Linked data provides opportunities for learning analytics and education by serving as a large body of openly available educational resources and data and by promoting interoperability through semantic web principles. It can help integrate isolated educational platforms and facilitate recommender systems. Example applications include integrating biomedical resources and analyzing datasets in a unified "Linked Education Graph". Techniques like entity enrichment through knowledge bases help disambiguate and correlate educational resources.

1. Motivation
Data on the Web
Some eyecatching opener illustrating growth and or diversity of web data
Learning Analytics & Linked Data – Opportunities,
Challenges, Examples
Stefan Dietze
(L3S Research Center, DE, @stefandietze)
Mathieu d’Aquin
(The Open University, UK)
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

2. Linked Data for Education & Learning Analytics
Why is it useful?
1. Linked Data as body of knowledge for education, analytics and TEL recommender sytems:
 vast amount of publicly available resources and data
Source: http://lod-cloud.net/state, September 2011
 HTTP access according to state of the art principles
Number of
Domain Triples % (O
datasets
2. Linked Data as set of principles for data sharing: Media 25 1,841,852,061 5.82 %
Geographic 31 6,145,532,484 19.43 %
 to improve interoperability of educational data
Government 49 13,315,009,400 42.09 %
 facilitate learning analytics and recommender system Publications 87 2,950,720,693 9.33 % 1
scenarios across isolated platforms Cross-domain 41 4,184,635,715 13.23 %
Life sciences 41 3,036,336,004 9.60 % 1
User-generated
20 134,127,413 0.42 %
content
Further reading:
295 31,634,213,770 5
 Interlinking educational Resources and the Web of Data
– a Survey of Challenges and Approaches
Stefan Dietze, Salvador Sanchez-Alonso, Hannes Ebner,
Hong Qing Yu, Daniela Giordano, Ivana Marenzi, Bernardo
Pereira Nunes, Emerald Program: electronic Library and
Information Systems, Volume 47, Issue 1 (2013).
 Linked Data for Open and Distance Learning
Mathieu d’Aquin, report for the Common Wealth of Learning,
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

3. Educationally relevant Web data Count
Where does it come from? http://kidshealth.org 5
 Vast amounts of educational resource http://www.childrenoftheearth.org 5
collections (OpenCourseWare etc) but…
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil… 5
 …increasing relevance of (social) Web
http://www.museumofbrands.com 5
content for education
http://www.ducati.it 5
 Data source: LearnWeb
(http://learnweb.l3s.uni-hannover.de/) http://www.nationalgeograohic.com 5
http://www.ecokids.ca 5
M1: R (% of total)
http://museo.ferrari.com 5
50,00 M2: Resources R / 1K queries
http://www.slideshare.com 5
45,00
M3: Resources R´/ 1K queries http://www.metmuseum.org 6
40,00
http://www.deutsches-museum.de 6
35,00
30,00 http://www.oxfam.org 6
25,00 http://www.google.it 7
20,00
http://www.mocp.org/ 7
15,00
http://www.moma.org/ 8
10,00
http://en.cyberdodo.com 9
5,00
0,00 http://www.bbc.co.uk 12
http://www.flickr.com 16
Stefan Dietze 06/11/12 3
0 10 20

4. LD as body of knowledge for education
Educationally relevant data, eg for informal learning
 Publications & literature: ACM, PubMed, DBLP (L3S), OpenLibrary
 Domain-specific knowledge & resources: Bioportal for Life Sciences,
historic artefacts in Europeana, Geonames
 Cross-domain knowledge: DBpedia, Freebase, …
 (Social) media resource metadata: BBC, Flickr, …
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

5. LD as body of knowledge for education
Educationally relevant data, eg for informal learning
 Publications & literature: ACM, PubMed, DBLP (L3S), OpenLibrary
 Domain-specific knowledge & resources: Bioportal for Life Sciences,
historic artefacts in Europeana, Geonames
 Cross-domain knowledge: DBpedia, Freebase, …
 (Social) media resource metadata: BBC, Flickr, …
Explicitly educational datasets and schemas
 University Linked Data: eg The Open University UK,
http://data.open.ac.uk, Southampton University, University of
Munster (DE), http://education.data.gov.uk
 OER Linked Data: mEducator Linked ER (
http://ckan.net/package/meducator), Open Learn LD
 Schemas: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI,
http://www.lrmi.net/), mEducator Educational Resources schema (
http://purl.org/meducator/ns)
⇒http://linkededucation.org &
⇒http://linkeduniversities.org
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

