Accepted Manuscript

Connections between E-learning, web science, cognitive computation and Social

Sensing, and their relevance to learning analytics: A preliminary study

Sachi Arafat, Naif Aljohani, Rabeeh Abbasi, Amir Hussain, Miltiades Lytras

PII: S0747-5632(18)30084-0
DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2018.02.026
Reference: CHB 5389

To appear in: Computers in Human Behavior

Received Date: 31 March 2017

Revised Date: 19 October 2017
Accepted Date: 19 February 2018

Please cite this article as: Arafat S., Aljohani N., Abbasi R., Hussain A. & Lytras M., Connections
between E-learning, web science, cognitive computation and Social Sensing, and their relevance
to learning analytics: A preliminary study, Computers in Human Behavior (2018), doi: 10.1016/
j.chb.2018.02.026.

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 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

Connections between E-learning, Web Science, Cognitive

Computation and Social Sensing, and their relevance to
Learning Analytics: a preliminary study

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Sachi Arafata,b , Naif Aljohania , Rabeeh Abbasia , Amir Hussainc , Miltiades Lytrasd
a Faculty of Computer and Information Science, King Abdulaziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

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b School of Computer Science, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
c School of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
d American College of Greece, Greece

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Abstract

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This paper explores the relationship between the socio-technical-pedagogical culture of
e-learning, the emerging discipline of Web Science and Cognitive Computation - as an
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emerging paradigm of computation, commenting in particular on the importance of this
relation for the development of learning-analytics discourse. This paper presents an
initial relational-framework between them and suggests how these relations can be ex-
ploited to solve problems in each area. It argues for (a) the particular importance of
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the abstract class of ‘learning machines’ for Web Science, (b) cognitive computation as a
necessary practical framework for the increasingly dominating, situated informal learn-
ing context, and (c) the potential benefit of Web Science frameworks for investigating
both, contemporary research questions in e-learning and the development of theories for
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informal ubiquitous e-learning. Finally, it argues that exploring links between the said
disciplines are necessary for practical research, for the purpose of developing learning-
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analytics methodology for evaluating growing types of modern e-learning contexts such
as the informal situated learning context.
Keywords: Web science, E-learning, Social sensing, Cognitive Computing,
situated-learning, learning-machines
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1. Introduction

This paper seeks to show how three different strands of research namely, Web Science
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(WS), E-learning (EL), Cognitive Computation (CC) form part of a whole, and moreover,
to open up theoretical and practical points of interaction between them. Furthermore, it
will show how finding links between these discourses is important for developing learning
analytics, a sub-discourse of EL. In pursuing these aims, this paper will reference machine

Email addresses: sachi.arafat@glasgow.ac.uk (Sachi Arafat), naifaljohani@gmail.com (Naif

Aljohani), rabeeh.abbasi@gmail.com (Rabeeh Abbasi), rabeeh.abbasi@gmail.com (Amir Hussain),
mlytras@acg.edu (Miltiades Lytras)

Preprint submitted to Computers in Human Behaviour February 19, 2018

 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

learning and data science, and ‘Social Sensing’ (SS), as technologies and theoretical
frameworks, that complement the said disciplines and the greater whole of which they
are a part.
Web Science is a relatively new discipline that employs traditional ideas of ‘observa-

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tion’ and ‘analysis’ found in the natural sciences to socio-technical phenomena and to
engineering/creating solutions [22]. Cognitive computation, inspired by cognitive and
neuro-science, and employing machine learning, seeks to augment human experience by
creating human-computer usage contexts at a more human-level of abstraction than the

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technical level of computer science [34, 26]. E-learning is a particularly important socio-
technical phenomenon, referring not only to learning-management systems of universities
and similar institutions, but the pervasive activity of technology-mediated learning [20].

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Finally, Social Sensing (SS) researchers seek to find socially meaningful patterns amongst
socially generated data such as on twitter and facebook, patterns denoting social phe-
nomena that are not immediately obvious from the data [31].
Relating these areas means working out relationships between the concepts and re-
lated technologies, and suggesting why particular connections could be beneficial to ex-

