Interactive and collaborative e-learning platform with integrated social software and learning management system

Abstract

E-learning featured by active participation, interaction and collaboration of learners and educators is becoming more and more important in education both for learners and educators. While learning management system (LMS) is the traditional approach to e-learning which is organized as courses; social software including blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and social bookmarking sites etc. are adopted by many educators to meet their emerging needs in educations. In order to satisfy the needs for participation, interaction, and collaboration of learners and educators in the cognition, construction, and socialization process of learning; we propose an interactive and collaborative e-learning platform which combines the advantages of LMS and social software by integrating social software with LMS. The platform connects course network of users with his/her social network and knowledge network. As a result, it's helpful to users in building their personalized social network and knowledge network during the process of learning. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.