Supporting, evaluating and validating informal learning. A social approach

• Informal learning (IL) is currently a very hot topic.
• The majority of existing proposals use formal procedures for validating IL.
• We propose social framework for the validation and promotion of informal learning.
• Learners evaluate each other's activities by tagging, adopting and commenting them.
• A recommender system helps learners discover new activities and promotes IL.

Informal learning has been a global hot topic for the past several years. The growth of the internet and the pervasiveness of computers in everyday life means that a huge part of this informal learning is done through a computer. In the European Union, since the official recognition of informal learning in 1999 with the Bologna Treaty, a number of guidelines and proposals have been published providing techniques and recommendations for translating informal learning outcomes to formal competences. Most of these guidelines depend on an evaluator (internal or external) to oversee and certify the process. In our work, we propose the usage of a more social and dynamic framework for gathering, validating and promoting a learner's digital informal learning. This framework is based primarily on peer interaction and peer assessment instead of employing experts and provides mechanisms for personalized recommendations in order to introduce further informal learning opportunities to the learners. We propose an approach where a learner's evaluation happens organically while other learners adopt the same activities and evaluate them positively or negatively.