An adaptive service for objects re-ranking in u-learning environment

Ubiquitous Learning (U-Learning), as an emerging learning paradigm, makes it possible for learners to carry out the learning activities at any places and at anytime. With the advantages of the devices, learners can obtain a variety of supplementary materials from the internet. In the scope of distance learning, LOR (Learning Object Repository) stands for managing and sharing of these kinds of materials which also be named as learning objects. However, some challenges raise while performing these activities. For instance, a huge amount of learning objects may appear while learners utilize the search service provided by the system. Learners have to spend time on collecting relevant resources for specific purposes. This situation may discourage the reusability of learning objects especially in a ubiquitous environment. In this paper, based on systematic re-examination of reuse scenarios, a resource retrieval mechanism, as a search middleware, was proposed to assist learners in obtaining relevant objects. The achievement of proposed mechanism can re-rank the search results in order of relevant degree based on the combination of learners' geographical information and input query. It may make resource retrieval more efficient in u-learning environment.