widget’s interface and the un- derlying social recommendation engine. A preliminary eval- uation of the widget’s usability and usefulness involving 15 subjects is also discussed. The evaluation helped identify us- ability problems that will be addressed prior to the widget’s usage in a real learning context. ispartof: pages:1-8 ispartof: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Social Recommender Systems (SRS 2011) in conjunction with the 2011 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2011) pages:1-8 ispartof: 2nd International Workshop on Social Recommender Systems (SRS 2011) in conjunction with the 2011 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2011) location:Hangzhou, China date:19 Mar - 23 Mar 2011 status: published

This paper focuses on Engineering Education Research on Technology Enhanced Learning carried out at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), and on its current focus on personal and collaborative learning. After some thoughts on the distinctive nature of Engineering Education Research, the interplay between engineering education practice and professional engineering practice is analyzed. In particular, it is demonstrated how the actual engineering practice of the faculty members influenced the acceptance and the success of new learning approaches and solutions. Finally, the impact on the current Web 2.0 paradigm is discussed and illustrated with the example of project-based collaborative learning activities supported by innovative social software that can be considered as a Personal Learning Environment. A vision of how to shape and exploit personal learning environments to tackle engineering education research challenges is also presented; this deals especially with the importance of user-driven recommendation mechanisms relying of proper trust models.

The STELLAR European network of Excellence (NoE) (http://www.stellarnet.eu) represents the effort of leading European institutions and projects in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) to unify their diverse and sometimes fragmented community. The Network is executed via a series of integration instruments designed to increase the research capacity of European TEL at all levels. One level is that of early career researchers, and in particular doctoral candidates, who are seen as key in establishing sustainable research capacity in TEL. This paper focuses on the ways in which STELLAR supports doctoral candidates through the establishment of a Doctoral Community of Practice (CoP) in Technology Enhanced Learning as a STELLAR doctoral integration instrument for the doctoral stakeholder community. This TEL Doctoral CoP (DoCoP), officially established in Autumn 2009, is also instrumental in bringing together actors of engineering education research in academic institutions, as proposed in the USA by Streveler [1]. The paper discusses possible ways in which the DoCoP could be developed through the innovative use of Web 2.0 technologies, by outlining the characteristics of one such technology and describing the ways in which an imaginary PhD candidate might use the technology in their PhD journey.

The trends in web development of educational applications and of Web 2.0 or social applications are converging. Platforms are designed to host a variety of software components (called widgets or plugins), which can be organised or combined (mashed-up) at user’s convenience. Such platforms can be exploited as both personalised learning environment (PLE) and as social network applications. This article argues that six qualitative dimensions can be defined to analyse the main features of these platforms: the screen dimension measures the visual integration, the data dimension measures the portability of data, the temporal dimension measures the rate of data synchronisation, the social dimension measures the networking of users, the activity dimension measures the structuring of users’ interactions with the environment, and the runtime dimension measures the flexibility in accessing the environment from different end points. As a proof of concept of the introduced dimensions, a few familiar Web 2.0 platforms are first measured along each dimension and then, using the results visualised as spider diagrams, compared with respect to their usefulness as PLEs.

In this chapter, the concept of Personal Learning Environment is first refined taken into account recent advances and the experience gathered in a European research project dedicated to responsive open learning environments. A prototypal implementation of a Web 2.0 platform enabling the construction, the sharing, and the repurposing of personal learning environments is then introduced. Participatory design and validation activities carried out in the framework of higher education test beds aiming at understanding the benefits of personal learning environments in academic institutions are presented. Finally, the broaden applica- tion framework for the deployment and the adoption of open user-centric environ- ments for learning and knowledge management is tackled with perspectives in terms of supporting inquiry learning at school with online laboratories, implementing connectivist massive open online courses or enabling agile informa- tion systems for nongovernmental organizations

As two recent trends in Web development, Widgets and mashups, are converging, we claim that there is a growing need to define a Widget Space configuration language to allow building flexible personal learning environments that could be independent of a runtime environment. By integrating the do-it-yourself dimension of a Web portal or Web mashup and the social dimension of the Web, we describe the scenarios that could emerge and we describe the new Web components that would be required to support it.

Although a plethora of Web 2.0 applications exist today, there is little literature reporting on experiences, concrete recommendations or best practices when developing such applications. The scarcity of such records makes it difficult for developers to determine how best to support the practices of communities with the use of Web 2.0 technologies. In this paper, we report on thirteen practical lessons learned while developing Web 2.0 collaboration services for Communities of Practice in the framework of a three years long European research project on Technology Enhanced Learning. The main objective of this project was to investigate how Web 2.0 technologies could impact the communication and collaboration needs of Communities of Practice interacting online and, conversely, how new interaction needs could impact Web 2.0 technology. The above lessons are presented in a way that could aid people engaged in various phases of the development of Web-based collaboration support services.