TOWARDS WEB 3.0 CONCEPT FOR COLLABORATIVE

E-LEARNING

Michail N. Giannakos and Vasileios Lapatas

Department of Informatics, Ionian University, Plateia Tsirigoti 7, Corfu, Greece

Keywords: Asynchronous Learning, Auto-generated Content, Collaborative Learning, Corporate Sector Training,

Lifelong Learning, e-Learning Concept, Education Sector Training, Enhanced Learning, Semantic Services,

Social Learning, Synchronous Learning, Tutoring, Web 3.0 Technologies.

Abstract: The goal of this paper is to define a concept based on Web 3.0 technologies to improve the learning

experience and attempt to create a lifelong learning environment in people’s daily routine. To achieve that,

there was a need to analyze the current curves of the World Wide Web (WWW) in this field. The last few

years a lot of interesting on-line services have been introduced to the public. On-line video conferencing,

synchronous/asynchronous conversations, wikis and social networking are just a few of those technologies

which changed the way people see and use the Internet. By using some of these services and combining

them with most resent (and interesting) techniques like background customized search and live

manipulation of content, it is possible to create a Web 3.0 application with smart, content-aware interface

for educational purposes. An application like that will be able to be used both in the corporate and education

sector.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, one of the hottest topics in education is

the opportunities that Web 3.0 offers by handling the

WWW as the largest information database humans

have ever invented. People can access large amounts

of information (e.g. news, research etc.) with just a

few clicks of the mouse by using automated-

personally configured search engines without even

knowing it.

To get to this point the WWW had to be evolved

from text-based static pages. More specifically the

“first version” of the Web (Web 1.0) introduced

great opportunities in open and distance learning.

Basically it was the first time in human’s history

where the tutor could transfer educational content to

the learner by using easy-to-access, visualized

techniques.

Later, with the transformation of Web 1.0 to

Web 2.0 the WWW gained a vast of new features

and soon enough web-sites/applications like wikis,

blogs and social networks became a part of most

people’s lives.

In education, the actual contribution of Web 2.0

lies in the learner’s ability to be able to interact with

web content. As a result it enables the learner to add

comments, reply or even change information created

by his tutor, instead of passively reading it.

One step further from those technologies comes

Web 3.0. This new “version” of the web has great

potentials. One of its most important features is the

ability to combine and integrate Web content and

services to improve the end-user experience.

Inspired by the technologies that are being used

in the Web 3.0, an educational concept was

conceived and designed in order to use those

techniques to achieve daily learning. The suggested

web application will be using tutoring and

collaborative techniques in a Web 3.0 environment

which will have the features of synchronous,

asynchronous and social learning.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows. In

the second chapter, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

technologies are being analyzed, as well as their

contribution in education. In the third chapter the

abilities of Web 3.0 and what they can contribute in

the learning field is being presented. In chapter

number four, this paper’s concept is being described.

Furthermore, possible ways of implementation, both

in corporative and educational environments, are

being discussed. In chapter five, as future work,

technical details of ways that this concept can be

147

Giannakos M. and Lapatas V. (2010).

TOWARDS WEB 3.0 CONCEPT FOR COLLABORATIVE E-LEARNING.

In Proceedings of the Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT, pages 147-151

 SciTePress

developed are being mentioned. To conclude, in the

final chapter, the possible impact that an application

like the presented one can have in education is being

discussed.

2 ABOUT WEB 1.0 AND WEB 2.0

IN EDUCATION

Web 1.0 is the term used to refer to web in the form

existing from 1990 to 2000 (O’Reilly, 2005). It

allowed data sharing over the internet. The Web 1.0

was divided into working directories; practically

everyone had their own space (Cormode and

Krishnarthy, 2008). For educational purposes Web

1.0 provides the technology platforms which publish

knowledge content. But the l

imitations on content creation limited the potential.

The techno-centric nature of Web 1.0 could not

satisfy educational needs. For that reason Web 1.0

educational usage was limited to publish content

(Figure 1).

Figure 1: Web 1.0 capabilities in education.

