IWWB-PLUS: InfoWebWeiterbildung – Personalised search area for the learning environment

The IWWB-PLUS project is supported by the INVITE funding program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Re-search and contributes to strengthening further education in Germany. It focuses on the aim of enhancing the appeal and usability of the established continuing education search platform InfoWebWeiterbildung (IWWB). Innovative technology will be implemented in this regard, as well as enabling interoperability with other services in the area of continuing education.

Project Description

In this age of rapid and continual change in life and work, continuing education is more important than ever. Individuals are often faced with the challenge of finding the continuing education course that suits their needs. InfoWebWeiterbildung (IWWB) is a web-based meta search engine that has for many years supported individuals in finding suitable courses. IWWB-PLUS implements new web and information technology to concentrate on an improvement and functional expansion of the existing platform.

The following main objectives are pursued:

  • Chatbots: Implementation of dialogue technologies to support users in finding appropriate continuing education offers
  • Light Assessments: Development and integration of appropriate procedures to assess the current state of knowledge in people with an interest in continuing education, to find matching continuing education offers.
  • Interoperability with external information providers (Europass): linkage to the EUROPASS system to personalise users' lists of search results 

IWWB-PLUS furthermore aims at re-engineering the UX design to clearly improve user experiences by an optimal human-machine interface design. 

Research

Several research avenues will be pursued in the context of IWWB-PLUS:

  • How can an ontology be automatically defined for selected groups of professions on the basis of given metadata, and how can it be incrementally expanded?
  • How can compatibility be generated with Europass respectively other competence schemata? Which information can be provided by IWWB plus in what form for third parties, in a way that is compliant with data protection regulation?
  • How should Chatbots be implemented in order to support users in searching for continuing education offers? Which special requirements need to be considered?
  • Which is the least insight that needs to be drawn from a Light Assessment, to allow for added value in the search refinement? How can a Light Assessment be implemented so that users find it comfortable and beneficial?
  • Which principles should be applied in order to generate high usage from short search paths? Which information do users need to make a good choice regarding an offer?

Project Objectives

IWWB-PLUS is a substantial further development and improvement of an existing continuing education platform InfoWebWeiterbildung (IWWB). The project focuses on developing and implementing dialogue technologies (chatbots) for an optimal user experience and the integration of Light Assessments and Europass competencies to personalise search results. A comprehensive, evidence-based re-engineering of the UX design also serves an improved user experience with IWWB.

Cooperations

German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning

Project Management

Dr. Daniel Schiffner

Project Team

Project Details

Status:
Current project
Area of Focus Education in the Digital World
Department: Information Centre for Education
Unit: Educational Computer Science
Education Sector: Further Education
Duration:
09/2021 – 08/2024
Funding:
DIPF
Contact: Dr. Daniel Schiffner, Head of Unit

TBA