Laws of Attraction: In Search of Document Value-ness for Recommendation

In this paper we explore the uniqueness of paper recommendation for e-learning systems through a human-subject study. Experiment results showed that the majority of learners have struggled to reach a ‘harmony’ between their interest and educational goal: they admit that in order to acquire new knowledge, they are willing to read not-interesting-yet-pedagogically-useful papers. In other words, learners seem to be more tolerant than users in commercial recommender systems. Nevertheless, as educators, we should still maintain a balance of recommending interesting papers and pedagogically helpful ones in order to retain learners and continuously engage them throughout the learning process.