6. LD for integration and analytics
Examples
1. Integration & analytics of biomedial resources: Linked Data as
means to lift, enrich, disambiguate and cluster educational
resources from disparate repositories (
http://www.meducator.net)
2. Curation and analytics of educational datasets in LinkedUp:
towards a unified educational graph
(http://linkedup-project.eu)
Further reading:
Linked Education: interlinking educational Resources and the Web of
Data
Stefan Dietze, Honq Qing Yu, Daniela Giordano, Eleni Kaldoudi,
Nikolas Dovrolis and Davide Taibi, ACM Symposium On Applied Computing
(SAC-2012), Special Track on Semantic Web and Applications
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

7. LinkedUp vision: a global data space for education
LinkedUp
 European-funded „Support Action“
 Started Nov/2012
 http://linkedup-project.eu
Challenges
 Finding the needle in the heystack: mEducator
which datasets to consider? The Open Data.gov.uk
University education
 Lack of structured & precise
descriptions of datasets according to
dimensions such as topic coverage, Research
represented types, quality, relevance ouputs
Orgs.,
 Dataset heterogeneity: lack of links Buidings,
between (a) dataset schemas and (b) Locations
resources and entities
Learning
resources
University of
Muenster, DE
OrganicEduNet
University of University of
Bristol Southampton
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

8. LinkedUp data cataloging and assessment
Linked Education Cloud & Linked Education Graph
Educational data gathering and cataloging: Linked Education cloud
 “LinkedUp/Linked Education cloud” as subset of LOD cloud
 CKAN – “The DataHub” for data collection, dedicated group “linked-education”
 Public RDF vocabulary of datasets (“Linked Education Catalog”)
Educational Data
Educational data integration & infrastructure: Linked Education graph
 Linked Education cloud => Linked Education graph & dataset
 Integration of (selected) datasets into coherent (RDF) graph
 Infrastructure, unified (SPARQL) endpoint & APIs for querying
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

9. Linked Education/LinkedUp @ The DataHub
http://datahub.io/group/linked-education
http://data.linkededucation.org/linkedup/catalog
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

10. Analytics on Learning Analytics http://www.solaresearch.org/resources/lak-dataset/
in a nutshell
 CKAN linkededucation
 Linked Data (including full text) of 300+ papers
 LAK tutorial from LAK and Educational Data Mining community
 LAK Data  Unprecedented resource for further research &
analytics
 LAK challenge
 Further reading:
 LILE2013 @ www Taibi, D., Dietze, S., Fostering analytics on learning analytics
research: the LAK dataset, Technical Report, 03/2013, URL:
http://resources.linkededucation.org/2013/03/lak-dataset-taibi.p

11. Dataset analytics: topic coverage
in a nutshell Dataset
Goal
Entities Categories Types
Yovisto 25 99 91
 Broader understanding
of the topics / disciplines education.data.gov.uk 24 81 22
covered within Linked Educational Programs - SISVU 23 95 55
Education cloud Achievement Standards Networks – ASN:US 22 97 64
(and LOD in general)
Linking Italian University Statistics Project 20 78 24
 Identifying similarities
between datasets Open Data from the Italian National Research Council 19 59 54
 Creating richer dataset Nature Publishing Group - ALL 19 36 20
descriptions Organic Edunet Linked Open Data 16 47 19
DBLP Bibliography Database in RDF (FU Berlin) 16 53 70
Approach Linked Data from the Open University 13 50 62
 Enriching sample Italian public schools (LinkedOpenData.it) 13 46 80
resources from each Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK) Data 12 46 66
dataset with DBpedia COLINDA - Conference Linked Data 10 28 48
entities/categories
mEducator: Linked Educational Resources 8 37 128
TheSoz Thesaurus for the Social Sciences (GESIS) 7 23 58
DBLP in RDF (L3S) 7 24 70
Catalogus Professorum Lipsiensis 6 15 55
OxPoints (University of Oxford) 2 9 49

