Context-Aware combination of adapted user profiles for interchange of knowledge between peers

Abstract

This paper presents a system that connects students with complementary profiles, so they can interchange knowledge and help each other. The profile of the students is built by a modified intelligent tutoring system. Every time the user profile is updated, a gateway updates the profile stored in the user's personal terminal using a web-service based communication mechanism. The terminals (e.g. mobile phones) are able to find and communicate between themselves using Bluetooth. When they find two complementary user profiles, they help the users getting into contact, thus providing the benefits of social network tools but at short-range and with physical context awareness. Two students are complementary when one knows what the other wants to learn and viceversa, so they can be of mutual help. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.