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plore. There are already connections between cognitive computation, e-learning and Web
Science discussed in existing literature. E-learning theorists employs cognitive models
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of learning, and CC applications use machine learning techniques to understand student
behaviour. CC due to it seeking to exhibit human-level abstractions of computational
processes, works to add human-level meanings to the web of socio-technical phenomena,
one of the raison d’êtres of WS.
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In addition to these existing, rather implicit relations, this paper proposes several
explicit confluences at the conceptual and practical levels between these areas. This
work to re-arrange each of these areas relative to each other, as parts that indicate the
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possibility of an emergent whole. The contention is that there would be significant benefit
were researchers to focus on explicitly constructing this whole from these parts, in the
disciplinary space that open-up from their intersection. This space envisioned is not that
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of a new discipline but is the space already occupied by Web Science, except that it is a
re-orientation of that disciplinary space that readily links to CC/EL, and indeed, related
disciplines dealing with socio-technical phenomena.
WS research is still in its early stages, seeking methodology and an adequate tax-
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onomy for its phenomena. It is hoped that our propositions, could form the basis for a
significant re-envisioning for WS. Similarly, it is hoped that this work could be a means
for renewed discussion amongst EL, CC, SS researchers, about how they ought to situate
and identify their disciplines given deep relations with one another and WS.
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In relating together these disciplines, sections 2, 3 and 4 introduce EL, WS and CC re-
spectively, but it frames them in such a way as to reveal a set of initial inter-relationships.
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Section 5 discusses the main interconnections in detail, with specific proposals about how
one discipline ought to be understood relative to another, and relative to a whole de-
noting a future WS. Section 6 shows why further research exploring these connections is
important for the rather practical activity of doing learning-analytics. Finally, section 7
summarises the key relationships and proposals.

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2. E-learning: Informal (situated) learning as general phenomenon

E-learning is about connecting people, technologies and services, for the purpose
of fulfilling educational objectives. The people concerned are the stakeholders: stu-
dents, teachers, content providers and institutions, professional associations and edu-

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cation boards; the services correspond to the learning activities based on pedagogical
models (e.g. open and/or distributed learning, and knowledge building communities)
and instructional strategies (e.g. problem solving facilitation, role-playing, contextual-

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ising instruction); while the technologies are those that work to facilitate content (its
curation, access and generation), communication and collaboration [2]. The technologies
here do not only serve to assist learning but instead work to shape “the cognitive pro-
cesses that underpin learning”[32, 23], and with technology-use being culturally mediated

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“technologically mediated learning (via asyn- chronous learning networks) is necessarily
shaped discursively by the practices around technology privileged in a particular cultural
milieu”.
The instructional strategies are derived from models of pedagogy or learning, the three

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main categories of which are behavioural, cognitivist and constructionist, each providing
principles defining what it means to learn with respect to the nature of the content, the
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behaviours of teacher/student and the setup of the learning context that is to generate
the ideal learning event 1
Of particular relevance is the theory of learning as situated [30, 13, 4, 6], which
holds that most learning is embedded (situated) within activities that may not explicitly
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draw attention as learning, that learning is often unintentional as opposed to being

deliberate. What this means is that e-learning services, instead of being centralised,
must be available as a ‘packaged product’ to generate a learning event in the midst of
the student being engaged in other activities. These other activities comprise ‘authentic
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contexts’ of learning, as they are the normal situ for the corresponding knowledge to
be learned. Another salient aspect of situated learning theory, which can be seen as a
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necessary concomitant of the situatedness of the learning event, is its collaborative aspect.
The learning event, in offering curated content and linking the learner with an expert or
teacher, involves them in a community of practice, in which they start as a novice and
migrate towards being an expert through engaging in learning events [7]. Although this
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communal participation involves the social construction of knowledge, perhaps the most
primary aspect for analysis here is the learning situation/event itself as a phenomenon,
which points to the learner’s experience. This means both behaviour and cognition would
ultimately need to be considered, a claim further supported by the works in [28].
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E-learning like all technology augmented social processes where a human agent dis-
appears and is represented by a live video or other representation, works to replace real-
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presence with a lesser type of presence: telepresence. This effects the way students take
risks and the way they develop their relationship with teachers as apprentices, something
particularly important for skill acquisition type learning [15]. This can be understood

1 For our purposes, the event can be formal in the sense of explicitly and actively following an instruc-

tional plan, e.g. Gagne’s nine events: gaining attention, providing content and assessment or spurring
recall of prior knowledge, etc. [16]. Or instead, the instructional plan could be implicit, which means
that while such instructional events may be present they may not follow a standard sequence, and would
only be understood as an instructional post-event.
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as being an ultimate limit that discerns such types of e-learning from traditional learn-
ing, and is something around which recent models of learning, roughly in the area of
situated learning, is based [17]. These models suggest explicitly how some of this lack
of presence can be alleviated. While e-learning focuses on socio-technical processes with

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educational objectives, Web Science instead has a scope extending over the general space
of socio-technical processes.

3. Web Science: studying the social machine

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Web Science is an emerging discipline which takes the web as its subject matter.
It understands the web as heteregeneous, interconnected systems of entities, whether

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human or technological device. These are entities connected by virtue of a physical (-
electronic) relationship such as two nodes on a network or two people in a room, or a
semantic relationship, such as between a system and its user - participating in meaningful
processes - or a human user and their ‘virtual friends’ or their avatar in SecondLife.

