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Formative feedback enables comparison to be made between a learner's current understanding and a desired learning goal. Obtaining this information is a time consuming task that most tutors cannot afford. We therefore wished to develop a support software tool, which provides tutors and learners with information that identifies a learner's progress, and requires only limited human intervention. The central idea is to use language technologies to create concepts maps automatically from texts, such as students' essays or Blogs. By comparing maps from students over time, or with maps created from tutor's materials, or by other students, it should be possible to ascertain learners' progress and identify remedial actions. We review existing tools for automatic construction of concepts maps and describe our initial explorations of one of these tools. This paper then introduces the theoretical background of the proposed tool, design considerations and requirements. An initial validation, which explored tutors' perceptions of the tool showed that tutors found the approach relevant, but its implementation in practice requires to consider teachers' practices, the tools already in use, as well as institutional policies. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

The need to support users of the Internet with the selection of information is becoming more important. Learners in complex, self-organising Learning Networks have similar problems and need guidance to find and select most suitable learning activities, in order to attain their lifelong learning goals in the most efficient way. Several research questions regarding efficiency and effectiveness deal with adequate navigation support through recommender systems. To answer some of these questions an experiment was set up within an Introduction Psychology course of the Open University of the Netherlands. Around 250 students participated in this study and were monitored over an experimental period of four months. All were provided the same course materials, but only half of them were supported with a personalised recommender system. This study examined the effects of the navigation support on the completion of learning activities (effectiveness), needed time to comply them (efficiency), actual use of and satisfaction with the system, and the variety of learning paths. The recommender system positively influenced all measures, by having significant effects on efficiency, satisfaction and variety. (Contains 7 figures and 4 tables.)

For competences development of learners and professionals, target competences and corresponding competence development opportunities have to be identified. Personal Recommender Systems (PRS) provide personal recommendations for learners aimed at finding and selecting learning activities that best match their needs. This article argues that a clear-cut description of the concept of "competence" is needed for appropriate system-based personal recommendations. It is proposed to extend current initiatives on standardization of modelling competences with the concept of "Learning and performance situation" (LP-situation) and it is claimed that this extension has added value for personal recommendations for adequate selection of learning activities, for determining proficiency levels of competences, for the design of learning tasks, and for accreditation of prior knowledge. Advantages and disadvantages are discussed. (Contains 3 tables.)