Learning in the city: Context for communities and collaborative learning

One of the main challenges in providing intelligent support to learners is the establishment of the learner's context. Most of the work done in this area is based on modelling an individual learner's context without considering the learner's interaction with other people. We consider a mobile collaborative learner's context where the learner is mobile and interacts with others in continuing her learning process. In this paper, we analyse the context of a mobile collaborative learner in an ambient intelligent environment by using a simple scenario. We examine the literature on context models in the area of context aware computer systems to see if the context model for a mobile collaborative learner in an intelligent environment can be supported by the currently available models. This paper discusses the context of a mobile collaborative learner in an ambient intelligent environment. This work uses an existing knowledge-based context model to evaluate if this model is applicable to mobile collaborative learners. We believe that the analysis presented in this paper highlights some of the issues in modelling the context for mobile collaborative learners. We also hope to identify weaknesses and strengths in existing context models and hope to provide some directions for better support for modelling the context of mobile collaborative learners