Social exchange and collaboration in a reputation-based educational system

The present state of the implementation of SocialX is presented. It is a web-based reputation system, supporting collaborative and social aspects of e-learning. The system supports 1) sharing and exchange of solutions to exercises, 2) discussion of such solutions through forum, and 3) project activity (projects are divided into steps and the groups can work in the usual collaborative manner, yet their products are to be used and evaluated by other groups in their project-steps; groups can also self-evaluate their work in each step). Participation and collaboration in the system are supported also by contextual (to the exercise) FAQs and micro-forums, and encouraged by the management of a currency-based representation of the value of contributions coming by the students (such value is interpretable as the usefulness of a product contribution or of an answer to question proposed by other students). In particular tokens are exchanged by giving and answering questions in the forum. Besides representing the richness of one's participation in the system, tokens can be used also to help the teacher/tutor in electing the most suitable question/answer pairs to be promoted into the FAQ (collection of Frequently Asked Questions). Group activities in the projects are regulated by self/peer-evaluated phases, in order to favour group responsibility, manage with peer-pressure and allow self-evaluation. In particular, the different phases of a project are given to different groups, and the product of a group can be self-evaluated (at submission) and peer-evaluated (by the group that receives it to continua with a next phase).