SOCIALX: reputation based support to social collaborative learning through exercise sharing and project teamwork

In this paper, the authors describe design and motivational issues of the web-based system SocialX. It supports social-collaborative and cooperative aspects of e-learning such as sharing and reuse of (solutions to) single exercises, and development of projects by group-work and social exchange. Such aspects are supported in the framework of a reputation system, in which learners participate. A learner’s reputation is computed, presented, and maintained during her/his interactions with the system. The algorithm to compute reputation can be configured by the teacher from tuning weights associated to various aspects of the interactions. To enhance collaboration on exercises, the authors support contextual (to the exercise) micro-forum and FAQs with a currency-based concretization of the perceived usefulness of questions/answers. Group responsibilities, peer-assessment, and self-evaluation are supported by group-based projects with self/peer-evaluated phases, i.e., different stages of a project are assigned to different groups and a stage-deliverable is both self-evaluated (at submission) and peer-evaluated (by the group receiving it for the next stage).