Answers to some questions you may have

Q: What about privacy? Are we not going to be sending personal data? How do we know what we are sending?

A: You have full control about what data you are sending: all the code is in the library which you hold. The goal is to make personalized recommendations and build sequences of resources which can help a learner acquire or strengthen a skill. So quite logically the more information about the user we have to do this, the better it is.

The minimum information we require is the url of A, the time and date (of access of A), a system generated identifier for the user (allowing us to follow him from resource to resource), technical information about the system and browser he is using. This is what the snippet we are providing does.

A more informative option is to let X5-GON have some demographic information about the user (which you have if the learner is registered with you). You can provide us with the age, the gender, the studies profile. This will of course allow us to send better recommendations but also build a better model. If you are interested with this option please let us know.

Of course, in all cases we are complying with all European regulations, including GDPR.

Q: Where should the library go?

A: An alternative is that you trust us and let us provide the library from the X5-GON server. The library will be made accessible to you at any moment, of course. This will allow us to make technical / security updates. In this case, you can use the snippet as it is. But if you prefer to have the library on your server, the library should be included in the public folder accessible to every OER that includes the snippet. And in the snippet you should replace the address http://theX5GON.net/ourlibrary   by the address you are providing.

Q: What about the recommendations the server is going to send us? What should we do with them?

A: There are many possible scenarios. These depend on the pedagogical situation which you are of course master of. If you want to include the recommendations, or the n best, on your page, we will ensure that these reach your server within 100ms: this would allow you to give your learners the recommendations as they are loading the page (containing resource A). This is the choice made by the website http://videolectures.net . You may also choose to filter these recommendations in any way you want, or even only to present the recommendations upon request by the learner.

Q: Where does the snippet go?

A: Most OER repositories list courses or activities, each having an individual URI. Alternatively, they are organised around an internal search engine allowing to find a course from a given teacher, on a specific topic, etc. On the corresponding webpage we may find text, images, downloadable files, viewable videos, etc. When the webpage is generated inside a CMS, many other things can appear. The snippet should be installed on this webpage.

Q: How easy is it going to be to include the snippet?

A: We have found that each OER repository has a specific architecture. So there is always a way to automatically add the snippet on all the pages. But we can help you from X5-GON to do this (advice, FAQ, etc).