Estefanía Martín, Isidoro Hernán and Pablo A. Haya New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia Vol. 21, No. 3, 1–22, (2015) doi: 10.1080/13614568.2015.1027966 [download] (JCR, IF 2015: 0.586, Q4 – 125/144 Computer Science, Information Systems )

In the educational context there is an increasing interest in learning networks. Recommendation systems can play an important role in achieving the educational objectives. Although we can find many papers focused on recommendation techniques and algorithms however, less attention has been dedicated to social factors that influence the recommendation process. This process could be improved if we had a deeper understanding of the social factors that influence the quality or goodness of a suggestion made by the recommendation system. This work elucidates and analyses the social factors that influence the design and decision making process of recommender systems. We conducted a survey where 126 undergraduate students were asked to extract are the main factors for improving suggestions when they are interacting with an Online Social Network (OSN) or in an Educational Social Network (ESN). The results show that different factors have to be considered depending on the type of the network.