(AEIOU) Project.wsa

What is Activity data?

Activity data refers to the
records of human actions,
both online and physical,
which can be analysed by a
computer. (JISC, 2013)

 Usage data
‘actions that a user has
performed (e.g. downloads)

 Attention data
items that a user has viewed
(e.g. metadata records)

Activity data is used as an
umbrella term to cover
usage and attention data’
(AEIOU, 2011).

 „Commercial

companies such as
Amazon and Tesco have made a
great success of exploiting their data
about customer activities to improve
services to customers.

 Recent

research and projects have
suggested that similar opportunities
may exist for Higher Education
institutions
in
managing
their
research, learning, information and
administrative services‟.

(AEIOU,2011)

„Explore

user activity data in
further and higher education and
to identify opportunities for
institutions to improve services to
students,
teachers
and
researchers.

To

improve management of
institutional services and to
identify opportunities where it
would be beneficial or more
efficient to cooperate at a
national, regional or consortia
level‟ (AEIOU, 2011).

The JISC Activity data programme funded
nine projects to investigate a variety of
different areas of activity data. (JISC, 2013).
For example:
1. Student Facing : e.g STAR-Trsk NG
2. Academic Performance: e.g AEIOU
3. Resourse Recommendation : e.g AEIOU
4. Process Related: e.g AGtivity
The Activity data to Enhance & Increase
Open-access Usage (AEIOU) project was
one of these projects that funded by JISC
which will be explore in this presentation.

Project Aim:
The goal of this project was to
enhance the awareness of
academic research in Wales, by
combining repository activity
data from Welsh educational
institutes, in order to produce a
recommendation service titled
“frequently viewed together”.
This collaborative service is
similar to those used by
Amazon and other retail
websites. (AEIOU, 2011).

Both quantitative and qualitative
assessments can be applied to
demonstrate this process:
 The goal is to increase the
awareness and usage data that
surround elements of the six
major repositories on
institutional data.
 Another goal is to develop a
focus group that can be used to
assess the likely success of the
recommendation service that
has been proposed ‟ (AEIOU,
2011).

1) develop the Welsh research
industry.
2) increase awareness of Welsh
research projects.
3) improve collaborative actions
between
multiple
Welsh
educational institutes (AEIOU,
2011).

Activity Data Audit:
First: identification and documentation of
current activity data, which was
understood through the use of Google
analytics.
Next, baseline activity data that was
extrapolated from related institutions
were established, in order to conduct a
comparison and evaluation.
Finally, a report was made that includes
the findings of activity data, including that
which had been collected from core
partners over the course of the project, in
order to clarify the hypothesis outcome

Recommendation Service:

The following parameters are commonly applied to
assessing these recommendations:

1)

User similarity.

defines a notion of similarity between two Users
2) Item similarity.
find similarity between Items.
3)User neighborhood .
In a user-based recommender, recommendations are
produced by finding a "neighborhood" of similar
users near a given user. for example, nearest 10
users.
(JISC, 2013).



Undergraduate :

The focus group comprised six undergraduate students,
three studying level 1 courses, 3 at level 2. Two had
previously studied several modules up to level 3. The
students were studying a range of subjects. The group
were asked if they would make use of
recommendations.
There was a general consensus that ratings and
reviews from other students would be beneficial
(because „other people‟s experiences are valuable‟)
especially if it was known which module the student
leaving the rating had done, and how high a mark they
had got for their module.
(JISC, 2013).



Postgraduate
This focus group was made up of five
postgraduate students (one of whom was also
a member of staff) studying a range of
different subjects through arts, science, social
sciences and educational technology . The
main feedback was that:

Students use citation information as a form
of recommendation

Students are wary of recommendations
when they do not know the recommender eg
tutor recommendations are valued
(JISC, 2013).

While
both
undergraduates
and
postgraduates
demonstrated
the
importance of trusting the source of the
recommendation there were differences in
how that trust might be established. For
undergraduates trust came from the
success of their peers making the
recommendations, whilst postgraduates
wanted recommendations from people that
they trust.
That implies a good level of academic
caution about the quality of resource
recommendations. So that is possibly a
qualification to AEIOU hypothesis “That
recommender systems can enhance the
student experience in new generation eresource discovery services”
(JISC,2011)

1. Reporting

(using
activity data)

The

the

core

data that have been
established from this service will
provide insight into institutional
processes, supplying reliable
information
that
can
be
contextualized to a larger scale.

2. Promotion (via the recommendation service)









In order to develop the awareness and profile of Welsh
research institutes, the repository can be used to display the
projects and the results of research.
With regards to improving collaboration between different
educational institutes, the repository data can be applied to
recommending individuals that are interested in the same
research area.
To attract postgraduates, different educational institutes
have utilized the recommendation service to suggest new
research topics to potential students that could be interested
in studying at a particular establishment, such as the
associated Welsh HEIs.
In order to support the existing network that has been
produced, the repository can be utilized to improve
awareness, attract visitors, and improve usage of the
system

3. Future Sustainability:
The
HEFCW
corporate
strategy has been associated
heavily with the AEIOU
project, particularly due to
their shared common goal of
developing
„sustainable
excellent research in higher
education by building up
quality
and
quantity
to
strengthen the research base
in Wales.‟ (JISC, 2011:
online).

According to Birmingham City University (2011)


„It is a positive development
which
hopefully
will
encourage more repository
use and browsing across all
Welsh repositories‟


„who benefits most would depend
on who the user is. PhD students
for example would probably not
benefit from the service as they
would tend to take a very focused
approach to searching. It
depends on who the user is.
Undergraduates might benefit
more. „

‘It could encourage wider
use than materials in our
own repository – it has real
value’

“….helps to expose things
in smaller less well known
collections”


‘good pedagogically for
linking related research’


„one survey respondent felt
that the recommendation
service encouraged them to
browse for longer, with many
commenting
that
it
encouraged browsing both
within your own institutional
repository and across other
repositories „

„The AEIOU project aimed to
isolate a repository resource
recommendation
service
that
could be used by researchers.
There were many constraints on
this project, therefore limiting the
possible analytical, evaluative and
conclusive processes that could
have been undertaken. (AEIOU,
2011).

Welsh Repository Network. (2011) Activity data to
Enhance and Increase Open-access Usage. [Online]
[15/
12/2013]http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk/aeiou/
JISC. (2011) Exploiting activity data in the academic
environment. . [Online] [15/ 12/2013]

http://www.activitydata.org/index.html
AEIOU. (2011) Activity data to Enhance and Increase
Open-access Usage. . [Online] [15/ 12/2013]

http://aeiouproject.blogspot.co.uk/2011/0
2/aeiou-project-plan.html
Birmingham City University. (2011) AEIOU Project
Evaluation Report. [Online] [15/ 12/2013]
http://www.activitydata.org/AEIOU.html#AEIOU

(AEIOU) Project.wsa

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