Felix Mödritscher

Towards a recommender strategy for personal learning environments

Abstract Personal learning environments (PLEs) aim at putting the learner central stage and comprise a technological approach towards learning tools, services, and artifacts gathered from various usage contexts and to be used by learners. Due to the varying technical skills and competences of PLE users, recommendations appear to be useful for empowering learners to set up their environments so that they can connect to learner networks and collaborate on shared artifacts by using the tools available. In this paper we examine different recommender strategies on their applicability in PLE settings. After reviewing different techniques given by literature and experimenting with our prototypic PLE solution we come to the conclusion to start with an item-based strategy and extend it with model-based and iterative techniques for generating recommendations for PLEs.

Mashups by orchestration and widget-based personal environments Key challenges, solution strategies, and an application

Purpose – Mashups have been studied extensively in the literature; nevertheless, the large body of work in this area focuses on service/data level integration and leaves UI level integration, hence UI mashups, almost unexplored. The latter generates digital environments in which participating sources exist as individual entities; member applications and data sources share the same graphical space particularly in the form of widgets. However, the true integration can only be realized through enabling widgets to be responsive to the events happening in each other. The authors call such an integration “widget orchestration” and the resulting application “mashup by orchestration”. This article aims to explore and address challenges regarding the realization of widget‐based UI mashups and UI level integration, prominently in terms of widget orchestration, and to assess their suitability for building web‐based personal environments.Design/methodology/approach – The authors provide a holistic view on mashups and...

Ubiquitous web navigation through harvesting embedded semantic data: A mobile scenario

In this paper, we investigate how the Semantic Web can enhance web navigation and accessibility by following a hybrid approach of document-oriented and data-oriented considerations. Precisely, we propose a methodology for specifying, extracting, and presenting semantic data embedded in XHTML documents with RDFa in order to enable and improve ubiquitous web navigation and accessibility for end-users. In our context, embedded data does not only contain data type property annotations, but also object properties for interlinking, and embedded domain knowledge for enhanced content navigation through ontology reasoning. We provide a prototype implementation, called Semantic Web Component SWC and evaluate our methodology along a concrete scenario for mobile devices and with respect to precision, performance, network traffic, and usability. Evaluation results suggest that our approach decreases network traffic as well as the amount of information presented to a user without requiring significantly more processing time, and that it allows creating a satisfactory navigation experience.

Foundations of a pattern language based on Gestalt principles

Traditionally, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a highly interdisciplinary field bridging the research between psychological research and computer science. This paper places great emphasis on a new pattern language based on Gestalt principles, among which Prägnanz is regarded as the fundamental one. Psychological findings, pattern methodology and linguistic categories consequently form the basis of our work. The proposed pattern language, not yet finished, is intended to support visual design [11] in a user-centered way by providing comprehensive information about Gestalt principles.

Comparing LMS Usage Behavior of Mobile and Web Users

Mobile devices are gaining popularity due to their increasing functionality and usability, and their location and time independence. Consequently mobile technology has become important for both learners and educational institutions. In this paper, we examine usage behavior of mobile and web users within a learning management system (LMS). After motivating the topic and briefly sketching related work, the setup of a case study, the data-set and the findings are described. In short, it turns out that mobile users tend to quickly look up required or interesting information while web users have longer and deeper browsing sessions which include more course-specific functionality.

Mashups and widget orchestration

The mashup era has emerged in response to the challenge of integrating existing services, data sources, and tools to generate new applications. Mashups are usually realized either through a seamless integration, in which only the resulting application is known by the end-users, or through integration of original applications, data sources, and tools, particularly in terms of widgets, into the same graphical space, in which participating applications and data sources are identifiable by the end-users. The former composes a unified functionality or data presentation/source from the original sources. The latter generates a digital environment in which participating sources exist as individual entities, but the true integration can only be realized through enabling widgets to be responsive to the events happening in each other. We call such an integration widget orchestration. In this paper, we provide a holistic view on the mashup era and a theoretical grounding for widget-based digital environments, we elaborate on key challenges for realizing such environments and (semi-)automatic widget orchestration, and we introduce our solution strategies. We identified following challenges: widget interoperability, user-behavior mining, and infrastructure. We introduce functional interfaces (FWI) for application interoperability, exploit semantic web technologies for data interoperability, and investigate the possibility of employing workflow/process mining techniques, along with Petri nets as a formal ground, for user-behavior mining. We outline a reference platform and architecture, compliant with our strategies, to foster re-usability of widgets and development of standardized widget-based environments. We have implemented a prototype for a Widget-based Personal Learning Environment (WIPLE) for foreign language learning in order to demonstrate the feasibility of our solution strategies, framework, and architecture.

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

Semantic mash-up personal and pervasive learning environments (SMupple)

Personal Learning Environments have emerged as a complementary, even challenging, paradigm to Adaptive Learning Systems. We consider the mash-up era as an appropriate approach for a successful realization of digital personal learning environments. However, mash-ups are also accompanied by critical technical and usability challenges. In this paper, we try to identify some of these challenges and present our solution approach which results in Semantic Mash-up Personal and Pervasive Learning Environments (SMupple).

And Data for All: On the Validity and Usefulness of Open Government Data

Open Government Data (OGD) stands for a relatively young trend to make data that is collected and maintained by state authorities available for the public. Although various Austrian OGD initiatives have been started in the last few years, less is known about the validity and the usefulness of the data offered. Based on the data-set on Viennas stock of trees, we address two questions in this paper. First of all, we examine the quality of the data by validating it according to knowledge from a related discipline. It shows that the data-set we used correlates with findings from meteorology. Then, we explore the usefulness and exploitability of OGD by describing a concrete scenario in which this data-set can be supportive for citizens in their everyday life and by discussing further application areas in which OGD can be beneficial for different stakeholders and even commercially used.

Utilizing Embedded Semantics for User-Driven Design of Pervasive Environments

The Web does not only offer an almost infinitive number of services and resources but can be also seen as a technology to combine different technological devices, like mobile phones, digital media solutions, intelligent household appliances, tablet PCs, and any other kind of computers, in order to create environments satisfying the need of users. However, due to the large amount of web resources and services as well as the variety and range of user needs, it is impossible to realize software solutions for all possible scenarios. In this paper, we present a user-driven approach towards designing and assembling pervasive environments, taking into consideration resources and services available on the Web and provided through computing devices. Based on semantics embedded in the web content, we explain the concept as well as important components of this user-driven environment design methodology and show a first prototype. Finally, the overall approach is critically discussed from the perspectives of programmers and web users on the basis of related work.