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The founders of Web Science understand it as a “science of decentralised information
structures” [5] , they iterate that such a science [5] :
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is essential for understanding how informal and unplanned informational
links between people, agents, databases, organisations and other actors and
resources can meet the informa-tional needs of important drivers such as e-
science and e-government. How an essentially decentralised system can have
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such performance designed into it is the key question of Web Science

Like any other space of phenomena, such as that of the natural world, there are
meaningful patterns of relationships between entities, ways to intervene to change these
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patterns and ‘edit’ these spaces; and ways evaluate spaces and processes therein con-
cerning their function. Unlike natural science however, in taking a synthetic - easily
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manipulatable - world of technology as one of its object of study, Web Science involves
both the engineering/intervention of phenomena more intimately with its analytical side.
Furthermore, as aspects of the social world is its object of study, it also considers social
policy as a concern that is primary and not extraneous. Web Science is hence [5]:
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not just about methods for modelling, analysing and understanding the
Web at the various micro- and macroscopic levels. It is also about engineering
protocols and providing infrastructure, and ensuring that there is fit between
the infrastructure and the society that hosts it. Web Science must coordi-
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nate engineering with a social agenda, policy with technical constraints and
possibilities, analysis with synthesis - it is inherently interdisciplinary..
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The primary phenomenon Web Science introduces, is the social machine (SM), re-
ferring not only to the interactional possibilities of, and between, a collection of human
and technological entities, but actual instances of such interaction. The interactions pre-
suppose a purpose or reason, such that a user changing a Wikipedia entry upon a world
event to reflect a new reality. The introduction of the notion of a SM was to discern
between the human ‘creative’ aspect of a technology-mediated work, i.e. “the generation
of online content (e.g., uploading a photo or writing some text),”, and the ‘administra-
tive’ aspect referring to what the technology does without this creative guidance. Other
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than Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Instagram are social machines, that
is as a whole and also in part (i.e. its small sub-aspects). It is however, often difficult
to differentiate between the creative and the administrative, a creative task can be un-
derstood as administrative and vice versa; the border between these aspects of work is

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not static. Shadbolt et al. provide a revised definition that resolves this in [39]: “Social
machines are Web-based socio-technical systems in which the human and technological
elements play the role of participant machinery with respect to the mechanistic realization
of system-level processes”; a definition was inspired from the extended-mind hypothesis

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in the philosophy of mind [10]. Unlike the original definition, this SM are not processes
but physical systems:

It is important to note that we are not saying that social machines are

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processes, as would seem to be implied by the definition of social machines
offered by Berners-Lee and Fischetti [4]. Rather, we are saying that social
machines are the physical systems that perform, implement or realize such
processes. .. Tinati and Carr [51] thus write that“any task that requires the

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co-constitutional involvement of humans and technologies is a form of social
machine”.
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A machine is social in that it participates in social phenomena in a way that past
technologies did not, this is an effect of the pervasiveness of modern technology, and
is due to increasing portions of human experience being mediated by technology. In
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addition to social networking and similar applications, SMs involve tools that personify
human actors such as virtual assistants (e.g. Siri, Viv and Cortana), medical assistants
or expert systems supporting medical diagnoses, home automation systems.
The understanding and engineering of social machines necessitate the adding of layer
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(s) of meaning over existing information structures, to understand what it is that makes
particular activities meaningful as social activities. The Semantic Web (SW) corresponds
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to these layers. It is crucial for recognizing (or making intelligible), and creating or
purposefully intervening-upon social machines. As ultimately the social machine is a
social process that involves technology, and for us to create/manipulate or understand
such machines the technology and the data it works on have to be given a cognitive or
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social meaning, i.e. a semantics. This meaning is with respect to its place, purpose and
function within the social machine or process to be created. In having this abstract layer
of meaning, the data and technology can be understood humanistically, can be reasoned
about according to its “social attributes such as trustworthiness, reliability, and tacit
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expectations about the use of information, as well as privacy, copyright, and other legal
rules”
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The SW has the effect of putting data and information structures on a level playing
field as relational data, and as types of SMs; and of thereby being a condition of pos-
sibility for the appearance of SM phenomena into the public sphere. Relational Data
Frameworks are work to express ontologies are basically a way to create represent the
result of ontological discourse about relations between different information structures.
This labelling by the SW acts as the mapping out of phenomena space, and the OWL and
other technologies as hypothesis/theory generation/evaluation schemes. In this sense, the
main point of the SW is not to establish formal ontologies but to suggest links between
entities premised on existent ontologies, or folksonomies. If some data is to be of value in
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some context, then SW techniques should ideally reflect this through the semantics col-
lected on that data. The SW works with URIs, basic web objects. The semantics emerge
through formal ontologies or informal socially-agreed ontologies from folksonomies; the
SM is a phenomenon formed out of the SW of relations.

