Enhancing Student Access to University Content through Semantic Technologies
description
Transcript of Enhancing Student Access to University Content through Semantic Technologies
ENHANCING STUDENT ACCESS TO UNIVERSITY CONTENT THROUGH SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGIES
Fouad Zablith
Olayan School of Business
American University of Beirut
Information is Scattered & GrowingWhat are the courses offeredIn Decision Systems this spring?
Information is Scattered & GrowingWhat are the courses offeredIn Decision Systems this spring?
What are the relevant learningMaterial to this course?
Information is Scattered & GrowingWhat are the courses offeredIn Decision Systems this spring?
What are the office hours of my instructor?
What are the relevant learningMaterial to this course?
Registrar
Library
Student’sDepartment
Moodle
Communications
Student Services
Digital Repository
OnlineMedia
Registrar
Library
Student’sDepartment
Moodle
Communications
Student Services
Digital Repository
OnlineMedia
?
Problem• Big universities and organizations store their information
in different systems relevant to their departments
• Each system has its own platform, and grows with time to form an information silo, disconnected from other information repositories
• This will make it hard for students, the main consumers of university information, to get answers to their queries in an efficient way
Technology is Getting More Sophisticated
From searching for “Terms”, to searchingfor “Things”
Technology is Getting More Sophisticated
Learning on the fly with augmented reality
Technology is Getting More Sophisticated
Learning physics while travelling around Europe+ explosion in online learning material
Students’ Expectations are Changing• Today, students tend to expect more from technology, as it
is offering them more sophisticated tools
• They expect when they check their mobile phones, to know at a glance where their friends are at the moment
• They expect to know what happened in class from their moodle page, and ask questions through moodle
• They expect to go online to search for learning concepts they didn’t understand in class
How can we, as a university, meet students’ expectations to enhance the discovery of our content?
Proposed Solution• We propose a solution based on the following two main
components:
• A linked platform of university content• A processable and explicit student context
• The role of the two components is to enable the adaptation of university content to the students’ needs based on their contexts
• We propose relying on semantic technologies to provide the two components
Requirements• To achieve our objective, we foresee the following
requirements:
• A methodology to extract and connect existing university information resources
• A set of tools to elicit the context of students in a processable manner
• Devise the appropriate means to adapt university content to the student needs in different channels
Linking Resources• Linking is important, we have tutorials on that! Can we
make such links more explicit and reusable?
Semantic Technologies and Linked Data
• Linking data within an organization enables breaking the isolation of data silos
• The semantic web and linked data provide the means to connect entities at the data level using meaningful relations and unique references
• Such entities are linked and published following well defined vocabularies, to make seamless exchange of data within the university and external resources
Example
Jim
Student
Management 215
Course
enrolledIn
isa isa
A Linked University Platform
Linking Across the University
Course
Linking Across the University
Course TitlehasTitle
Instructor
isToughtBy
Book
SlideshasMaterial
Linking Across the University
Course TitlehasTitle
Instructor
isToughtBy
Department
isPartOf Book
Slides
hasISBN
ISBN
hasMaterial
hasSupplier
SupplierPublication
hasPublication
Linking Across the University
Course TitlehasTitle
Instructor
isToughtBy
Department
isPartOf Book
Slides
hasISBN
ISBN
hasMaterial
hasSupplier
SupplierPublication
hasPublication
and beyond…
“Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/”
Governments
Universities
References
Bibliography
And many more!
Moving from Silos to Linked Data
Linked Data Lucero Statistics
Entity Type Number of InstancesCourses 580Research Publications 16,000Video Podcasts 2,200Audio Podcasts 1,500Open Educational Resources 640YouTube Videos 900University Buildings 100Library Catalogue Books 12,000
LibraryCatalogue
YouTube
Publications Podcasts
PeopleCourses
Information
Linked DataPlatform
Linking Learning Material
Application that enablesstudents to discover various learning materialfrom the same page
Podcasts, open material and courses were neverconnected, but now they are!
New Learning Channels
With the ease of access to information, creative things could be done with learning material.
Student Context for Content Adaptation
Potential Student Context Sources• Student contexts can potentially be aggregated from
different sources such as:
• Existing student records• Social networks• Manually updated profiles/preferences• Historical user context activities• Physical devices (e.g. location enabled mobile phones)
Student Context Mockup
Jim
Student
MNGT 215
enrolledIn
Running
interestedIn
English 203
completed
Chess
Student Assistant Mockup
Jim
Student
MNGT 215
enrolledIn
Running
interestedIn
English 203
completed
Chess
Book
Linked University Content
Hagop
Person Events
Run AUBRun
AUB
Office hours:OSB 456MWF: 3-4pm
OSB
MNGT 210
Program
Beirut Marathon11 Nov 2012
You have to take MNGT 210 next spring
New chess bookat AUB library
Student Context
More Flexible Queries
Are there any Engineering related
events at AUB?
More Flexible Queries
What are the cases related to Management 215?
Are there any Engineering related
events at AUB?
What are the student job vacancies
available?
More Flexible Queries
What are the cases related to Management 215?
Are there any Engineering related
events at AUB?
Challenges• Student contexts can contain private information, hence
students should have full control on what to expose
• Some information are harder to represent than others for example courses information vs degree requirements
• Another challenge is at the level of the student acceptance of such technology
• How to manage the increase in the context history to keep relevant information to the student
Conclusion• Semantic technologies enable having a linked and
processable information layer in big organizations and universities
• A semantic student context was proposed to enable adapting university content to students’ preferences, and enhancing the discovery of new content
• Our next step is to start linking content at AUB, and evaluate the effect of the proposed context aware application on:• The efficiency in content discovery• The student learning experience
Image Sources• http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-sense-of-place
-a-world-of-augmented-reality-part-2/13628/
• http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/ph100/CourseRev/1
• http://openclipart.org/detail/79363