This document summarizes a survey of semantic technologies for learning and teaching in UK higher education. It describes the SemTech project which investigated benefits of semantic technologies and outlined a roadmap for adoption. The survey classified semantic tools and services and identified trends, discussing how semantic technologies could help with challenges like student retention, recruitment, and cross-institutional collaboration. It also presented results on currently adopted technologies and a path forward for linked data to enable interoperability and pedagogy-aware applications.
1. Semantic Technologies for
Learning and Teaching
A survey of UK Higher Education
Thanassis Tiropanis, Hugh Davis, Dave Millard, Mark Weal
{tt2, hcd, dem, mjw}@ecs.soton.ac.uk
www.semtech.ecs.soton.ac.uk
2. topics
• semantic technologies for learning and teaching
• classifying semantic technologies in a web 2.0 environment
• surveying semantic tools and services for education
• identifying trends on semantic technology adoption
• discussing future adoption
3. the semtech project
JISC-funded project working with CETIS
•
SemTech is investigating the benefits of semantic technologies in learning and
•
teaching and outlining a roadmap for their adoption in the context of HE/FE
education and informal learning
Survey of semantic tools and services
•
Current adoption of semantic technologies in the UK higher education
•
Roadmap of semantic technology adoption in the next 5 years
•
www.semtech.ecs.soton.ac.uk
•
4. semantic tech in edu scenario?
Agreed
Ontologies
learning content
discovery
Metadata
personalisation
& adaptation
Learning
Content
5. semantic tech in a web 2.0 world
• Soft semantics
Meaning in formats that humans can process
‣
Lightweight knowledge modelling in Web 2.0 applications
‣
• Hard semantics
Meaning in formats that machines can process
‣
Processing is independent of specific knowledge models
‣
6. semantic tech in higher education
Learning and teaching challenges
•
Assisting course creation and delivery workflow
‣
Recommendation of relevant resources and people
‣
Group formation
‣
Critical thinking and argumentation support
‣
Efficient personal and group knowledge construction
‣
Assessment, certification, plagiarism
‣
7. semantic tech in higher education
Higher education challenges
•
Student retention by monitoring progress and empowering students
‣
Student recruitment
‣
Visibility of programmes and research output, attracting funding
‣
Efficiency of accreditation
‣
Workflows and collaboration across departments and institutions
‣
Integration of knowledge capital, cross-curricular initiatives
‣
Transparency of data held by educational institutions
‣
8. surveyed semantic tech
semtech-survey.ecs.soton.ac.uk
Collaborative
Searching and
Authoring and
Matching
Annotation
Infrastructural
Repositories, VLEs Technologies for
and Authoring tools Linked Data and
Semantic Enrichment
9. Collaborative Authoring and
Annotation Tools
Mymory
Unobtrusive user observation
Meaning co-ordination
Annotation of resource sections
Compendium
Visualisation of arguments
Collaborative domain modelling
Real time meeting capture
10. Searching and Matching tools
Arnetminer
Find experts
Associations between experts
Mining RDF from existing repositories
LUISA
Discovery, selection, negotiation and
composition of LOs
Annotation techniques
Use of Semantic Web Services
11. Repositories, VLEs, Annotation tools
Freebase
Collaboratively authored, open
repository of structured topics
Topics mined from other repositories
Accessible via open APIs
SKUA
Distributed network of semantically
aware shared annotation services in
the form of RDF stores
Support for user-facing applications
13. surveyed semantic tech use
Wiki
• Actors: Tagging
Blog/Electronic Journal
Teacher Shared Bookmarking
RDF
Student
OWL
Assessor/Examiner
University Administrator
FOAF
System Administrator
Other Administrator
SKOS
Program/Module Co-ordinator
Triple Store
Admissions Team
Automated System
Ontology/Taxonomy
Researcher
Archive/Repository
14. semantic tech value
Well-formed Metadata
Interoperability/Data Integration
Improved Data Analysis/Reasoning
Reasoning
Linked data
Well-formed metadata
15. semantic tech trends in education
Quantitative approach
•
value in well-formed metadata for over 4 in 5 cases
‣
value in data-integration for over 2 in 5 cases
‣
value in data analysis and reasoning for almost 2 in 5 cases
‣
some cases with value in well-formed data only are existing
‣
repositories or tools aiming aiming for interoperable data (e.g.