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The scientific methodology for forming and testing hypotheses about SW components,
or higher level phenomena such as social machines, is still emerging. This methodology
uses but is not exhausted by the extensive work of reasoning over SW. This methodology
problem requires such work to be integrated normatively with statistical machine learning

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approaches. In addition, it requires an extensive taxonomy of phenomena, the SMs
in particular, the properties of which would be what the hypotheses are about. For
example, hypotheses about how regular particular types of SMs are, how their particular

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properties, e.g. sociality [39, 17-18] is likely to change over time or over a set of meaningful
events. Given all the change in the web, for there to be a coherent science it is especially
incumbent on a science in this context to have regular phenomena. The work of taxonomy
in [39] begins to resolve the problem of taxonomy by suggesting a significant number of
properties by which SMs can be categorised. It can also be understood to be working

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towards an ontology of possible and actual social machines.
In order to effect a sufficient, broad-based semantic web, human designed folksonomies
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or ontologies require to be complemented with machine-estimations of meaningful pat-
terns. Cognitive-computation, over and above the immediate machine-learning tech-
niques required to do this, with representative applications like IBM’s Watson, can be
understood as the effort to create an overall framework for realising and employing se-
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mantic webs.

4. Cognitive Computing as a paradigm centered around social machines

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Cognitive Computing (CC) is a modern paradigm for computation that brings with a
nascent vision for the future of the man-machine relationship. While conventional com-
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puter science is concerned with logical and mathematical operations on abstract data,
CC works in addition, at a higher - more humanistic - level of abstraction, with the ma-
nipulation and analysis of words, concepts, semantics; and on knowledge representation,
comprehension and learning [42, 14]. CC typically focuses on those spaces that exhibit
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rich human-machine configurations, usually involving adaptive devices in pervasive con-

texts working with messy unstructured data. The purpose therein is to build systems
that are able to understand, replicate and effectively complement human activity. IBM’s
Watson is the typical example of a CC system, but this was preceded by expert systems
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such as those in medicine. The purpose of Watson however, is to be a CC platform that

can be applied across contexts.
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CC research ranges from the design of hardware and software implementation of neu-
ral processors, to algorithms and frameworks supporting the replication of human-like
analysis of data, e.g. machine learning algorithms, to more theoretical research aimed at
understanding effective man-machine combinations for completing tasks through mod-
elling cognitive processes. The overall aims of CC research are to understand, evaluate,
create/support and intervene-upon human-machine configurations. With respect to its
creative/engineering function, the goal is not only to make more effective the conduct
of human tasks but - and this is the nascent vision - to do so in a way that is natural,

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and that allows for deeper human engagement. Furthermore, in CC focusing on human-
technology systems, as opposed to technology-only systems, this latter goal of CC can
be understood in the context of Web Science as corresponding to the establishment of
effective ecologies of human-machine configurations or social machines. As with SMs,

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CC seeks to fulfill these goals through augmenting human senses and abilities with tech-
nology [27]. CC has in common with WS and SMs the relation between technology and
the cognitive agent as being depicted by the extended-mind idea [10].
CC research is not only focused on single-user contexts - although this constitutes

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a large portion thereof - with applications like virtual assistants. Its scope - something
indicative of its vision - like WS, also includes groups of users. There is no limitation to
the context or number of the agents that could come under analysis by CC or intervention

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by CC applications. The context could be as large as a city, such that one can speak of
creating‘operating system for cities’ [27, 178], understood as a high-level social machine
that forms a foundation for other such machines., which all work together to represent
the technology-mediated human activities typical of a modern city. Thus, the use of
Watson in-context constitutes a social machine [21, 131]. Even without a live human

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element, an instance of automatic processing by Watson, were it to use prior human
created information - e.g. from Wiki - could still be considered to constitute a social
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machine. In general, where AI systems train on human input, their execution at a
later instance corresponds to the functioning of a social machine. The social machine
in which machines participate, presumes that machine to increasingly be intelligent, i.e.
use learning algorithms or decision making techniques [21, 135]. This is due to the
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pervasiveness of technology mediation.

5. Points of Connection
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The course of research in WS, CC and EL are in a sense, heading towards one another,
either in their practical or theoretical/conceptual aspects. By practical we mean not only
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in terms of tools or technology, but in terms what a discipline thinks ought to be done.
For example, both CC and WS think that the web require layers of meaning, so that it
can be worked-with at increasingly human-levels of abstraction. The following discusses
some significant ways each such discipline is thereby related to another, ways that ought
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to be further explored and capitalized-upon.

