Abstract:

It is well known that social networks offer an excellent architecture for development and diffusion of knowledge in a specific environment; for example NGOs use social networks as a media of dissemination and expression of their activities. Companies also use social networks as a tool for dissemination and clients monitoring. Social networking is involved in the learning environment as well, it is used as a tool for motivating and energizing learning and knowledge interactions between users.

This paper describes the design of a semantic agent embedded in a social network for a learning environment. The target community is a university where the academic model is intensive (this model is based on four months periods, 70% is practical and 30% is theoretical -Universidad Tecnológica del Sureste de Veracruz. México). This learning environment has the purpose of monitoring the interactions of students in order to analyze and establish a profile according to their participation degree in the community. This level of participation is compared to the use of the theoretical knowledge. This degree of participation has been called “Karma”, and it’s displayed to the student with an infographic. In this research, the sample was conformed by 48 students from the engineering degree in Information Technologies; there was a confidence interval of 7.29%. Data collecting was performed by observation of the learning environment and by observing the results of theoretical evaluations. During the experiment, the next finding was obtained:
The interaction in the learning environment is related to the theoretical part of the educational model; therefore it was concluded that: while more "Karma" exists, the achievements of the students in class are better. This learning environment is detailing the following modules: profile, groups, photos, videos, events, messages.

Keywords:

Semantic agent, learning environments, monitoring.