Just-in-time support using open source technologies

Abstract

In any organization, community or learning environment, people may face a difficulty in learning a subject, performing a task, or solving a problem. From one side newcomers face the problem of having an overflow of information at early stages, and on the other hand advanced students may need help from proficient sources. When help is needed, just-in-time support is the most effective. Whether its an employee facing technical problems beyond his knowledge, or a student needing help in a particular subject, just-in-time support provides the help needed in both time critical situations and not. We have develop a JIT support system that manages students and tutors in the most efficient way by borrowing techniques from other areas, such as operating systems. Operating systems have evolved by years and particular scheduling and load balancing algorithms have been developed to cater for the load balancing of processes and resources. By adopting the same concepts and mapping the same concepts to a JIT support system, in this way tutors can be treated as resources and students can be treated processes. In addition, with the aid of a user model profiles of the various users can be built, giving a better student to tutor match. The system is an open source application and built using open source technologies