This document discusses how semantic web technologies like linked data are a perfect fit for education. It provides examples of how the Open University has applied linked data to connect educational resources and data from across the university. Linked data allows for flexibility, accessibility, and the ability to combine and interpret different sources of knowledge. However, challenges remain around representing rich metadata about educational purpose and interpreting resources in an educational context.

1. Semantic Web, Linked Data
and Education: A Perfect Fit?
Mathieu d’Aquin
Knowledge Media Institute, The Open
University, UK
@mdaquin

2. The evolution of
(higher) education
From Local to Global
How do we manage that?
(at the technological level)

4. Metadata for
education already
But there are
metadata standards for
learning resources, aren’t
there? Yes, my dear, but I’m not
sure this answers the
question…

5. So this talk should finish here?
• IEEE LOM
– Standard for Learning Object Metadata
– Reuse Dublin Core
– XML-based
– Final draft in 2002
• SCORM
– Sharable Content Object Reference
Model
– Started in 1996 / last edition 2009
• MIT OCW Metadata
– Open Courseware
– Reuse IEEE LOM
• LRMI
– Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
– Started in June 2011, Spec 1.0 (current)
– Plan for integration with Schema.org
– Does not reuse any of the other
standards

6. Why it still does not work
http://xkcd.com/927/
Lack of flexibility, too much ambiguity, creating
news silos… Maybe standards are not the
answer?

7. The Web…
… is quite a great platform
Why don’t we…
… use it to connect educational resources
to each other?
… use it to express the different ways in
which these can be understood and
reused?
… use it to discover, combine and remix
things with different origins and purposes?

8. 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

9. The Web of Linked Data

10. What is it good for?
Accessibility and flexibility!
Example: Application at the Open University

11. 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

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

13. data.open.ac.uk
The first linked data platform providing open
information from a across a whole university

14. 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

15. Applications
Social
Resource
Discovery
Research
Exploration
d'Aquin, M. (2012) Putting Linked Data to Use in a Large Higher-Education Organisation, Interacting with
Linked Data at Extended Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2012

16. Example: map of buildings
Interactive map of
Open University
Buildings in the UK

17. Example: Study at the OU mobile
application
That’s where linked data is

18. The Semantic Web
rNews
Music
Ontology Geo
Ontology
SIOC Media
Ontology
Dublin
Core
DBPedia
FOAF
Ontology
DOAP
FMA BIBO
Ontology
LODE
Gene
Ontology

19. What is it good for?
Interoperability, reusability
and open meaning!
Examples: For libraries, for universities
globally, for understanding student’s
activities

20. Mapping Library Catalogues to
Standard Web Vocabularies
Marimba4lib.com

21. Used by the
Spanish
National
Library
See
http://datos.bne.e
s

22. Beyond library resources: A global
university space
mEducator
The Open Data.gov.uk
University education
Research
Orgs., Bu ouputs
idings, Lo
cations
Learning
resources University of
OrganicEduNet Muenster, DE
University University of
of Bristol Southampton
d'Aquin, M. (2012) Linked Data for Open and Distance Learning, Common Wealth of Learning

23. See http://linkeduniversities.org

24. Personal analytics based on log integration
(see http://uciad.info)
A generic personal
analytics dashboard
from web and
application logs.
Uses a web activity
ontology for
integration, and
ontological
reasoning to
aggregate
information from
multiple systems
and sites
d'Aquin, M., Elahi, S. and Motta, E. (2011) Semantic Technologies to Support the User-Centric Analysis of
Activity Data, Workshop: Social Data on the Web Workshop, SDoW 2011 at ISWC 2011

25. What more is it good for?
Using Knowledge from the
Web!
Examples: For understanding research
communities, for discovering new content
for, for research, for analyzing student’s
activities

26. Using links to enrich our own
data
Academics in “Arts and Humanities” Topics most commonly mentioned by
most often involved with the media (in news outlets own by the BBC (in
number of news items) number of news items)
From dataset about
From news From dbpedia.org
our researchers
clipping data

27. Discovery of open educational resources
(see http://discou.info)

28. Resources Similarity-
Interface URIs + Based
common topics Search
BBC Programme or iPlayer
Resource page
descriptions
Indexes
Synopsi
s
Named Entity Semantic Semantic
Recognition Entities Indexing
(Dbpedia)
Podcasts, OpenL Indexes
earn Units and
Articles
data.open.ac.uk Semantic Index
d'Aquin, M., Allocca, C. and Collins, T. (2012) DiscOU: A Flexible Discovery Engine for Open Educational Resources
Using Semantic Indexing and Relationship Summaries, Demo at International Semantic Web Conference, ISWC 2012

29. Enriching data-mining results for
interpretation

30. What even more is it good for?
Combining, interpreting and
using sources of knowledge at
run time!
(but I’m running out of time ;-)
d'Aquin, M. and Motta, E. (2011) Watson, more than a Semantic Web search engine, Semantic Web Journal, 2
d'Aquin, M., Motta, E., Sabou, M., Angeletou, S., Gridinoc, L., Lopez, V. and Guidi, D. (2008) Towards a New
Generation of Semantic Web Applications, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 23, 3, pp. 20-28

31. Towards global education based on
the Web of Data
The LinkedUp support action (http://linkedup-project.eu): tackling the
challenge of large scale Web Data integration for concrete educational
scenarios

32. Conclusion – Final message
Linked data and semantic web
technologies make the
promises of educational
metadata truly reachable
More importantly, applying
linked data and semantic web
principles make the promises
of open, global education
feasible
But…

33. Facing again the same
challenges… any use case but how do we
Linked Data is about supporting
discover resources in linked data if not described according to
what they can do?
How do we represent metadata about educational purpose?
LRMI just has “educationalAlignment” which can be anything
Learning Outcome? Competence acquired? More complex
pedagogical models?
Contradicts the flexibility of Semantic Web / Linked Data
what is the educational purpose of a painting in a museum?
Generally: How do we interpret metadata about a resource the
context of an education scenario?

34. Thank
you!
More info and contacts:
@mdaquin
m.daquin@open.ac.uk
http://mdaquin.net