Overview of papers on enhancement of European Higher Education as presented during the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference in Rome, October 2016

The paper focuses on the impact of emerging Web 3.0 technologies on online open learning. In the Web 3.0 technologies perspective, learners will be much comfortable switching among a wide range of open resources making a simultaneous use of locally installed applications, tools and content. Learner’s preferences based on learner’s online activity with more than one provider are mined to proactively offer mechanisms and services tailored to the learner’s interests. Such a distributed learning environment provides also facilities for self-organized groups of learners and communities of practice. Online lifelong learning contexts are supported with increasingly enhanced usability features. Software for social purposes could also be incorporated with educational facilities.

Moreover, in the Web 3.0 perspective it will be also much easier to extract and identify personally identifiable patterns. Issues that are more complex and challenging than previously experienced ones arise in the online learning context. In particular, the basic notion of personal data is revisited in the paper and multipersonal data, as defined in the paper, are singled out. Their relevance in the online open learning context is discussed. Some challenges stemming from them are emphasized and some solutions are mentioned.

Keywords

personal information management · personalized online-learning · Web 3.0 technologies