Sandy El Helou

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.

A recommender system for job seeking and recruiting website

In this paper, a hybrid recommender system for job seeking and recruiting websites is presented. The various interaction features designed on the website help the users organize the resources they need as well as express their interest. The hybrid recommender system exploits the job and user profiles and the actions undertaken by users in order to generate personalized recommendations of candidates and jobs. The data collected from the website is modeled using a directed, weighted, and multi-relational graph, and the 3A ranking algorithm is exploited to rank items according to their relevance to the target user. A preliminary evaluation is conducted based on simulated data and production data from a job hunting website in Switzerland.

The 3A Interaction Model: Towards Bridging the Gap between Formal and Informal Learning

This paper discusses the adoption of bottom- up social software tools in formal learning environments. This is believed to enhance the learning experience of today’s young generation characterized by being technology savvy and keen on social networking. As a first step towards this objective, the 3A interaction model that aims at aiding the design of personal and collaborative learning platforms is presented. It accounts for interaction paradigms widely used in Web 2.0 applications and builds on Distributed Cognition and Activity Theory while remaining at the right level of abstraction to be easily “translatable” into tangible applications supporting both formal and informal learning.

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.

The eLogBook Framework: Sustaining Interaction, Collaboration, and Learning in Laboratory-Oriented CoPs

Convinced by the important role of CoPs (communities of practice) and the innovative learning modality they offer, the A‰cole Polytechnique FA©dA©rale de Lausanne is currently developing a framework to sustain interaction, collaboration, and learning in laboratory-oriented CoPs, namely the eLogBook. This paper describes the services provided by this framework, the 3A model on which it is based, and the main features it presents. The eLogBook presents several innovative features that make it different from other classical collaboration workspaces. The eLogBook offers a high level of flexibility and adaptability so that it can fit the requirements of various CoPs. It allows CoPs’ members to define their own rules, protocols, and vocabularies. The eLogBook also focus on usability and user acceptance thanks to its personalization and contextualization mechanisms. Finally, the eLogBook provides a community’s members with ubiquitous services thanks to its multiple views and its advanced awareness services.

A federated recommender system for online learning environments

From e-commerce to social networking sites, recommender systems are gaining more and more interest. They provide connections, news, resources, or products of interest. This paper presents a federated recommender system, which exploits data from different online learning platforms and delivers personalized recommendation. The underlying educational objective is to enable academic institutions to provide a Web 2.0 dashboard bringing together open resources from the Cloud and proprietary content from in-house learning management systems. The paper describes the main aspects of the federated recommender system, including its adopted architecture, the common data model used to harvest the different learning platforms, the recommendation algorithm, as well as the recommendation display widget.

A Study of the Acceptability of a Web 2.0 Application by Higher-Education Students Undertaking Collaborative Laboratory Activities

This paper presents the findings of a study on the acceptability in higher education of a Web 2.0 collaborative application, namely eLogbook. The latter offers several features for sustaining collaboration and supporting personal and group learning. It was introduced to students taking a laboratory course that spans over one semester and mainly consists of in-class group experiments. In this paper, we present eLogbook. We then describe our hypotheses as well as the qualitative and quantitative methods used to evaluate the usefulness and usability of eLogbook in a formal learning context. Finally, we discuss our findings and its implications.

Feed-oriented awareness services for e-logbook mobile users

The e-logbook is a collaborative web-based environment deployed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). It consists of an activity-oriented space where a community of educators, teaching assistants and students can form groups, conduct activities and perform several actions over stored and shared assets. Moreover, the e-logbook offers awareness services to sustain collaboration and coordination among the community members. This paper presents adaptive feed-oriented services designed and implemented to deliver awareness to mobile users, taking into account their device limitations and their activity context.