5.1. Learning Machines as Social Machines: pervasive and presupposed

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Social machines do not only denote a key phenomenon constituting the modern web.
Instead, they are phenomena radically present across the range of modern human life.
They have been the means for enabling subcultures of decentralised human activity that
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have been particularly disruptive and empowering, and highly influential in shaping the
modern human experience. SMs constitute the predominant participatory phenomenon
involving billions of users. E-learning situations we propose - along with [43] - are learning
machines (LM). They are a subset of social machines, with educational objectives beyond
whatever social objectives may be present. This concept is not foreign to WS, for as [38,
202-203] states, knowledge acquisition is indeed a common purpose of social machines.
This section explores some implications of this relation not addressed in these other
works.
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As a sub-type of SM, a LM inherits properties of general SMs while providing ad-

ditional properties. With respect to the administrative and creative part of a SM, in
an EL context, the bringing together of people and diverse content, to serve under an
instructional strategy can be understood to be the administrative part. The creative

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part can be thought of as the sequencing of relevant strategies, for designing a learn-
ing event customised for a particular learning context. The additional properties of a
LM along with methodologies for studying it, such as learner analytics, can in turn be
understood as a type of social machine analytics with respect to educational objectives.

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This alignment of a LM with the social-sphere through its being understood as a social-
machine is especially apt given the trend towards social learning in EL discourse (c.f.
[45]) where social learning is in particular responsible for fostering individual creativity

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amongst learners in an online context [46],
E-learning as situated learning, represents not only a large portion of learning ma-
chines - i.e. real learning events - but also, arguably, is a function for significant number
of SMs. This refers not to formal learning but informal learning, and specifically situ-
ated learning. From asking questions and receiving answers on Quora, to the various

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types of situated learning on stack-exchange, to informal skills learning on various fo-
rums pertaining to consumer goods, learning as a function is pervasive in the set of social
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machines.
In the modern time due to technology mediated living making up increasing portions
of human experience, there are far more situations of informal and situated learning than
formal ones. These are increasingly, ubiquitous situations further contextualised by the
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learner’s relation to their city as a whole opposed to specific learning environments. The
pervasiveness of such learning works to suggest a natural pedagogical function of social
interactions. Thus, the scope of e-learning as a discipline, reaches well beyond supporting
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institutional learning agendas to the (a) explanation of the human experiences in learning
machines, (b) creation of strategies for purposefully intervening upon informal situated
learning processes, which are processes embedded in others, by means of application-
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level services. Realizing informal situated learning by such services - due to the highly
contextual nature of such embedded learning events - requires a learning support system
to make sense of numerous contextual factors. This is where CC systems, as decision
support systems making sense of big data, relate to e-learning at the practical level, as
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the means of creating services supporting e-learning as an embedded practice.

EL systems pervasive in this way, exhibiting often implicit and usually informal learn-
ing scenarios, have a particular social significance. We contend that they work to fulfill
- in a rather unprecedented way - Illich’s ideal of informal education [24, 33, 19, 12]. An
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ideal whose realisation is a means to tackle social inequities partially engendered by the
still dominant institutionalised forms of learning. Learning machines thereby, have ar-
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guably been the most ‘disruptive’ of all social machines. Social machines from Wikipedia,
to Udacity, to open coursewares of institutions, to educational social media in general,
have made irreversable impact not only to formal educational practices but, by creat-
ing subversive spaces for informal education beyond institutions, to technology-mediated
living - by ‘injecting’ greater possibilities for learning therein. As such they have worked
to - perhaps inadvertently - form Illich’s ‘educational web’: a system of social structures
that enable one to transform their immediate experience into one of learning and sharing
by connecting those that have something to share with those that want to learn it from
them, and by allowing those that want to learn with a system of resources to accomplish
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their goals, at any time [25]. LMs have thereby pervasively intervened-upon become
situated-in a range of sub-cultures that have some learning component.
Research questions pertaining to EL, such as those in [20, 47] about the properties of a
learning community, are about the nature learning machines, and required to be answered

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through developing a taxonomy. This is a task equivalent to the one undertaken in WS
research [39] for general SMs. Both WS and EL are still at the beginning stages with
respect to this task, and this is due to the rapidly expanding situated contexts of LMs and
SMs. The taxonomy given for WS in [39] could be understood as analogical to properties

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for learning machines. For example, the SM property of ‘Social Role Differentiation’,
used to specify whether the roles of agents associated with the respective SM is clear or
ambiguous, not only makes sense for LMs but is useful. In a LM context, especially an

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informal context such as a forum on consumer products, the roles of ‘teacher’/student or
expert and novice, are not always clear or ‘decided from above’. Similarly, the property
of ‘user autonomy’ as learner autonomy , ‘User Involvement in Quality Evaluation’ as
‘the degree to which there are student-directed assessments (or self-assessments)’, and
several others in [39] are of immediate benefit for the EL context.

