Title: Enhancing educational portals through capturing collective knowledge of web-based learning communities

Authors: Demetrios Sampson

Addresses: Department of Technology Education and Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, 150 Androutsou Street, Piraeus, GR-18532, Greece; Advanced e-Services for the Knowledge Society Research Unit, Informatics and Telematics Institute (ITI), Centre for Research and Technology – Hellas (CERTH), 42 Arkadias Street, Athens, GR-15234, Greece

Abstract: Since the early stages of the World Wide Web, web-based learning communities have been constantly developed online. Among the primary objectives of their members has been to share digital learning resources and increase the community|s collective knowledge by communicating and collaborating online. In this paper, we discuss how the learning object paradigm can be exploited to support web-based learning communities and online communities of practice, as a means to enhance the services already provided by Educational Portals (EP). It is claimed that this can be achieved by motivating the active interaction of community members with the EPs| resources and at the same time allowing the dynamic update of the available resources taking into account the community|s collective knowledge on the real use of the resources. To this end, we present the ASK e-Educational Communities Environment (ASK e-EDCOM), a web-based environment for the empowerment of online educational communities.

Keywords: web based communities; educational portals; learning objects; knowledge capture; collective knowledge; educational communities; online learning; e-learning; electronic learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2006.011758

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2006 Vol.2 No.3, pp.260 - 272

Published online: 20 Dec 2006 *

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