***************************************************************************
* 3rd International Workshop on Social and Personal Computing
* for Web-Supported Learning Communities (SPeL 2010)
* http://software.ucv.ro/~epopescu/spel2010/
*
* in conjunction with the 21st International Conference on Database and
* Expert Systems Applications (DEXA'10)
* http://www.dexa.org/
*
* Bilbao, Spain
* University of Deusto
* 30 August - 3 September 2010
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Motivation
==========

The workshop follows the previous SPeL 2008 (http://software.ucv.ro/~epopescu/spel2008/) and SPeL 2009 (http://software.ucv.ro/~epopescu/spel2009/) workshops held in conjunction with the SAINT 2008 conference (http://www.icta.ufl.edu/saint08/) and WI/IAT 2009 conference (http://www.wi-iat09.disco.unimib.it/) respectively. The general topic of the workshop is the social and personal computing for web-supported learning communities. This year, the workshop focuses on social and intelligent systems in education, with particular interest on aspects related to data, information, and knowledge within such systems.

Web-based learning is moving from centralized, institution-based systems to a decentralized and informal creation and sharing of knowledge. Social software (e.g., blogs, wikis, podcasts, and media-sharing services) is increasingly being used for e-learning purposes, helping to create novel learning experiences and knowledge. In the world of pervasive Internet, learners are also evolving: the so-called “digital natives” want to be in constant communication with their peers, they expect an individualized instruction and a personalized learning environment, which automatically adapt to their individual needs.

Social learning is based on creating and sharing information and knowledge within the learning community and personalized learning can only take place if enough data about learners (e.g., their behavior, actions, characteristics, and so on) have been gathered and correctly analyzed and interpreted. For both social and personalized learning, the role of data, information, and knowledge is essential. In this context, the workshop addresses the challenges of social and personal computing in Web-supported learning communities focusing on aspects related to acquiring and managing data, information, and knowledge. Its aim is to provide a forum for discussing new trends and initiatives in this area, including research about the planning, development, application, and evaluation of intelligent e-learning systems, where people can learn together in a personalized way through social interaction with other learners.


Topics of interest
==================

The workshop topics cover all aspects of intelligent systems in e-learning, particularly related to issues about data, information, and knowledge in social and personalized learning, including (but not limited to):
- Ontologies and semantic Web for e-learning
- Metadata, folksonomies and tagging
- Knowledge management in e-learning systems
- Educational data mining
- Student data privacy and security
- Interoperability issues
- Intelligent learner and group modeling
- Collaborative filtering and recommendations for learners
- Social information retrieval
- Semantic social networks
- Knowledge community formation and support
- Web 2.0 and social computing for learning
- Virtual spaces for learning communities
- Web supported ubiquitous learning
- Web services in e-learning
- Mobile e-learning applications
- Adaptive and personalized learning environments
- Adaptive Web interfaces for learning scenarios
- Cognitive aspects in intelligent web-based learning systems
- Web-based cooperative learning
- Intelligent agent technology in web-based education
- Pervasive e-learning scenarios
- Lifelong learning networks
- Social software for collaborative learning
- Socially intelligent agents
- Community discovering in social learning systems
- Social structure exploitation in e-learning
- Socially-inspired e-learning systems


Paper submission and publication
=================================

The Proceedings of the Workshop will be published by the IEEE Computer Society Press (indexed by IEEE Xplore, EI, INSPEC, DBLP).

The length of the workshop papers should not exceed 5 pages, IEEE-CS format. Please follow the instructions on the DEXA 2010 website (http://www.dexa.org/node/12), where you can find the Manuscript Formatting Guidelines.


Important dates
===============

March 20, 2010 Workshop paper submission
April 20, 2010 Workshop paper notification
May 17, 2010 Camera ready paper
30 Aug. - 3 Sept. 2010 SPeL 2010 workshop (exact date is TBA)


Workshop Chairs
===============

Elvira Popescu - University of Craiova, Romania
Sabine Graf - Athabasca University, Canada


Program Committee
=================

http://software.ucv.ro/~epopescu/spel2010/committee.php