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Existing research questions in EL such as those in [20] can be addressed through asking
similar questions about SMs and querying the WS literature, and adapting answers to the
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EL context. In this way, the WS work in [39, 17-18] could evolved by adding properties to
differentiate learning machines as a subclass of LMs. WS researchers are in fact seeking
to expand their taxonomies in this way: “Clearly, the effort to develop a hierarchically-
organized set of social machine classes is an important focus area for future work, and it
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could feed into the aforementioned effort to develop a social machine ontology”[39]
Furthermore, note that it is the situatedness of informal types of learning that re-
lates corresponding LMs to a large range of SMs. In particular, many such SMs can be
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said topresuppose LMs. Conversely, to the extent these LMs are conditioned by the pro-
cesses in which they are embedded, EL studies would need to consider the encapsulating
processes require to be studied. Thus, the study of situated LMs means the study of
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encapsulating SMs. This means heading towards WS research. In particular, were em-
bedded learning - implemented for example, as learning as a service - to be required to
fulfill particular standards, then these standards would interact with the general space of
web standards that apply to the corresponding encapsulating social machines. It would
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also mean that, for the scientific purpose of explaining the effect of learning machines,
that the existing discourse around the social functions of encapsulating SMs - as is part
of WS and computational social science discourse - would have to be brought to bear on
what learning as an embedded function therein could mean. Thus, the need for further
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theoretical research in EL to consider all these aspects. However, if such research is

indeed deemed to be important for e-learning as a discipline, and were discourses therein
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to proceed with such research in a normative fashion, then such research would arguably
merge, in both content and style, with WS research.
In general, the varied situations of informal learning as contexts of technology-mediated
living engender new psycho-social constructs, epistemologies and multimodal processes
in which people are pervasively involved, this calls for new theories of learning [20, 62].
The increasingly diverse cultural forms made possible and/or supported b technology,
especially participatory cultures [20], mean increasingly diverse contexts of learning: new
theories are required to address the particulars of these contexts. Common research ques-
tions for situated learning ask about (a) how collaborative/active learning and learning
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communities can be recognized (empirically and conceptually), and defined in terms of

group behaviour or cognitive states, (b) what optimal types and levels of interaction for
fulfilling learning objectives are, and (c) how communities ‘foster’ learning. The ques-
tions pertaining to recognising learning are akin to the standard questions in WS about

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what properties define social machines of particular types. This pertains to the funda-
mental and common scientific question about the nature, observability and regularity of
phenomena. The properties given in [38] offer, in addition to learning-specific properties,
a rich set by which to define wide ranges of embedded learning scenarios.

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5.2. Cognitive Computing: Connecting to E-learning and Web Science
A LM depicts a cognitive computation situation: there are one or two real cognitive

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agents, possibly many more to depict student interaction, and possibly several simulated
agents. The SM is the sum-total of interactional and processual possibilities limited by
the purpose of ‘learning’ and related socialisations. Beyond this conceptual relationship,
CC relates to EL at a practical level. Informal, embedded learning, is generally more

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context-dependent than the formal equivalent. Thus in order to fulfill its objectives,
in its practical aspect, it appears to incline towards technologies able to address many
contextual factors. This necessitates dealing with large amounts of data, and not only
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for goal of customising learning experience - one of the particular goals of e-learning
in general - statistical machine learning approaches seem the direction to go. However,
beyond these approaches, the CC paradigm, which in particular considers the human-
machine combination, in addition to something like the Watson framework, appears to
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be a fruitful direction for further EL research.

Web Science already shares its general research perspective with that of Cognitive
Computing [21, 18]. This is since WS’s key phenomenon, the social machine, pertains to a
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combination of human and machine aspects. CC is particularly interested in studying and

harnessing such a combination. In this respect, it could be said that CC theory mainly
studies social machines, except that the focus appears mainly on two agent systems such
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as exampled by personal virtual assistants such as Siri. However, even such systems,
due to depending on social data through opinion mining and such, can be understood in
general to be multi-agent systems - as is the norm for social machines as studied in WS.
The semantic web, where metadata allows for logical inference between objects, is
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necessary for supporting the highly contextualised learning in embedded informal learn-
ing, as the different sources of information inherited from encapsulating processes require
to be effectively related together using pre-existent ontologies that imply what this rela-
tion should be. Thus, CC approaches effectively apply to these learning contexts through
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the technology of the semantic web taken from WS, of prior-user-labelled objects and
logic that can effect learner analytics or be use to generate ‘teaching content’.
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5.3. Social Sensing as Denoting the observational apparatus for Web Science
The nascent area of Social Sensing (SS) is about detecting socially meaningful events
and phenomena amongst social media content. Of particular use in public health ap-
plications, Social Sensing has been employed to map-out areas affected by epidemics
from live-analyses of search engine queries about infection [18, 37]. It has similarly been
employed in cases of natural events such as earthquakes, to live-analyse twitter feeds to
predict the course of further shock waves [36]. Moreover, Social Sensing is being used
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to understand for life saving health-care scenarios, such as in the case of users in de-
veloping countries lacking sufficient blood collection facilities using twitter to find blood
donors [1]. A patient sends a request to a broker (disseminator) who then forwards the
request to potentially, millions of followers, often resulting in a successful response from

