Exploring user types and what users seek in an open content based educational resource

The OpenLearn site is an example of an Open Educational Resource (OER) providing units for free study and for re-use under the Creative Commons license. The primary focus of the site is content but it also offers social tools such as forums, personal journals, presence, and videoconferencing. The content can also support interactivity such as quizzes, opportunities for reflection, and interactive diagrams. This paper discusses desirable attributes for a learning environment suited to OERs and considers OpenLearn in the light of the four types of learning focus suggested by Bransford et al (2002) namely: learner, knowledge, community and assessment centred. A study of user views of OpenLearn is reviewed using cluster analysis to identify possible user types. The needs of these user types are then considered with a focus on assessment issues and possible responses suggested in the case of OpenLearn to help bring in assessment to informal learning resources

Best Practices of Consuming Linked Open Data

The term Linked Data is defined as a set of best practices for publishing and interlinking structured data on the web. These best practices were introduced by Tim Berners-Lee and are also known as principles. These best practices are used by the vast majority of data providers leading to the establishment of a global data space known as the web of data. In this paper will analyze and explore the technical principles of Linked Data, the best practices of using Linked Data, some deployed Linked Data applications and use cases to exploit the Web of Data

Democratic Replay: Enhancing TV Election Debates with Interactive Visualisations

This paper presents an online platform for enhancing televised election debates with interactive visualisations. Election debates are one of the highlights of election campaigns worldwide. They are also often criticised as appearing scripted, rehearsed, detached from much of the electorate, and at times too complex. Democratic Replay enhances videos of election debates with a collection of interactive tools aimed at providing a replay experience centred around citizens' needs. We present the system requirements, design and implementation, and report on an evaluation based on the ITV Leaders' Debate from the 2015 UK General Election campaign

Towards analytics and collaborative exploration of social and linked media for technology-enchanced learning scenarios

Social Web applications such as "Flickr", "Youtube" and "Slideshare" offer a vast body of multimedial knowledge, discoverable through the appropriate search interfaces and API's. This extensive information source, however, is largely unstructured and the available metadata is typically limited to title, tags and description for a resource. On the other hand, Linked Web Data is both structured and well described through a variety of metadata. Combining those sources opens promising direction for knowledge discovery and, at the same time, new challenges for collaborative searching in various Technology-Enchanced Learning Scenarios. In this paper, we explore how to support (collaborative) search in such scenarios through an initial analysis of the Web data landscape and introduce early results from efforts on exploiting Linked Data techniques to solve critical issues in this context

Decentralized Control and Adaptation in Distributed Applications via Web and Semantic Web Technologies

The presented work provides an approach and an implementation for enabling decentralized control in distributed applications composed of heterogeneous components by benefiting from the interoperability provided by the Web stack and relying on semantic technologies for enabling data integration. In particular, the concept of Smart Components enables adaptability at runtime through an adaptation layer and is complemented by a reference architecture as well as a prototypical implementation

Final FLaReNet deliverable: Language Resources for the Future - The Future of Language Resources

Language Technologies (LT), together with their backbone, Language Resources (LR), provide an essential support to the challenge of Multilingualism and ICT of the future. The main task of language technologies is to bridge language barriers and to help creating a new environment where information flows smoothly across frontiers and languages, no matter the country, and the language, of origin. To achieve this goal, all players involved need to act as a community able to join forces on a set of shared priorities. However, until now the field of Language Resources and Technology has long suffered from an excess of individuality and fragmentation, with a lack of coherence concerning the priorities for the field, the direction to move, not to mention a common timeframe. The context encountered by the FLaReNet project was thus represented by an active field needing a coherence that can only be given by sharing common priorities and endeavours. FLaReNet has contributed to the creation of this coherence by gathering a wide community of experts and making them participate in the definition of an exhaustive set of recommendations

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 companion screen application for TV broadcasts annotated with Linked Open Data

Increasingly, European citizens consume television content together with devices connected to the Internet where they can look up related information. In parallel, growing amounts of Linked Open Data are being published on the Web, including rich metadata about its cultural heritage. Linked Data and semantic technologies could enable broadcasters to achieve added value for their content at low cost through the re-use of existing and extracted metadata. We present ongoing work in the LinkedTV project, whose goal is to achieve seamless interlinking between TV and Web content on the basis of semantic annotations: two scenarios validated by user trials - Linked News and the Hyperlinked Documentary - and a companion screen application which provides related information for those programs during viewing

Interlinking between Income Tax, Citizenship and Democracy? A Case Study of Canada and China

The interlink between taxation, citizenship and democracy appears to be obvious in Western democracies: citizens are voters, taxpayers and beneficiaries of public spending funded by tax revenues. The literature on the politics of taxation suggests that democratic institutions affect taxation at every stage of the policy-making process, the type of elections and governance model influence the level of redistribution and complexity of the tax system, democracies generally choose policies that are more favorable to the poor than non-democracies, the tax mix varies with the nature of the political regime, and more repressive governments rely less on personal income taxation. Political citizenship is not identical to tax citizenship as most countries rely on residence as the basis of tax jurisdiction and some citizens living abroad are not tax residents. However, citizenship can be viewed as a proxy for domicile and, in effect, correspond to residence in most cases. The principle of “no taxation without representation” captures the quintessential link between taxation and democracy. This paper examines the interlink in Canada and China