Integrating Distributed Discussions in Web 2.0 Applications and Their Integration with Lecture Recordings

With the rise of Web 2.0 tools, courses often use more than one platform for commenting and discussing educational contents, e.g., both a discussion forum like Moodle and an online social network site like Facebook. If so, users may not be aware of discussions happening on one site and are uncertain where to post their contributions. Therefore, there is a need for integrating different discussion sites. However, the integration is difficult due to different data formats. In this paper, an approach is presented that makes use of ontologies and enterprise integration patterns for seamlessly integrating discussion sites. Further, it is shown how discussions can be easily integrated with lecture recordings on a data level, and be stored for later reuse by using Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data principles.