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a donor. Furthermore, Social Sensing has been used to measure research impact in the
form of altmetrics. It demonstrated a positive correlation was between the impact of a
publication and its popularity as a discussion topic on social media [41].
With respect to its relation to WS, CC and EL. In the e-learning context, forum

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activities exhibit social phenomena based around question-answering processes, and can
be ‘sensed’ [44]. CC systems employing machine-learning approaches to discover patterns
of user behaviour are essentially doing ‘Social Sensing’, even though this may only be

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an aspect of the overall function of such systems. The discipline of Social Sensing works
explicitly to relate computationally acquired patterns to socially meaningful phenomena.
There is however a salient relationship between WS and SS. To the extent Web Science
seeks to first discover social machines, i.e. some regular relation, or interactive pattern,
between users and software/infrastructure, it is doing Social Sensing. The social machine

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can thereby be understood to depict a regular social phenomena, that is first ‘sensed’
prior to it being called a social machine phenomenon. Hence, SS can be understood
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to denote the ‘observational apparatus’, i.e. techniques, concepts, tools, for the science
of Web-Science, in the same way as corresponding experimental methodology and tools
form the same apparatus for the natural sciences.
If SS is understood in this way, then the applications of SS, from earthquake predic-
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tion, to socio-technical and health phenomena such as blood-donor finding to epidemic

mapping, each become a type of social machine, i.e ‘geo-disaster’ and ‘public-health’ types
of social machine respectively. All such machines can thereby be characterised as per
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the taxonomy in [39]. Furthermore, they can be checked for embedded informal LMs, to
which learner analytics can be applied. For example, blood-donation public-health social
machine would supposedly have a learning component wherein a key, yet rather simple
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learning objective, would be for the seekers of blood-donors to quickly discover the best
brokers to whom to send their request so as to elicit the quickest responses [1].

6. Upshot for Learning Analytics

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The benefits of linking between the discipline mentioned above are primarily to the
conceptual and foundational layers of their corresponding discourses. However, any such
disciplinary progress at these layers arguably have numerous advantages at the prac-
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tical/empirical levels. This section considers the potential benefit of such disciplinary
linking to the problem of learning analytics, which pertains - in the language of this
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paper - to the methodology for evaluating learning machines.

Consider first summary of the above ideas in figure fig. 1 wherein web science is
situated as a methodology for observing, discussing and manipulating socio-technical
phenomena. As depicted therein, WS understands these phenomena as social machines.
Moreover, In ’discovering’ social machines WS is sensing the social - which is the purview
of the SS discourse - especially when it is employing machine learning and cognitive com-
putation methods to do so, as is common to SS. Furthermore, the phenomena discov-
ered, construed as social machines, can refer to any technology-mediated human activity
- as would correspond to the CC scenario - such as e-learning activity. The specific
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technology-mediated activity conditions the type of social machine observed, which in

this case would be a learning-machine.
With respect to such learning machines, any methodology for their ‘measurement’
such as those pertaining to learner analytics must presuppose particular construals of

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learning phenomena such as the LM (such as what its properties are). Analytics corre-
sponds to the evaluation of processes and states, of student discourses, tests, student-
interactions pertaining to learning, social metrics, information about student’s emotional
state [3] and demographics, etc. Any such evaluation process presupposes a number of

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concepts. For example, value concepts, cognitive concepts (depicting students emotional
state for example) and an idea of how to construe a student’s ’social context’ (e.g. as to
what factors should be included or ignored).

