Synchronous support and monitoring in web‐based educational systems

The purpose of this paper is to present the design of a context‐aware service for synchronous support in web‐based educational systems.

The proposed service supports synchronous interaction among tutors and students, based on their current context, thus increasing the communication channels, the reasoning and the exchanging of ideas.

The proposed service introduced here gives additional value to distance learning educational systems, as it transforms the web from a medium primarily used for asynchronous communication into a synchronous one.

As educational institutes move their content online and open universities support lessons through the internet, services like the proposed one are of general value.