Forming communities in Web-based Educational Systems through users’ preferences and interest measuring

Service customizing in Web-based educational systems aims at directing content and teaching strategies towards studentspsila individual and group needs. This paper presents a virtual learning community forming approach, which helps knowledge exchange among its members. The approach here presented uses implicit and explicit information collection of userspsila interests and preferences and relates the values in a correlation among the users. The correlation measuring ends up in groups with distinct characteristics. The proposal presented is validated by case study and it shows that from correlation values among the users in the interest and preference items, a group algorithm results in the formation of the intended groups. The results among interest and preference correlation were compared and assessed.