Linking Universities - A broader look at the application of linked data and semantic web technologies in an academic environment
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This document discusses applying linked data and semantic web technologies at universities. It provides examples of how the Open University in the UK publishes various types of data as linked open data, including course information, research publications, podcasts and videos. This enables new applications for resource discovery, social networking and supporting research activities. The document also outlines challenges in linking educational data across institutions and supporting new research methodologies through linked data approaches.
Linking Universities - A broader look at the application of linked data and semantic web technologies in an academic environment
- 1. Linking Universities - A broader look at the application of linked data and semantic web technologies in an academic environment Mathieu d’Aquin Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK @mdaquin
- 3. A University… A university is an institution of higher education and research which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects and provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word "university" is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means “community of teachers and scholars.” -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University
- 4. The Open University • The largest university in the UK: 250K students per year, 8000 associate lecturers, a big campus in Milton Keynes • Created in 1969 • Almost entirely open and distance learning • 13 regional centers, more national centers, courses available in a large number of countries
- 5. Public information at the Open University Data from OpenLearn ORO Research Content Outputs Archive of Library’s Course Catalogue Material Of Digital Content A/V Material Podcasts iTunesU
- 6. Linked Data Open University Person: Mathieu Website Publication: Pub1 author workFor Open University VLE Course: M366 offers M366 Course page Organisation: The Open University Mathieu’s Homepage availableIn setBook Mathieu’s List of Mathieu’s Publications Twitter Country: Belgium Book: Mechatronics The Web" The Web of Linked Data"
- 7. Applying linked data to the Open University DBPedia RAE Data from OpenLearn ORO Research Content Outputs Archive of Library’s Course Catalogue geonames Material Of Digital Content data.gov.uk A/V Material Podcasts iTunesU BBC DBLP
- 8. data.open.ac.uk The first linked data platform providing open information from a across a whole university
- 9. Linked Data at the Open University Course information: 580 modules/ description of the course, information about the levels and number of credits associated with it, topics, and conditions of enrolment. Research publications: 16,000 academic articles / information about authors, dates, abstract and venue of the publication. Podcasts: 2220 video podcasts and 1500 audio podcats / short description, topics, link to a representative image and to a transscript if available, information about the course the podcast might relate to and license information regarding the content of the podcast. Open Educational Resources: 640 OpenLearn Units / short description, topics, tags used to annotate the resource, its language, the course it might relate to, and the license that applies to the content. Youtube videos: 900 videos / short description of the video, tags that were used to annotate the video, collection it might be part of and link to the related course if relevant. University buildings: 100 buildings / address, a picture of the building and the sub-divisions of the building into floors and spaces. Library catalogue: 12,000 books/ topics, authors, publisher and ISBN, as well as the course related. Others…
- 10. Applications Social" Resource " Discovery" Research" Exploration
- 11. Example Application: Study at the OU That’s where linked data is
- 12. Example application: Media Relation Reports Academics in “Arts and Humanities” Topics most commonly mentioned by most often involved with the media (in news outlets owned by the BBC (in number of news items)" number of news items)" From dataset about our From news clipping From dbpedia.org researchers data
- 13. Research Application: Research communities
- 14. Beyond the Single University mEducator The Open Data.gov.uk University education Research Orgs., ouputs Buidings, Locations Learning resources University of OrganicEduNet Muenster, DE University University of of Bristol Southampton
- 16. LinkedUp The LinkedUp support action (http://linkedup-project.eu): tackling the challenge of large scale Web Data integration for concrete educational scenarios
- 17. State of the Linked Education Cloud • Currently building a catalogue of educational datasets (the LinkedUp data pool). Collected 165 from 27 sources so far. There is immensely more! • About 600 classes, less than 100 used by more than 1 dataset • Almost 1000 properties, less than 180 used by more than 1 dataset
- 18. Number of datasets containing instances of a given class
- 19. Number of datasets using a given property
- 20. Challenge: Discovery of open educational resources Example: DiscOU - http://discou.info
- 21. Resources URIs Similarity- Interface + common topics Based Search BBC Programme or iPlayer page Resource descriptions Indexes Synopsis Named Entity Semantic Entities Semantic Recognition (Dbpedia) Indexing Podcasts, Indexes OpenLearn Units and Articles data.open.ac.uk Semantic Index
- 22. Challenge: Supporting Research Example: Reading Experience Database Project Event LocaHon subClassOf locatedIn subClassOf Experience City Country date: Date readerInvolve d originCountry textInvolved givesBackgroundTo occupaHon Person religion gender creator/editor LinkedEvent Ontology Document CITO CitaHon Ontology Htle: String Dublin Core descripHon: String providesExcerptFor published: Date FOAF DBPedia
- 24. More research support… Building new directions for investigation, e.g. reading during the first world war Linked Data as data/knowledge capture medium from the start: new projects with Linked Data as their backbone (Listening Experience Database, Damned in Hell…)
- 25. Challenge: Need for new methodologies Example: Enriching data-mining results for interpretation
- 26. Conclusion Universities / Education / Research have for objective to create and share knowledge Linked Data provides a backbone to achieve that, while removing the technological barrier between researchers/teachers/students and the data Semantic Web and Knowledge technologies have the potential to support new methodologies for learning design and for research, whatever the domain
- 27. Thank you! More info and contacts: @mdaquin m.daquin@open.ac.uk http://mdaquin.net http://linkeduniversities.org http://linkedup-project.org