Social, Personalized Lifelong Learning

This chapter discusses a challenging hot topic in the area of Web 2.0 technologies for Lifelong Learning: how to merge such technologies with research on personalization and adaptive e-learning, in order to provide the best learning experience, customized for a specific learner or group of learners, in the context of communities of learning and authoring. We discuss the most well-known frameworks and then show how an existing framework for personalized e-learning can be extended, in order to allow the specification of the complex new relationships that social aspects bring to e-learning platforms. This is not just about creating learning content, but also about developing new ways of learning. For instance, adaptation does not refer to an individual only, but also to groups, which can be groups of learners, designers or course authors. Their interests, objectives, capabilities and backgrounds need to be catered for, as well as their group interaction. Furthermore, the boundaries between authors and learners become less distinct in the Web 2.0 context. This chapter presents the theoretical basis for this framework extension, as well as its implementation and evaluation, and concludes by discussing the results and drawing conclusions and interesting pointers for further research.