Evgeny Bogdanov

A social media platform in higher education

This paper reports on the successful use of Graasp, a social media platform, by university students for their collaborative work. Graasp features a number of innovations, such as administrator-free creation of collaborative spaces, a context-aware recommendation and privacy management. In the context of a EU-funded project involving large test beds, we have been able to extend this platform with lightweight tools (widgets) aimed for learning and competence development and to validate its usefulness in a collaborative learning context.

Graaasp: a web 2.0 research platform for contextual recommendation with aggregated data

In this paper we describe Graaasp, a social software currently under development to support the creation of a real usage database of social artifacts. Our goals are twofold: First to offer a generic aggregation service and user interface to people and communities. Second, to experiment with recommendation and reputation models and algorithms in e-learning.

From LMS to PLE: a step forward through opensocial apps in moodle

Bringing flexibility and extensibility into Learning Management Systems) is crucial because it gives teachers and students a free choice of technologies and educational materials they want to use for their courses. The paper presents a solution via enabling widgets (OpenSocial apps) within Moodle. Our first Moodle plug-in allows teachers to freely choose a set of tools they want to use in their courses though students can not change widgets proposed by teachers. This environment was evaluated with students within several courses. Even though the environment was perceived as useful by students, they still lacked their own personalization. We describe how the future plug-in tackles this problem.

Widget-Based Approach for Remote Control Labs

The paper presents a novel approach to conduct laboratory experiments in relation with the Control class taught at EPFL. The existing laboratory interface built as a Java applet, which allows students to access experimentation devices locally or remotely, is split into a set of light-weight Web applications or widgets. While achieving the same basic functionalities, these widgets provide user customization and extension. They are more flexible and add off-the-shelf interaction with other widgets and with the surrounding Web environment. The paper shows how remote experimentation devices are integrated within the Graasp platform, which provides knowledge management and enables collaboration among students. The educational scenario illustrates the technical challenges, and the solutions to tackle them are proposed and explained.

Cloud-Savvy contextual spaces as agile personal learning environments or informal knowledge management solutions

This paper presents how advanced social media platforms can be exploited to construct and share contextual spaces enabling the instantiation of agile personal learning environments or informal knowledge management solutions. The usefulness of open plugins to collect resources from the cloud in such dedicated contextual spaces is discussed. The mechanisms for the personalization of spaces from an interaction point of view once populated with resources and their sharing across platforms are also detailed. Results are illustrated with the case of the Graasp platform developed in the framework of European research projects in Technology Enhanced Learning.

Collaborative Development of a PLE for Language Learning

This paper provides a report on the experimental collaborative and distributed development of a prototypic Widget-based PLE. The development process is described and detailed taking into account the requirements of a language learning scenario. First results are presented, and developer experiences are discussed critically with a focus on the development process as well as problems with current Widget technologies and interoperability

Towards PLEs through Widget Spaces in Moodle

Bringing flexibility and extensibility into Learning Management Systems is crucial because it gives teachers and students a free choice of technologies and educational materials they want to use for their courses. This paper presents a solution by enabling widgets (OpenSocial apps) within Mood le. Our first Moodle plugin allows teachers to freely choose a set of tools they want to use in their courses, although students cannot change widgets proposed by teachers. Additionally, the plugin enables the flexible interaction interfaces inside Mood le and improves the interoperability of Mood le with other Web platforms. The environment was evaluated with students within several courses. Even though the environment was perceived as useful by students, they lacked their own personalization. The second Mood le plugin described tackles this problem.