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Given the (a) increasing variety of learning-machines - for situational learning in
particular [8] and (b) the need to proactively engage in expanding this variety and cre-
ating further situational-learning opportunities as part of learning innovation in order to
tackle modern education challenges [11, 40], it is incumbent on the EL (and specifically
the learning-analytics) community to develop the corresponding evaluation/analytics

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methodologies for LMs. An implication of the disciplinary linking introduced in this pa-
per is that such methodology ought to be informed by work in these related disciplines.
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There are already shared evaluation approaches, such as machine learning approaches
that can be applied to finding patterns in data in general, however that is not the main
import here. Were learning-analytics to actively consider these relationships and the
corresponding disciplines, it would firstly have a source of measures, metrics and com-
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putational approaches it could borrow. More importantly - due to its relatively young
age - learning-analytics discourse would find in these other disciplines a framework of
concepts (such as the notion of social machine and its myriad properties) that present
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a means for developing a rigorous foundations for modeling the base of parameters for
analytics 2 .
Borrowing from these other disciplines may not only be a curious and interesting
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research aim, but necessary. Learning innovation implies the need to consider complex
situated and social settings of learning, aspects of which are already dealt-with by WS
and CC. If learning-analytics discourse does not appropriate concepts and metrics WS
and CC and present itself as a rigorous evaluative discourse for LMs then it is expected
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that WS/CC discourse would ultimately take over its space as it seeks to study learning-
based social machine or learning-applications of cognitive computation respectively.
Finally, the growth of wearable-technologies [9, 47] which represents CC style scenar-
ios of technology-use, and the inevitable uptake of such technologies through learning-
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innovation, is an important emergent context where CC and EL (and hence learning

analytics) are forced into conversation. Any evaluation metrics for the corresponding
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types of learning experiences presumes a rigorous understanding of human cognition

and behaviour. Cognitive computation, in seeking - in its theoretical capacity - to un-
derstand technologies that in particular allow for human-computer cooperative activity,

2 While there are examples of such conceptual borrowing in EL and learning-analytics research, some-

times understood as cognitive learning analytics [29, 35], there is not yet a wide-enough recognition for
a general need for such research let alone of the necessity of a normative methodology for such appro-
priation. In addition, any rigorous discourse on cognitive learning analytics would clearly also need to
consider the existing discourse in CC, and thereby require to relate conceptually between CC and EL.
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Social Sensing A discovery/observation method

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aided by machine learning and
(as observational
cognitive computing approaches
method and apparatus)

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SPACE OF
SOCIO-
AN
TECHNICAL
Web Scien(ce)/tist PHENOMENA
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Empirical/observed
phenomenon for
Web Science
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Possibly generated by
a Cognitive
Computation scenario
or corresponding
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technology
(Discovered) Social Machine

Interactive cognitive
(human or machine) agents
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Embedded/Situated Learning
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Machine. To be studied by E-
learning methodologies
absorbed by Web Science
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Figure 1: Cognitive Computing, Social Sensing and E-learning as aspects of Web Science

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also presumes such an understanding. This presents yet another reason for proactively
linking to the aforementioned disciplines, for the sake of developing analytics, especially
its foundations, to consider the different modes of technology-use in learning.

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7. Conclusion

Web Science (WS) is a science of socio-technical phenomena known as social machines,

that capture an increasingly large range of social activity pertaining to human-machine

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interactions. To the extent cognitive agents are considered in such machines, cognitive
computation concepts are of use to WS researchers. Learning machines are a special type
of social machines. LMs inherit properties of SMs while contributing properties to SMs in

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which they, especially in the case of informal situated learning, are encapsulated - which
presuppose them. These are properties pertaining to educational objectives. E-learning
like WS can benefit from CC concepts when making cognitive models of learners. The
main mutual benefit of CC to both WS and EL, at a practical level is a framework such

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as Watson that could address the numerous contextual factors in SMs, and situated LMs
specifically, to offer detection - or social-sensing - of relevant social/learning phenomena
therein. Or to intervene-upon or support corresponding processes
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The key benefit offered by WS to EL is a framework in which modern yet foundational
problems of e-learning could be investigated. As WS is still in its early stages. Its space
of phenomena (i.e. SMs), of which LMs make up a large share, is still ambiguous.
Taxonomies exist but could be significantly improved-upon by appending them with the
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large range of documented e-learning situations, as learning machines. To the nascent

methodology of WS as a science could be added existent methodology in EL, e.g. learner
analytics as an analysis of observed properties of SMs.Web Science can be understood as
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the ‘whole’, a ‘home’ for much of e-learning, Social Sensing and cognitive computation
research. They are parts that integrate or coordinate to strengthen the methodology,
observational aspects, empirical support, experimental tools, and style of intervention
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through engineering, of an emergent science about technology-mediated human living.

The emergence of different application contexts are leading to each of these disci-
plines to approach the other. It is the proposal of this paper that EL scholars should
proactively explore the relationships with these other fields and appropriate concepts
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and techniques to develop rigorous approaches for understanding and measuring learning
machines; the latter through further developing the conceptual foundations and method-
ology for learning-analytics.
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Web Science, Cognitive Computing, E-learning and Social Sensing are connected

Informal situated-learning is becoming the most prevalent form of e-learning

Situated learning argued to be significant form of social machine (from Web Science)

Progress in learning-analytics depends on exploiting relations with these disciplines

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