Learning Resources Affective Recommender

Widget Description:
The Learning Resources Affective Recommender (LRAR) Widget provides the list of most suitable resources given the affective state of the learner. The learner must indicate her current affective state and her learning objectives. This information, along with the user identifier, is sent to the LRAR Service where is stored and used to generate a list of recommended resources.

The learning resources are meant to be open by a third-party resource-visualizer widget.

Technical Details:
The chosen specification for the development of the widget is the OpenSocial Gadget.

The selected ROLE SDK are the following:
1. OpenApp to open the resources recommended to the LRAR Widget into a resource visualizer widget.
2. Web Service integration with CAM to log the attention that the learner has shown towards the recommended resources.

Links

Implementation Reference:

http://beethoven.gast.it.uc3m.es/affectmata/widget/affective-widget.xml

Images

Screenshot Mock-ups:

More Details

Use Case:

Alice, a Computer Science major, is trying to complete a programming task that she was assigned as homework. She starts working very motivated on the initial details of the program. She reflects this in the Learning Resources Affective Recommender (LRAR) Widget by selecting the mood "Flow". The widget recommends resources that will help Alice keep the positive state, such as programming language references and the user's manual of the compilation tool. Alice finds the resources helpful and uses them to write her code more quickly.

As Alice advances she realizes that the task is not easy and that she might have to dedicate more time than what she was expecting, this causes her state of mind to decrease. She gets to a point where she cannot fix a compilation error and she feels frustrated. She updates her affective state to "Frustrated". The widget reacts to this change by offering learning resources describing basic programming concepts and common programming errors with their respective solutions.

Alice accesses the resources and solves her bug. After seeing that the widget helps her along the task, Alice recovers her positive mood and continues her work to finish the homework.