12. Dataset analytics: topic coverage
in a nutshell
 Top-20 Categories in
Linked Education Category #Occurrence
Catalog
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Educational_psychology 133
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Philosophy_of_science 115
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Thought 111
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Concepts_in_metaphysics 104
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Management 97
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Concepts_in_physics 96
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Cognition 95
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Teaching 92
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Mental_processes 90
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Systems_science 90
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Developmental_psychology 86
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Concepts_in_epistemology 83
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Cognitive_science 82
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Neuropsychology 82
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Design 81
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Greek_loanwords 81
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Learning 79
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Evaluation 74
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

13. Data assessment: topic coverage
Identifying dataset similarities and correlations
in a nutshell

14. Data assessment: topic coverage
Identifying dataset similarities and correlations
in a nutshell

15. Linked Education graph: resource analytics
LinkedUniversities
educational videos
Step 1 – Alignment of types/properties
?
<dc:title> <akt:has-title>
OER VideoLecture
Publication
 6 million distinct (but linked) resources
 97 million RDF triples
 21.6 GB of data
 Schema: http://data.linkededucation.org/ns/linked-education.rdf
 SPARQL: http://data.linkededucation.org/request/linked-learning/sparql
Mathieu d‘Aquin, Stefan Dietze 12/03/13 15

16. Entity enrichment => disambiguation & correlation
Via DBpedia/Freebase
<led:Resource-BBC-519215>
…
<led:title>…gravitating…</led:title>
…
</led:Resource-BBC-519215>
<led:Resource-OpenLearn-2139393292>
…
<led:title>…laws of gravity…</led:title>
…
</led:Resource-OpenLearn-2139393292>
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

17. Linked Education graph: resource analytics
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

18. LD for integration & analytics of heterogeneous Web Data
Use case: biomedical education
Metamorphosis+ Tailored (L)CMS plugins
=> http://metamorphosis.med.duth.gr/ => http://www.meducator3.net/
Data/services integration & retrieval/search APIs
?
Educational Web Resources

19. LD for integration & analytics of heterogeneous Web Data
Use case: biomedical education
http://purl.org/smartlink ⇒ http://linkededucation.org/meducator
Data/services integration & retrieval/search APIs Linked Educational Resources

20. Data enrichment via DBpedia & Freebase
Semi-structured RDF
description of
? educational resource
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

21. Data enrichment via DBpedia & Freebase
Semi-structured RDF
description of
educational resource
?
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

22. Data enrichment via DBpedia & Freebase
?
?
?
?

23. Data enrichment via DBpedia & Freebase
NER & disambiguation,
eg, via
!
!

24. Semi-automated data enrichment
Example: OER annotation in MetaMorphosis+
Metamorphosis+
http://metamorphosis.med.duth.gr/
Further reading:
Dietze, S., Kaldoudi, E., Dovrolis, N., Yu, H.Q., Taibi, D. (2011)
MetaMorphosis+ – A social network of educational Web resources based
on semantic integration of services and data, 10th International Semantic
Web Conference (ISWC2011), Bonn, Germany
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

25. Semi-automated data enrichment
Access to 324 ontologies 1. User-specified term during
and over 5 Mio entities learning resource annotation Metamorphosis+
http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ http://metamorphosis.med.duth.gr/
2. Suggested Entities
3. Selected entities from BioPortal used to describe discipline, keywords of resource
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

26. Data analytics: clustering & correlation
..) DBpedia concept (http://dbpedia.org/resource/....)
Linked by number of Linked by number of
Number of resources per DBpedia reference/enrichment (subject) in mEducator dataset
resources resources
Cervical_cancer 59 59
Screening 31 31
Cervical 29 29
Hpv 29 29
Oxygenation 26 DBpedia references used most frequently to describe the
26
Childhood 22 „subject“ of particular educational resources
22
differential_diagnosis 19 19
Knowledge 18 18
Learning 17 17
decision_making 16 16
Training 15 15
Lecture 15 15
Risk 15 15
hpv_infection 15 15
Fear 15 15
pap_smear 15 15
Abnormal 14 14
Ventilation 14 14
Ecg 14 14
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