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the

computer industry caused by the move to the

internet as platform, and an attempt to understand

the rules for success on that new platform. Chief

among those rules is this: Build applications that

harness network effects to get better the more people

use them” (Musser and O’Reilly, 2006). The

read/write Web 2.0 consists of a set of new

technologies that make the web more like a

platform. With the evolution of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0,

there was a transformation of the applications

(Figure 2).

Transformation also affects the area of

education. Applications like E-learning 2.0,

Classroom 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 appear (McAfee,

2006). These applications pay attention in the user’s

ability to interact and manipulate the educational

content (Figure 3).

Figure 2: The evolution of the websites.

Figure 3: Web 2.0 capabilities in education.

3 ABOUT WEB 3.0

IN EDUCATION

Web 3.0 is the third stage of the web evolution

(Figure 4), that is beginning now. In the common

question of “what Web 3.0 is?” Tim Berners-Lee,

inventor of the web gave the following comment: “I

think maybe when you have got an overlay of

scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and

folding and looking misty-on Web 2.0 and access to

a semantic web integrated across a huge space of

data, you will have access to an unbelievable data

resource” (Berners-Lee et. al, 2006).

In recent years, education concepts based on

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) (Canales, 2007)

and Web 3.0 technologies have been mentioned (Pan

Tie-Jun et. al, 2009; Pahl, 2009). The rapid

evolution of learning software, artificial intelligence

and web technologies make ITS and Web 3.0 a

viable option. Moreover, Web 3.0 offers more

intelligent services and in addition to reading and

writing content, user’s actions can initiate web

processes (Figure 6), that can be possible with

technologies like smart interfaces and intelligent

agents.

4 PAPER’S CONCEPT

Our concept consists of a suggestion interface to

Web 1.0

Britannica Online

Content Management

Systems

Directories (taxonomy)

Personal Websites

Web 2.0

Wikipedia

Wikis

Tagging (folksonomy)

Blogs

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Figure 4: Web 3.0 capabilities in education.

improve the e-learning experience using Web 3.0

technologies. An interface like that can enhance

collaborative learning with smart interfaces and

auto-updated content depending on the topics of

discussion. Its most important features can be:

 Synchronous/asynchronous and social content

 Wiki-enabled interface

 Customized background search

4.1 Synchronous/Asynchronous and

Social Content

The web-site will contain on-line chat (both text and

video) to enable communication between tutors and

learners, as well as between learners. This way

everyone can cooperate or answer questions between

them.

This content can be live (synchronous), meaning

that when a person interacts with the interface to add

content, everyone is able to see the changes in real-

time and there is no need to refresh the page in the

browser. Also, the content can be asynchronous,

meaning that if someone wasn’t able to be on-line

when a change took place, he will be able to review

the changes any time he logs on the site.

To make this more understandable a usage

example is presented (Figure 5). The tutor creates a

new subject in the site and then he logs off. Then,

some learners enter the site and see the new subject.

One of the learners has a question to ask and submits

it. The learners initiate a discussion, live, in attempt

to solve the problem.

Then after a few hours the tutor logs in and sees

the learners’ conversation. He notices that the

subject is too abstract and decides to change it so

that it will be less confusing.

Then he notices that some learners are on-line at

Figure 5: Example of a low fidelity prototype using

synchronous/asynchronous and social content.

the time and they start a video conference to solve

their questions. After the video conference comes to

an end, another learner logs in and sees the changed

subject title and that he missed the video conference.

This is not a problem because he can stream the

video conference to his computer and see what he

had missed.

4.2 Wiki-enabled Interface

Since the most common reference library in the

world is wikipedia.org, it would be more than

necessary to embed an interface which links an e-

learning site with wikis (Figure 7). To do so, there

are two possible ways.

The first way, and the most obvious one, is to let

the tutors define which words of the text will be

linked to wikis. This is practical but it makes the

work of the tutors much more complicated.

The second way is to do this automatically. The

text in the conversations can be processed and let the

on-line application decide which words can be wiki-

enabled.

In this part of the project instead of traditional

wikis it might be useful to add visual wikis (Hirsch,

2009) to enrich the page’s content. This feature will

offer a more attractive interface for the end user.

4.3 Customized Background Search

The most important feature of this web application is

the customized background search.

