TILE is brainstorming ways in which context can be derived:

• My Studies – Modules from VLE or VRE
• My ID
• My Activity – LMS/VLE/etc. Click streams
• My Feedback – bookmarks, reviews, ratings
• My Parameters – e.g. Location, status (and also the idea that you could want to ‘override’ by changing some of the parameters – to get access to 2nd year reading lists when you are in the 1st year etc.)
• My Interests

They also identified a couple that they are considering outside the initial scope

• My Networks – e.g. Facebook
• My Publications – Citation indexes etc.

Difficult to capture all the discussion but some points:

• Context varies – your ‘facebook’ context could be very different to your ‘academic’ context
• Context can feedback not just to the individual, but be used to drive information back to tutors (for example information about what students on their course are reading etc.)

Clearly there are privacy issues, but we can accept that context in the main can be derived from data aggregation – without dealing with individuals specific activity (except perhaps someones own personal usage data?)

We looked at a diagram suggesting a SUM for the aggregation of data that could be used to drive context across an institution – but I have to admit I didn’t quite get it – possibly I want to work at a level of detail that the SUM doesn’t go to?

It occurred to me as we discussed the issues, that we talked mainly about institutions not about users in terms of providing context. I need to think about this, but shouldn’t we be thinking about data portability, and how users carry their context with them? I need to think about this more.