27. Data analytics: clustering & correlation
..) DBpedia concept (http://dbpedia.org/resource/....)
Linked by number of Linked by number of
Number of resources per DBpedia reference/enrichment (subject) in mEducator dataset
resources resources
Cervical_cancer 59 59
Screening 31 31
Clustering of resources graph (blue nodes: resources, green nodes: enrichments)
Cervical 29 29
Hpv 29 29
Oxygenation 26 26
Childhood 22 22
differential_diagnosis 19 19
Knowledge 18 18
Learning 17 17
decision_making 16 16
Training 15 15
Lecture 15 15
Risk 15 15
hpv_infection 15 15
Fear 15 15
pap_smear 15 15
Abnormal 14 14
Ventilation 14 14
Ecg 14 14
Cluster of educational resources
relating to „cervical cancer“ subject
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

28. Exploratory search enabled via clustering
Example: search results of OER in MetaMorphosis+ Metamorphosis+
http://metamorphosis.med.duth.gr/
Educational resources retrieved
based on particular user query
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

29. Exploratory search enabled via clustering
Example: search results of OER in MetaMorphosis+ Metamorphosis+
http://metamorphosis.med.duth.gr/
Related resources (ranked)
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

30. Conclusions
Summary
 Linked Data as knowledge resource: growing amount of educationally related datasets available
 Linked Data principles for data interoperability as enabler for Learning Analytics and educational
recommender systems across platform boundaries
 Challenges:
 Data heterogeneity (in particular when considering all forms of related data and resources)
 Insufficient knowledge & descriptions of data(sets)
Ongoing and future work
 Linked Education data catalog (http://linkedup-
project.eu,http://data.linkededucation.org/linkedup/catalog)
 Assessment & annotation of datasets according to topic / type coverage, educational relevance, …
 Exploitation in innovative Learning Analytics scenarios and applications => LinkedUp Challenge
(http://linkedup-challenge.org)
Stefan Dietze 12/03/13

31. References
 Interlinking educational Resources and the Web of Data – a Survey of Challenges and Approaches, Stefan Dietze,
Salvador Sanchez-Alonso, Hannes Ebner, Hong Qing Yu, Daniela Giordano, Ivana Marenzi, Bernardo Pereira Nunes, Emerald
Program: electronic Library and Information Systems, Volume 47, Issue 1 (2013).
 Linked Education: interlinking educational Resources and the Web of Data, Stefan Dietze, Honq Qing Yu,
Daniela Giordano, Eleni Kaldoudi, Nikolas Dovrolis and Davide Taibi, ACM Symposium On Applied Computing (SAC-2012),
Special Track on Semantic Web and Applications
 As Simple As It Gets – A sentence simplifier for different learning levels and contexts
Nunes, B. P., Kawase, R., Siehndel, P., Casanova, M.A., Dietze, S., in ICALT 2013: 13th IEEE International Conference on
Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), Beijing, China, July 15-18 (2013).
 Fostering analytics on learning analytics research: the LAK dataset, Taibi, D., Dietze, S., Technical Report, 03/2013, URL:
http://resources.linkededucation.org/2013/03/lak-dataset-taibi.pdf
 Semantic Web Journal Special Issue on Linked Data for Science and Education. , Kessler C., d’Aquin M. and Dietze S.
(eds) http://iospress.metapress.com/content/m87017012802/
 Putting Linked Data to Use in a Large Higher-Education Organisation
Mathieu d’Aquin, Interacting with Linked Data workshop 2012
 Information Organization on the Internet based on Heterogeneous Social Networks, Kaldoudi, E., Dovrolis, N., Dietze,
S., 29th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (ACM SIGDOC’11), Pisa, 2011.
 MetaMorphosis+ – A social network of educational Web resources based on semantic integration of services and data,
Dietze, S., Kaldoudi, E., Dovrolis, N., Yu, H.Q., Taibi, D. (2011), 10th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2011),
Bonn, Germany
Mathieu d‘Aquin, Stefan Dietze 12/03/13 31

32. Thank you!
Contact
 http://purl.org/dietze | @stefandietze
See also (general)
 http://linkedup-project.eu
 http://linkedup-challenge.org
http://linkededucation.org
 http://linkeduniversities.org
See also (data)
 http://datahub.io/group/linked-education
 http://data.linkededucation.org/linkedup/catalog
 http://www.solaresearch.org/resources/lak-dataset/
 http://datahub.io/dataset/meducator
 http://datahub.io/dataset/smartlink