Expanding Learning and Social Interaction Through Intelligent Systems Design: Implementing a Reputation and Recommender System for The Claremont Conversation Online

A research proposal by: Brian Thoms

Committee: Terry Ryan (chair), Lorne Olfman and Samir Chatterjee

This dissertation proposal presents plans for Design Science Research examining the design, construction and implementation of an online blog reputation and user recommender system for the Claremont Conversation Online (CCO). In line with constructivist learning models and practical information systems (IS) design, I develop a blog reputation system (a system that can be extended to support wiki pages, profiles and files) that provides CCO users with the capability to rate the blog posts of their peers. Additionally, my research explores the design and construction of a user recommender system (a system that, also, can be extended to support blogs, wiki pages, profiles, and files). Utilizing the ratings from the reputation system, the system recommends like-minded individuals from across the site. While this research builds upon earlier work on the CCO, I expand this research to explore 1) an innovative mechanism to facilitate learning in higher education through the addition of a reputation system for blogs and 2) an innovative tool to quell user attrition across the CCO with the addition of a user-based recommender system.

Check out my latest blog entry for more information on my resarch design.

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