FORGE: BRINGING FIRE AND THE E-LEARNING SPHERES TOGETHER

1. FORGE: BRINGING FIRE AND THE
E-LEARNING SPHERES TOGETHER
John
Domingue
Knowledge
Media
Ins4tute
The
Open
University,
UK
Connec4ng
European
Innovators
to
ICT
Test
Facili4es,
27th
June,
2014,
Paris

2. Agenda
• Basic Facts
• Motivation and Objectives
• Concepts and Approach
• Interfacing with FIRE Facilities
• Use of Linked Open Data
• Courses
• Summary

3. BASIC FACTS

4. Project Fiche
• Name: Forging Online Education through FIRE
• Dates: 1st October, 2013 – 30th September, 2016
• Duration (Months): 36
• Project Coordinator: John Domingue, OU
• Technical Project Manager: Christos Tranoris, UoP
• Project website: http://ict-forge.eu/

5. Consor4um

6. MOTIVATION AND
OBJECTIVES

7. Mo4va4on
(1/2)

8. Mo4va4on
(2/2)
Mooc Illustration: Adam Simpson

9. http://about.futurelearn.com/blog/
Launched September 2013
29 partners – 26 universities
Nearly 400,000 course sign-
ups
Over 200,000 registered
users
Up to 30,000 learners
joining courses this year

10. FutureLearn Student Types

11. Overall Goal

12. FORGE Objectives
• Study and develop new processes and approaches to
online learning based on the integration of FIRE facilities
and eLearning technologies.
• Inject into the higher education learning sphere the FIRE
portfolio of facilities and tools.
• Introduce the learning community to the concepts of
Experimentally Driven Research.
• Increase the overall usability and take-up of FIRE facilities
through the layering of how-to-use resources over the
FIRE platforms.
• “Empower every person to get involved and take control”
– increasing the accessibility of FIRE to disadvantaged
users

13. CONCEPTS AND
APPROACH

14. FORGE Approach

15. Self Regulated Learning

16. Flipped Classroom Paradigm

17. iTunes U

18. OU iTunes U Stats
• Open University on iTunes U was launched on
3rd June 2008
• Now 58 iTunes U Courses
• 65,138,000 downloads
• Over 9,015,700 visitors downloaded files
• Currently averaging 87,500 downloads a week
• 449 collections containing 3,485 tracks (1,638
audio, 1,847 video)
• 423 OpenLearn study units as eBooks (ePub),
representing over 5,000 hours of study
• Currently delivering an average of 0.3 TB of
data a week

20. iBook Interactive Demo (ict-forge.eu)

21. INTERFACING WITH FIRE
FACILITIES

22. FORGE Core Architectural Entities
FIRE Courses Widgets FIRE Adapters

23. FORGEBox and FORGEStore
• Identified major challenges associated with courses
• Need for
• A middleware solution to support the hosting of widgets
• FIRE adapters
• Identified actors and their support usage scenarios
• The need for a sharing repository
FORGEB x FORGESt re
A middleware solution enabling FIRE courses
A marketplace for a FORGEBox installation
www.forgebox.eu www.forgestore.eu

24. FORGEBox
FORGEBox
Fed4FIRE
Portal
LMS
eBook
Provide
Interactive
content
(i.e. widgets)
Interface via
FIRE APIs
FIRE
Testbed
FIRE
Testbed
FIRE
Testbed

25. FORGE Widgets, Adapters and FIRE
Resources
Lab
Course,
(LMS,
iBook)
(3) Interactive
Content (JSON/
XML)
Resource FIRE
Testbed
Control via
specific FIRE
tools and
APIS, e.g.
FRCP/SFA/
SSH
Adapter
Adapter
Adapter
(Implements
specific
API,
eg
OMF,
OML,
SFA/
RSpec,
FRCP)
(2) Request
Content
(JSON/
XML)
web
container
Widget
(1) Get widget
Content (HTML5/JS)
Widget
Widget

26. Web browser
Example: Secure Shell/Logging
Remote
machine
FORGEBox
Jetty
JavaWebApp
Web
resource
Java
class
proxy
ssh widget
(html/js)
Logviewer
widget
(html/js)
Content / web sockets

27. • Hosted currently as prototype under
www.forgestore.eu
• The central point to share FORGE artifacts:
• Widgets
• FIRE adapters / FORGEBox Services
• Interactive courses
• Manages FORGE artifacts
• Provides a single point for FORGEBox
developers
• Provides an API for easy access by
FORGEBox installations
FORGESt re

28. FORGEStore

29. USE OF LINKED OPEN
DATA

30. • Vision:
well
connected
graph
of
open
Web
data
• W3C
standards
(RDF,
SPARQL)
to
expose
data,
URIs
to
interlink
datasets
⇒ vast
cloud
of
interconnected
datasets
• Crossing
all
sorts
of
domains
Domain
Number of
datasets
Triples % (Out-)Links %
Media 25 1,841,852,061 5.82 % 50,440,705 10.01 %
Geographic 31 6,145,532,484 19.43 % 35,812,328 7.11 %
Government 49 13,315,009,400 42.09 % 19,343,519 3.84 %
Publications 87 2,950,720,693 9.33 % 139,925,218 27.76 %
Cross-domain 41 4,184,635,715 13.23 % 63,183,065 12.54 %
Life sciences 41 3,036,336,004 9.60 % 191,844,090 38.06 %
User-generated
content
20 134,127,413 0.42 % 3,449,143 0.68 %
295 31,634,213,770 503,998,829
Source:
h[p://lod-­‐cloud.net/state,
September
2011
Linked Open Data

34. Uses for Linked Data in FORGE
• Courses and course components
• Widgets
• Experiments
• Experimental results
• Learning Analytics

35. Linked Open Data and Courses
• The FORGE courses are described using Linked Data.
• The courses are described with the Resource Description
Framework (RDF) language and exposed via a SPARQL
Query Language endpoint, allowing users to formulate and
run custom SPARQL queries on the FORGE course
descriptions.
• The main vocabulary used is the MLO (Metadata for Learning
Opportunities).

36. Learning Analytics

37. COURSES

38. First Deployment at Univ of Patras
www.forgebox.eu/demo/courses/tcp_congestion.html

39. Cisco Networking Academy

40. Summary (1/2)
• FORGE aims to connect the
communities associated with
FIRE and eLearning
• Approach is based upon
• New learning paradigms
• Rich multimedia interactive eBooks
• Widget Store
• FORGEBox architecture
• Linked Open Data

41. Summary (2/2)
• Benefits to FIRE include:
• Higher take-up of FIRE facilities by
learners
• Sustainability through the use of
educational (vs. research) budgets
• Increasing the usability of FIRE
through extensive how-to learning
resources
• Challenges
• New learning paradigms require
‘always on’ infrastructure
• Potentially new levels of demand
• The right combination of FIRE and
eLearning technologies could prove
revolutionary to both spheres