The Open University is exposing its data as linked open data and integrating it using semantic web technologies. This includes data about courses, educational resources, research publications, podcasts, and more. The data is hosted at data.open.ac.uk and links to external datasets. Applications are being built that combine and explore this integrated data in new ways to benefit users, such as a mobile course explorer and tools to analyze research communities and impacts. Exposing university data as linked open data is gaining adoption in the UK and beyond.

1. Building the Open University’s Web of Linked Data Mathieu d’Aquin and the LUCERO team @mdaquin Knowledge Media Institute, the Open University LUCERO project lucero-project.info – data.open.ac.uk

2. Linked Data Principles and technologies for a Web of Data Data objects uniquely identified by web addresses: URIs A graph data model: RDF For linking data objects to data objects … at the scale of the Web

3. LOD cloud

4. The Open University The biggest university in the UK (200,000 students) One of the youngest (40 years) Most teaching done at a distance 1 campus, 13 regional centers Committed to “Open”: Open educational material available as podcasts (iTunes U), units of course material (OpenLearn), etc. Tradition of investing in new technology for teaching, learning, knowledge sharing, etc. Role of the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi)

5. So Linked Data for the OU? RAE DBPedia Data from Research Outputs OpenLearn Content ORO Exposed as linked data, our data interlink with each other and the external world: become part of the “global data space” on the Web Archive of Course Material Library’s Catalogue Of Digital Content geonames data.gov.uk Currently: OU public data sit in different systems – hard to discover, obtain, integrate by users. A/V Material Podcasts iTunesU BBC DBLP

6. data.open.ac.uk

7. The data.open.ac.uk Stack Applications Institutional repository data Research Data (Arts) Organizational infrastructure Technical infrastructure

8. Expose Store Collect Extract Link Ontologies Scheduler Cleaning rules RDF file (add) RDF file (delete) URL redirection rules RSS Extractor Delete (1) Add (2) RDF Cleaner Web Server ORO, podcast RSS feed RDF file (add) RDF file (delete) Triple Store RSS Updater SPARQL endpoint RDF Extractor New items Obsolete items Each datasets Index Entity Name System Search XML Updater URI creation rules Lib, courses, loc Planning + Logging Generic process Dataset specific process

10. Get sample data

11. Identify Copyright Issues

12. Identify possible links

14. Map onto the data

15. Identify uncovered parts

16. Define URI SchemeData Modeling Validation Lucero Core Team Lucero members Data Owner Development of Extractor URI Creation Rules Definition Deployment Lucero KMi Team

17. Datasets Already “officially” in place: ORO: more than 18,000 publications from OU researchers Podcasts: 2,500 audio and video tracks from podcast.open.ac.uk, linked to the relate courses Study at the OU: more than 600 live module descriptions OpenLearn: more than 550 Units of course material KMi Staff and Planet newsletter Open Arts Archive Currently being processed: OU Buildings in MK and regional centers Library Catalogue YouTube channel Old Courses “Reading Experience Database” project People Profiles

18. Links and Vocabularies We link to Geonames for course availability Education.data.gov.uk to reuse their representation of the Open University Data.ordnancesurvey.gov.uk for postcodes of OU buildings Dbpedia.org for Arts History dataset We almost only reuse vocabularies: BIBO for publications FOAF for people Dublin Core for a lot of things W3C Ontology for Media Resources for podcasts and Youtube videos LODE (linkedevents) for events MLO and XCRI for course description GoodRelations for prices and offers AIISO for organizational structure And connect taxonomies The Local Open University topic categories The iTunes U categories The Library of Congress Subject Headings JACS codes

19. Screenshot of the dataset page

20. Applications For education Mobile podcast explorer, podcast explorer on TV OU Building Map, OU location tracker (cf. foursquare) OU Expert Search Connecting courses/OpenLearn to relevant podcast OU Course Profile Facebook app using list of courses, “Study Buddy” app connecting facebook users to relevant courses For Research Display connections in a research community Research Data/Impact Analysis Connection research datasets to external data

22. Example application: Link OpenLearn to relevant course/podcasts

23. ROLE widget

24. Example Application: keep track of location, meetings, tutorials, at the OU

25. Example application: exploring research communities

26. Example application: Expert Search using publication information and connecting to contact information within the OU

27. Lean-back podcast viewer

28. Example application: Explore Information about a person in the “Reading Experience Database” based on data provided by DBPedia (Linked Data version of Wikipedia)  New ways to look at humanities research data

29. Where this is going More and more integration at the OU: Link to podcasts, iTunes U, Youtube on course pages in Study at the OU (Comms/Student Services/IT) Use in the “Course profile” Facebook Application (IT/Comms) RADAR: research audit/assessment using linked data (KMi[Vanessa]/Research School) Mobile Course/Qualification explorer (Comms) OU Events in RDFa (Comms)

31. Integrating Open Educational Material in course descriptions

32. Radar

33. Explore Explore the courses, qualifications and open educational resources available on a particular topic in one place.

34. Why is it important? The OU has been the first University to expose its data as linked data: http://data.open.ac.uk Now widely recognized as a critical step forward for the HE sector in the UK (and worldwide) Favor transparency and reuse of data, both externally and internally Reduces cost of dealing with our own public data: integration and reuse by design Enable both new kinds of applications, and to make the ones that are already feasible more cost effective Many other UK universities have now followed our example: Lincoln, Southampton, Edinburg, Oxford, … And others in other countries are setting up similar initiatives (Muenster, Loja, UPM, CNR…)

35. Where this is going Linked data across universities More and more UK and European university creating their linked data platform (following us!) Towards data.ac.uk? LinkedUniversities.org – providing common vocabularies and tools so that linked data from different universities can integrate Aggregation of video material from Open Educational Repositories Major Challenge: Common/linked categorization scheme and tag space Integration with Schema.org/LRMI

37. Thank You! lucero-project.info data.open.ac.uk @mdaquin @fzablith

38. People SalmanElahi ((Ex)-Dev) Carlo Allocca (Dev) Jane Whild (Admin) FouadZablith (Dev) KMi AndriyNikolov (linking) Enrico Motta (SGP) Mathieu d’Aquin (PD) Arts Suzanne Duncanson-Hunter John Wolfe Paul Lawrence Richard Nurse ((ex-)PM) Owen Stephens (PM) Stuart Brown Com./ Student Comp. Services Data Owners Non Scantlebury Library Specialists Arts Specialists OU Library