Multilingual media components directly embeddable in open educational resources in science and technology

The use and reuse of OER (Open Educational Resources) depends on several conditions. Amongst others, the richness of their metadata, their granularity and the languages ​​in which they are made available. This work aims to facilitate efficient production of graphical and language-neutral components. It is assumed that the STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engeneering and Mathematics) share a common mathematical language and, more intuitively, an iconographic approach linked to the structures that satisfy the formulas used in each case. The work is limited to these areas of knowledge, primarily as presentations and animations of very low granularity, which can be directly integrated into larger resources in any language. The overall research design consists of four stages: 1. Initially, the manual generation of presentations and animations, with no literal in any language, and very concisely focused (mainly, definitions of a single concept for each animation). Determination of common graphics primitives to differentiate the common subtasks: presentation of examples to make the concept emerge inductively, graphical construction of the definition, highlighting the generalization or instantiation steps, homogeneous use of icons for emphasising or posing a question to the observer .. . 2. Evaluation of the expressiveness and effectiveness of these resources. Currently, these resources are being presented to small groups of students. This fall begins a multilingual evaluation process on a larger scale: as part of a regular course at the UNED and as LabSpace course in the Open University. Here we attempt to clarify the appropriate assessment tools (preferably in the same graphics language) with the minimum amount of additional external comments to constitute a course in a particular language. 3. The first two stages must provide an intuitive and graphical interface of the selected formalism (mainly Discrete Mathematics and Logic). The third stage addresses the effect of changing the output device on the selection of the graphics primitives for each generic subtask. Possible variations of the graphical language will be studied in the context of HCI analyses. 4. Finally the approach addresses semi-automatic generation, via script, of these resources: from formal description of the definitions or processes (as described, for example, in OMDoc) to the production of the corresponding animation. Additionally, the injection of semantics should facilitate the link between different animations, the navigation and search of conceptual dependency and the identification of concepts that have supporting collections of resources as described. At this point, the current development of this work provides results for the first two stages described

Libraries and Information Systems Need XML/RDF... but Do They Know It?

This article presents an approach to the uses of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and Semantic Web technologies in the field of information services, focusing mainly on the creation and management of digital libraries compared to traditional libraries, while paying special attention to the concept and application of metadata, and RDF based integration

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

Adrian: a platform for E-Learning Content Prodution

Universities and other institutions related to education are investing time and resources in E-learning initiatives. This leads to an increasing number of course offers in E-learning format. There are environments, called Learning Management Systems (LMS), designed to help teachers in the management of their courses. These systems support the management of administrative information, student evaluation and all the interactivity between teacher and students and among students. However they do not provide tools to help teachers to prepare and to produce content: lessons, tests, guided lab sessions, ... Here is where ADRIAN comes into the scene providing support for content production. ADRIAN is composed by several components: one component to help producing lessons and lab guided sessions; one component for the production of tests and exams; one component to support the production of multimedia presentations; and one component to generate interfaces that integrate all the material produced (content parts) by the other components or developed elsewhere by the teacher. The whole system is being developed with XML (eXtended Markup Language) using descriptive markup for content, and related technologies like XSL (eXtended Stylesheet Language) for content transformations. This way we ensure the portability and platform independence of the system. The last mentioned component, the integration component, is based on ontologies; the user is asked to define an ontology for his course. After that the system generates automatically the web interface that integrates all the courseware components. In this paper we describe the ADRIAN architecture and the components developed so far. This description is illustrated with a real case study

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants

A Distributed Collaborative System for Flexible Learning Content Production and Management

Authoring learning content is an area under pressure due to conflicting requirements. Adaptive, templatebased, highly interactive, multimedia-rich content is desired for current learning environments. At the same time, authors need a system supporting collaboration, easy re-purposing, and continuous updates with a lower adoption barrier to keep the production process simple, specially for high enrollment learning scenarios. Other areas such as software development have adopted effective methodologies to cope with a similar increase in complexity. In this paper an authoring system is presented to support a community of authors in the creation of learning content. A set of pre-defined production rules and templates are offered. Following the single source approach, authors create documents that are then automatically processed to obtain various derived resources. The toolkit allows for simple continuous updates, the re-use and re-purpose of course material, as well as the adaptation of resources to different target groups and scenarios. The toolkit has been validated by analyzing its use over a three year period in two high enrollment engineering courses. The results show effective support and simplification of the production process as well as its sustainability over time.Work partially funded by the EEE project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I TIN2011-28308-C03-01”, and the “Emadrid: Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” project (S2009/TIC-1650).Publicad

Teaching TEI: The Need for TEI by Example

The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)1 has provided a complex and comprehensive system of provisions for scholarly text encoding. Although a major focus of the ‘digital humanities’ domain, and despite much teaching effort by the TEI community, there is a lack of teaching materials available, which would encourage the adoption of the TEI's recommendations and the widespread use of its text encoding guidelines in the wider academic community. This article describes the background, plans, and aims of the TEI by Example project, and why we believe it is a necessary addition to the materials currently provided by the TEI itself. The teaching materials currently available are not suited to the needs of self directed learners, and the development of stand alone, online tutorials in the TEI are an essential addition to the extant resources, in order to encourage and facilitate the uptake of TEI by both individuals and institutions

A Semantic Web Annotation Tool for a Web-Based Audio Sequencer

Music and sound have a rich semantic structure which is so clear to the composer and the listener, but that remains mostly hidden to computing machinery. Nevertheless, in recent years, the introduction of software tools for music production have enabled new opportunities for migrating this knowledge from humans to machines. A new generation of these tools may exploit sound samples and semantic information coupling for the creation not only of a musical, but also of a "semantic" composition. In this paper we describe an ontology driven content annotation framework for a web-based audio editing tool. In a supervised approach, during the editing process, the graphical web interface allows the user to annotate any part of the composition with concepts from publicly available ontologies. As a test case, we developed a collaborative web-based audio sequencer that provides users with the functionality to remix the audio samples from the Freesound website and subsequently annotate them. The annotation tool can load any ontology and thus gives users the opportunity to augment the work with annotations on the structure of the composition, the musical materials, and the creator's reasoning and intentions. We believe this approach will provide several novel ways to make not only the final audio product, but also the creative process, first class citizens of the Semantic We

Overview of a Guide for Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This chapter provides an overview of a guide for electronic theses and dissertations that is being prepared as requested by UNESCO to help with the expansion of ETD activities around the world. It roughly follows the outline developed through discussions involving the many partners working on that guide, coordinated by Shalini Urs. It builds upon experiences related to the evolution of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, a federation of groups interested in ETD programs. It introduces key concepts, explains matters according to the interests of students and universities, highlights technical issues, recommends a scheme for expanding training, and suggests likely future activities

Teaching Aids Development for Arabic Lessons to Enhance Student’s Reading Skills

This study aims to enhance students reading skills of the ninth-grade students in Madrasah I'dadiyah Muhammadiyah. This research is research and development Borg & Gall study used to obtain a specific production, know the effectiveness of its implementation, and verify its validity for scholars, using the qualitative and quantitative approach to analyze quantitative and qualitative data. The methods used in it consisted of interviews, Tests, questionnaires, and written documents. In analyzing the data, this research used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 25 SPSS 25 method T-Test, and the Wilcoxon Signed. The developed educational aids come in the Android program by choosing the appropriate material, exercises, and teaching methods. The effectiveness is obtained from the results of the pre and post-tests by implementing: descriptive statistical analysis, conditional testing, and inferential testing in the extended experiment, and the result indicates that there is progress in their language proficiency, especially in reading skills. These teaching aids are attractive and exciting and help students learn Arabic, especially reading Arabic