Activity Notification: Enhancing the Social Nature of Online Learning
Abstract: This paper is a Systems & Resources report of an ongoing design research project to both develop an activity notification system and to build new knowledge about how certain types and representations of social information influence the social nature of online courses. The Context-aware Activity Notification System (CANS) is a notification system for cooperative work and collaborative learning systems that is designed around the importance of awareness of user activity, a user’s social context, and personal notification preferences. The paper describes the current state of development and shows how the new functionality of a social widget supports social awareness and course activity. The findings show that the social widget removes some of the barriers of peripheral awareness and contributes to mediating social activity in the online course.