dblp, eprints, project gutenberg, talis, d2r)
the rest could benefit from data integration (e.g. argumentation
‣
tools like cicero/debategraph or konduit, PROWE)
16. semantic tech trends in education
Qualitative approach
•
Collaboration tools can benefit from data integration and
‣
reasoning for inline recommendation, matching, linking to other
collaboratively authored repositories
Searching and matching tools benefit from integration and
‣
reasoning (e.g. case of Yahoo! SearchMonkey)
Repositories, VLEs, annotation tools can link to other
‣
repositories and increase their visibility
All identified HE challenges can benefit from data integration
‣
and reasoning
17. the road ahead
The initial value of semantic technology be in scale first before
•
reasoning
The emergence of a linked data field across related repositories
•
could enable applications and value for the identified HE challenges
Semantic tools and services that map linked data to application-
•
specific ontologies will increase linked data value and impact
Encouragement of community-agreed ontologies to empower
•
semantic applications along the side of application-specific ontologies
Expressive semantics to enable pedagogy-aware applications
•
18. issues
•a classification of pedagogically meaningful uses of linked data?
• novel
learning and teaching activities enabled by semantic
technologies and linked data?
• documentation of success cases of semantic technology
adoption in education?
• barriers to exposing institutional repositories in RDF?
19. Acknowledgements
The SemTech team: The JISC CETIS Semantic The SemTech workshop
participants:
Technology Working Group:
Hugh Davis
Colin Allison (University of St.
Sheila MacNeill (CETIS)
Faith Lawrens Andrews)
Lorna Campbell (CETIS)
David Millard Chris Bailey (University of Bristol)
Phil Barker (CETIS)
Asma Ounnas Liliana Cabral (Knowledge Media
Helen Beetham Institute, Open University)
Heather S. Packer Simon Buckingham-Shum (Open Patrick Carmichael (University of
Marcus Ramsden University, UK) Cambridge)
Daniel A. Smith David Davies (University of Warwick) Tom Franklin (Franklin
Michael Gardner (University Essex) Consulting)
Thanassis Tiropanis
Tony Linde (University of Leicester) David Kay (Sero Consulting)
Mark Weal George Magoulas (London
Wilbert Kraan (CETIS)
Su White Knowledge Lab, Birkbeck College)
Sue Manuel (University of
Gary Wills Uma Patel (City University)
Loughborough) Alex Poulovassilis (London
Learning Societies Lab Lou McGill Knowledge Lab, Birkbeck College)
Graham Wilson (LT Scotland) John Scott (University of Essex)
(ECS-University of Robin Wylie (LT Scotland)
Southampton) David Kernohan (JISC)
21. surveyed semantic tech
Collaborative authoring and annotation tools
‣
relationship of resources, argumentation structure and visualisation, recommendation
‣
Searching and matching tools
‣
matching people based on interests, resources based on topics,
‣
Repositories, VLEs and annotation tools
‣
higher education expertise, experiment workflows, mining repository topic hierarchies
‣
Infrastructural tools to expose/integrate resources
‣
databases to RDF, data interoperability and integration, triple stores, efficient querying
‣
22. semantic tech survey
semtech-survey.ecs.soton.ac.uk
Collaborative authoring and annotation
Searching and Matching
Repositories, VLEs and annotation
Infrastructure for exposing/integrating resources
Searching
& Matching
Authoring &
Annotation
Repositories
Infrastructure
23. surveyed learning activity use
• Collaborative activities • T&L activities involving the
individual
Team Building
Computer Mediated Information Gathering
Discussion Information Handling
Computer Mediated Experimentation
Information Publishing
Role Play
Content Creation Simulation
Content Annotation Experiments
