Towards a Digital Learner Identity

Abstract

This paper presents a first attempt to describe the relevance and importance of a Digital Learner Identity in the context of supporting lifelong learners. A Digital Learner Identity is an augmented user model that captures the traces lifelong learners leave in their digital, social and physical worlds, all combined in a single model. In this paper we start looking at the notion of offline identities, and how it is changing because of the emergence of the social web. Then we focus the lens of our attention on how a unique Digital Learner Identity could help learners to find people to collaborate with (even people they are not linked to), and to understand how social networks (digital or physical) impact the way they learn. Finally, we describe a scenario to exemplify how the proposed Digital Learner Identity could support lifelong learners.