aPPLE : a plagiarism personalised learning environment

Abstract

aPPLE explores ideas within Personalised Learning Environments, and brings forward arguments sustaining an educational concept which is more learner-centred as opposed to the traditional teaching vs. learning environment. aPPLE also aims to introduce this concept by addressing a growing concern in the domain of academic writing, most particularly the phenomenon of Plagiarism which is affecting both learners and the quality of the academic work being delivered. aPPLE's conceptual synthesis focuses on the ubiquitous nature of the web and web services whose nature marks them in such a way as to enable properties, capabilities, interfaces and effects to be encoded in an unambiguous machine understandable form. This web service will provide a workflow choreographing several operations, to finally orchestrate them into becoming a more complex service similar to 'mash-ups' bringing together a series of web sources into one unique service. This web service will encapsulate an application which will be AJAX driven, for enhanced dynamicity, flexibility in the development and as a means of providing a richer user interface. The three-tier structured application aims to interconnect the abundance of Content on the Web regarding plagiarism prevention, with a high quality connection through the use of Web services promising to integrate the various operations and reduce the cost in Web application development, and integrating this service with a reasoning-based Knowledge Engine promoting personalised education. Such an application aims to find pervasive use through its embedded technology, with specific elements of social constructivism, which gives rise to Personalised Leaming Environments. The PLE, which is encapsulated in the web service will in fact be used to facilitate learning in different contexts and using different devices and interfaces, bringing together learning which is acquired through different sources and in different contexts. Personalisation will be brought about through individual content management on a platform based 'WebTop' offering a collaborative yet individual workspace. Although this project will finally deliver a learner centred application of an intelligent and pervasive nature, it also promises to deliver a new approach to learning through the merging of existing technologies and Web Science used in an informal educational context.