Social, Personalized Lifelong Learning - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 102

of practice (Wenger, 1998), where the learners
collaborate actively in the form of groups (com-
munities), rather than being passive in the learning
process. The benefit of such a framework is that
it is system independent, and thus can be applied
to any system wishing to integrate adaptation and
Web 2.0 technology. It makes sense, however, not
to start from scratch, but to add the social model
on top of an existing model for adaptation. Thus,
based on reasons highlighted in the previous sec-
tion, we have built our social model on top of the
LAOS framework for authoring adaptive hyper-
media. This is how the Social LAOS framework
(SLAOS) came into existence, and why it has
arguably been kept generic enough to be used by
any adaptive Web 2.0 system.
In SLAOS (Social LAOS), authors who share
the same interests can collaborate to provide more
valuable adaptive content within their communi-
ties, based on their different backgrounds and
knowledge. The collaborative facilities in SLAOS
rely on Web 2.0techniques, such as group-based
authoring, cooperation in creating the courses,

tagging (labelling) the content, and rating and
providing feedback on the content. The collective
content works as a state-based system , as each
particular instance of it can be used to improve
the authoring process by recommending related
content to authors, who then can decide on the
next state of the collective content based on these
recommendations. Additionally, related authors
(authors with the same interests) can be recom-
mended, who can help in the authoring process.
Furthermore, in SLAOS, teachers are no longer
the only authors of the content — students are
also considered authors, as they too can add their
contributions, controlled by a set of privileges set
by the teachers. Thus, similar recommendations
can be provided for students.
Figure 1 illustrates the smooth transition, in a
sliding-scale fashion, between learners (students),
teachers, authors and administrators. The X- axis
represents the various users of a social e-learning
system, whilst the Y- axis represents the rights these
users have in the system.

Figure 1. Smooth transition from student to author and beyond in social e-learning