Category: Open Course Data

Seminar: Using Interactive Visualisations to Analyse the Structure and Treatment of Topics in Learning Materials

Title: Using Interactive Visualisations to Analyse the Structure and Treatment of Topics in Learning Materials

Speaker: Tanya Howden, Heriot-Watt University

Date: 11:30 on 14 May 2018

Location: CM F.17, Heriot-Watt University

Abstract: With the amount of information available online growing, it is becoming more and more difficult to find what you are looking for, particularly when you’re in an area that you have very little background in. For example, if you were learning about neural networks for the first time, the number of responses you get from a simple Google search can be overwhelming – how do you know where to start?! This is only one of the many challenges faced when searching for appropriate learning materials.

In this talk, I will be discussing the motivations behind my research interests before introducing and demonstrating a prototype that has been created with the aim to give learners a more engaging environment with unified organisation and access to different materials on one subject.

Discussion: Describing Learning Resources with schema.org

Date: 11:15, 8 August 2016

Venue: F.17. Colin Maclaurin Building, Heriot-Watt University

Lorna Johnstone is an MSc student conducting a project with Phil Barker. Her project has been examining previous efforts at resource description and requirements analysis to identify a subset of schema.org that is adequate for learning resources, demonstrating its use and evaluating its suitability.

A short project on linking course data from Sharing and learning

During the summer my colleague Phil Barker (author of the Sharing and Learning blog) and I hosted a summer intern, Anna Grant. Anna’s project was to investigate the feasibility of publishing the data about our courses as Linked Data. Phil subsequently wrote up a blog post about the work which I have been meaning to share for […]

During the summer my colleague Phil Barker (author of the Sharing and Learning blog) and I hosted a summer intern, Anna Grant.

Anna’s project was to investigate the feasibility of publishing the data about our courses as Linked Data. Phil subsequently wrote up a blog post about the work which I have been meaning to share for a long time, so here it is; long overdue.

Below I have picked out some quotes from Phil’s original blog post that describe the work that Anna did.

The objectives for Anna’s work were ambitious: survey existing HE [Higher Education] open data and ontologies in use; design an ontology that we can use; develop an interface we can use to create and publish our course data. Anna made great progress on all three fronts.

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The ontologies reviewed were: AIISO, Teach, CourseWare, XCRI, MLO, ECIM and CEDS. A live working draft of the summary / review for these is available for comment as a Google Doc.

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The final draft [of the extended MLO Ontology] is shown below. Key:  Green= MLO, Purple=MLO extension, Blue=ECIM / previous alteration to MLO Yellow= generic ontologies such as Dublin core and SKOS.

MLO Extension to capture taught courses and their relationships to degree programmes.

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Anna has finished her work here now and returns to Edinburgh Napier University to finish her Master’s project. Alasdair and I think she has done a really impressive job, not least considering she had no previous experience with RDF and semantic technologies. We’ve also found her a pleasure to work with and would like to thank her for her efforts on this project.

Source: A short project on linking course data | Sharing and learning