Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Call: WORKSHOP ON SOCIAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL FOR TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING (SIRTEL'08)

Good news, we are ready to roll out the call for contributions for our 2nd workshop! This time we are planning more time for discussions and brainstroming type of exercises that participants can lead! This was the feedback from last year, so you see that we are taking it seriously :)

Check out the format for contributions; Research papers and System Demos are the more conventional stuff that we welcome, whereas Hands-On proposals are there to let us all loose and to think how could we use ideas from some exiting, existing systems to enhance and support learning and teaching. Oh then, there are of course the Pecha Kucha talks. That makes me really curious: someone said that they would not really work with computer science. I hope we are able to prove that wrong ;)


WORKSHOP ON SOCIAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL FOR TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING (link)

in the 3rd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL08), Maastricht, The Netherlands

IMPORTANT DATES

  • Contribution Submission: June 29, 2008
  • Results Notification: August 3, 2008
  • Camera Ready Submission: August 31, 2008
  • Workshop date: September 17, 2008
  • Main conference dates: September 18-19, 2008

CALL FOR WORKSHOP CONTRIBUTIONS

After the successful first SIRTEL workshop last year, we are delighted to welcome
exciting new contributions for the 2nd Social Information Retrieval for Technology Enhanced Learning (SIRTEL) workshop:

  • Research papers
  • System Demos
  • Hands-On proposals
  • "Pecha Kucha" talks*


RATIONALE

Learning and teaching resources are available on the Web - both in terms of digital learning
content and people resources (e.g. other learners, experts, tutors). They can be used to
facilitate teaching and learning tasks. Developing, deploying and
evaluating Social information retrieval (SIR) methods, techniques and systems that provide
learners and teachers with guidance in potentially overwhelming variety of choices remains to be tackled.

The aim of the SIRTEL’08 workshop is to look onward beyond recent achievements to discuss
specific topics, emerging research issues, new trends and endeavors in SIR for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). The
workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners to present, and more importantly,
to discuss the current status of research in SIR and TEL and its implications for science
and teaching.


TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to):


Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and Social Information Retrieval (SIR) techniques such as:

  • Recommender systems
  • Social collaborative searching, browsing and sharing of queries
  • Social network analysis
  • Game-theoretic approaches to select learning materials and learning partners in the long tail
  • Social bookmarking and tagging, folksonomies
  • Annotations, ratings and evaluations


Concepts for Social Information Retrieval (SIR)

  • Defining the scope, purpose and objects of social information retrieval in TEL
  • Defining user requirements for the deployment of SIR systems in a learning setting
  • Current and new trends in SIR methods for TEL
  • Approaches to TEL metadata that reflect social ties and collaborative experiences in the field of education
  • Analytical modelling of strategic intentions in TEL communities
  • Interoperability of SIR systems for TEL


Implementation of SIR in TEL

  • Methods and models of SIR in the area of learning and teaching
  • Social processes and metaphors in learning communities and social networks for searching, acquiring and sharing information
  • Pedagogical aspects of SIR in TEL; how to scaffold students, activity patterns, etc.
  • Integrating SIR services in existing learning platforms
  • Visualisation techniques to support SIR in TEL
  • Successful scaffolding techniques for SIR implementation

Evaluation of SIR in TEL

  • Ideas on how can we get more empirical on evaluation
  • Best practices
  • Evaluation of the success and acceptance of SIR systems in the context of teaching,learning and/or TEL community building
  • Challenges and enablers
  • Evaluating the performance and measuring the effectiveness of SIR systems in learning applications;
  • Evaluation the user satisfaction with SIR system in supporting learning and teaching, etc.


WORKSHOP SUBMISSIONS

This year we base our call for contributions on last year’s comments, where the participants wanted more time for discussions, for picking each other’s brains and to forecast how SIR could be used in TEL. Apart from more conventional contributions, we also have new formats for you to consider!

  • Research papers (4-8 pages)
    to present exciting new work that is not mature enough for a long conference/journal paper. We especially value papers with focus on evaluating early results and making them available for further discussion among practitioners.

  • Work in progress and System demos (upto 4 pages)
    allow participants to share the basics of their SIR for TEL applications. Papers can be short (upto 4 pages), but also different ways using screencasting or YouTube-type recordings of the demo are welcome. Include also information also needed on how others can access your system and test it.

  • Hands-On proposals (1-pager)
    Got a good idea for a SIRTEL implementation? Toying with ideas for SIRTEL prototypes, either totally new ones or based on some existing application (e.g. Amazon, Flickr, Digg, ..)? Interested in “pimping-up” your current LMS or platform to support social networks?
    Create a little scenario and write it down so that others can follow your thinking. Put in a few screen shots to illustrate your point better. During the session, which you will lead, the participants will have their hands and brains-on your idea. The outcome will help you with requirements of implementations in a TEL setting. Early ideas welcome!

  • Abstract for Pecha Kucha (5 min talk)
    Want to share your discussion ideas on SIRTEL concepts with others? We are listening! To leverage on the face-to-face of the workshop, we invite you to submit an abstract for CP type of presentation-discussion moment which you will lead during the workshop. Your talk can be max. 4 minutes long, the participants will decide how much discussion will follow.


Papers are to be submitted to: https://togather.eu/handle/123456789/274
Accepted papers will be published online as EC-TEL workshop proceedings
as part of the CEUR Workshop proceedings series.

The two best papers of the workshop will be published in a special issue of
the International Journal of Technology-Enhanced Learning (IJTEL)
http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijtel

More information at the submission site. All questions and submissions should be sent to: sirtel @ cs.kuleuven.be


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

  • Alexander Felfernig, University of Klagenfurt, Germany
  • Barry Smyth, University College Dublin, Ireland
  • Brandon Muramatsu, Utah State University, USA
  • Clemens Cap, University of Rostock, TBC
  • Frans van Assche, European Schoolnet, Belgium
  • Fridolin Wild, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria
  • Hendrik Drachsler, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands
  • Jon Dron, Athabasca University, Canada
  • Lisa Petrides, ISKME, USA
  • Marc Spaniol, Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics, Germany
  • Markus Strohmaier, Technical University of Graz, TBC
  • Martin Memmel, DFKI, Germany
  • Wolpers, Fraunhofer, Germany
  • Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcala, Spain
  • Nikos Manouselis. Greek Research & Technology Network, Greece
  • Oliver Bohl, Accenture GmbH, Germany
  • Rick D. Hangartner, MyStrands, USA
  • Selmin Nurcan, University of Paris 1, France
  • Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

ORGANISERS

  • Riina Vuorikari, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) & European Schoolnet (EUN), Belgium
  • Barbara Kieslinger, Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), Austria
  • Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
  • Prof. Erik Duval, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven), Belgium & ARIADNE Foundation

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