.: Our Research

Our research is done with the vision of improving the accessibility of educational information on the Internet. We believe that scholars spend a large degree of their research time repeating a searching process which has previously been done by others. Our aim is to improve the technology which would allow the time spent by one user of the Internet to be more fruitful for other similar users.

Our aim is to create technology which will:

1)	Assist the user in locating information, primarily for educational purposes.
2)	Searches should be context aware; a 16 year old student can be expected to be 
	searching for less in-depth information than a PhD student.
3)	Be as autonomous as possible.
4)	Adapt the results of searches to take into account knowledge gained from previous 
	searches done by other related users. No two users should need to go though a 
	searching process in order to access the same information. The results of one 
	should be available to the other.
5)	Group users by subject and by the depth of the subject research.
6) 	Encorage users to recommend articles and documents according to their relevancy.
7)	Maintain an index and archive URL’s of recommended documents.
8)	Provide a transparent localised web search in relation to the currently viewed 
	Webpage, and offer the most relevant pages to the user.
9)	Use an established Web Browser as a host for the system.
10)	The system should not restrict the user's browsing experience; any Webpage and 
	Search Engine should be available for use.
11)	The system may be used in conjunction with an existing archive such as CiteSeer 
	or AltaVista.

For more information about the research being undertaken at Durham University in Technology Enhanced Learning, please visit our website here.

For more information about Carl Nattrass's research for a PhD, please visit our website here.