Enabling Self-Organization of the Educational Content in Ad Hoc Learning Networks

This paper describes a simple solution to create self-organization of the educational content in learning networks by enabling stigmergic interactions between learners. For this purpose, the learning objects have been associated with a special type of metadata, based on the concept of “virtual pheromones”. By accessing the learning objects, users create trails of virtual pheromones, which are interpreted as an implicit recommendation for other learners to use those objects. The resulting system operates as a simple recommender system based on collaborative filtering in ad-hoc learning networks. We also suggest the possibility to implement such system in a P2P file sharing environment, as a solution to improve the sustainability of open education systems.