Enhancing distance learning platforms with social media analytics

The current paper emphasizes on how enhancement of human interconnection improves distance learning processes through the use of social media analytics. Until today, educators, learners, parents and everyone else interested in a distance learning activity were able to customize and personalize their educational trajectory through representative structures, which actually promoted very general composites of the individual opinions. Over time, distance learning platforms, combined with social media and services, have to evolve and focus in strengthening the influence of the voices of their users, as well as promote the active participation of them in the educational activities. In accordance to this need, the purpose of this paper is to present an intelligent extension of existing distance learning platforms. We discuss the details of a system that utilizes big amount of structured and unstructured, historical and real-time data in order to inform, create new contacts and strengthen the dialogue and cooperation between the participants in an educational procedure. We cite an example from the field of learning Russian language from Greek students. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2015.