This could be a Google search Application

Programming Interface (API) which performs

searches to some default educational sites and the

TOWARDS WEB 3.0 CONCEPT FOR COLLABORATIVE E-LEARNING

149

Figure 6: The evolution of content and technologies on the web.

Figure 7: A hypothetical wiki-enabled interface.

tutor can also add more websites if he likes to.

The interface of this search engine will be

invisible and the arguments that are going to be used

will be the content of the conversations as well as

the subject titles.

The top hits of the search results will be

displayed in a reserved area in the web interface.

Those results will vary depending on the content of

the conversation. So for example if some people

have a live discussion about a subject, automatically

some web-sites will be suggested to them in real

time as they communicate with each other.

Another way of implementing such a service is

to use ontology mining techniques (Tao, 2007; Jang,

2005) in specific web sites. In the actual

implementation of this concept both techniques will

be tested and finally, the one returning the most

appropriate results will be used.

This could be really useful for people who can’t

use search engines effectively and some results

could be also helpful for easy access to related web-

sites.

5 FUTURE WORK

For future work regarding this concept, there are

going to be attempts of implementing it.

At the beginning, there will be a need of a low

fidelity implementation of the proposed system.

This will be an assessment of the resulting

enhancement in the educational process and lifelong

characteristics (Sampson, 2009) induced by the

usage of the proposed system.

One important factor, following a possibly low

fidelity implementation of the proposed system, will

be an assessment of the resulting enhancement in the

Figure 8: A low fidelity prototype of how the whole web-

site could be. The search results are being displayed on the

right.

educational process and lifelong characteristics

(Sampson, 2009) induced by the usage of the

proposed system. At first a desktop application will

be developed for testing purposes. This technique

will be used because the development is much easier

by using the system’s API’s and frameworks to

execute otherwise complicated actions. This concept

will be evaluated in contrast with other effective

learning environments in between-group

experiments. If the evaluation results are negative,

the application will be redesigned and redeveloped

until positive feedback is received. In that case, a

highest fidelity application will be developed in

order to be ready in its web form.

Even thought, today’s web technologies enable

personalization (Kabassi & Virvou, 2003), an

attempt to increase it through interactivity will take

place. This can be accomplished by using cameras

and microphones in conjunction with gesture, facial

and sound recognition algorithms (Vlamos, 2010).

Those will extend the system capabilities by

enabling emotional recognition in order to offer

Web 1.0

Static Pages

HTML

Web 2.0

Dynamic Content

(Blogs, Social Networking,

Wikis, etc.)

AJAX

Web 3.0

Ubiquitous Content

and Services

Intelligent Agents

Smart Interfaces

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more personalized feedback. In addition, profiling

techniques based on the user’s data (Lapatas and

Stefanidakis, 2010) can be used to achieve more

accurate personalization.

The web development can be achieved by using

AJAX (Asynchronous JAvascript and XML) which

provides all the necessary tools needed for the

synchronous/asynchronous conversations and video

conferences. As far as it concerns the wikis and the

customized search, it is possible to be done using

PHP’s HTML DOM (Document Object Model); so

we can manipulate the content of this site, use it as

input for a wiki site or a customized Google search,

return the results and finally process them to create

some output.

This is just a first assumption of how this project

can be implemented using today’s technologies.

When the actual development starts, the mentioned

techniques will be subjected to change.

6 CONCLUSIONS

The goal of this concept is to introduce the user to

lifelong learning. The daily usage of the application

comes from its social characteristics and the adapted

content which raises the interest. Using the

combination of the features mentioned above, the

system will be able to achieve a personalized

interactivity with each user. The presented concept

is an attempt to introduce an educational system

which combines Web 3.0 technologies in order to

achieve better personalization and usability.

Furthermore, the social networking characteristics

will contribute in gaining wide acceptance and

satisfaction.

Moreover, technologies such as, Artificial

Intelligence and the WWW have rapidly evolved

over the last few years. Despite of this situation,

educational concepts have not been developed. As a

result there are a lot of potentials to take advantage

of this growth. Summarizing, the proposed system

could be a useful medium for rapid and accurate

knowledge spread in academic and corporate

section.

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