A linked data-driven & service-oriented architecture for sharing educational resources

The two fundamental aims of managing educational resources are to enable resources to be reusable and interoperable and to enable Web-scale sharing of resources across learning communities. Currently, a variety of approaches have been proposed to expose and manage educational resources and their metadata on the Web. These are usually based on heterogeneous metadata standards and schemas, such as IEEE LOM or ADL SCORM, and diverse repository interfaces such as OAI-PMH or SQI. Also, there is still a lack of usage of controlled vocabularies and available data sets that could replace the widespread use of unstructured text for describing resources. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has proven that it offers a set of successful principles that have the potential to alleviate the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we introduce an architecture and prototype which is fundamentally based on (a) Linked Data principles and (b) Service-orientation to resolve the integration issues for sharing educational resources

Linked education: interlinking educational resources and the web of data

Research on interoperability of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) repositories throughout the last decade has led to a fragmented landscape of competing approaches, such as metadata schemas and interface mechanisms. However, so far Web-scale integration of resources is not facilitated, mainly due to the lack of take-up of shared principles, datasets and schemas. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has emerged as the de-facto standard for sharing data on the Web and offers a large potential to solve interoperability issues in the field of TEL. In this paper, we describe a general approach to exploit the wealth of already existing TEL data on the Web by allowing its exposure as Linked Data and by taking into account automated enrichment and interlinking techniques to provide rich and well-interlinked data for the educational domain. This approach has been implemented in the context of the mEducator project where data from a number of open TEL data repositories has been integrated, exposed and enriched by following Linked Data principles

The OU Linked Open Data: production and consumption

The aim of this paper is to introduce the current efforts toward the release and exploitation of The Open University's (OU) Linked Open Data (LOD). We introduce the work that has been done within the LUCERO project in order to select, extract and structure subsets of information contained within the OU data sources and migrate and expose this information as part of the LOD cloud. To show the potential of such exposure we also introduce three different prototypes that exploit this new educational resource: (1) the OU expert search system, a tool focused on fnding the best experts for a certain topic within the OU staff; (2) the Buddy Study system, a tool that relies on Facebook information to identify common interest among friends and recommend potential courses within the OU that `buddies' can study together, and; (3) Linked OpenLearn, an application that enables exploring linked courses, Podcasts and tags to OpenLearn units. Its aim is to enhance the browsing experience for students, by detecting relevant educational resources on fly while reading an OpenLearn unit

Implementing the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) for accessibility and reuse of cultural heritage resources on the web – Challenges and Advantages

The accessibility of images-based resources is important for the practice of research, teaching and knowledge transfer in the Social Sciences and the Humanities. In the past twenty-five years, Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs) have been digitizing and providing millions of digital surrogates of their artefacts, paintings, books, maps, manuscripts and other objects in digital repositories and web platforms. However, most of those digital resources are still locked up in silos which means they lack interoperability and reusability. To address this issue, the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) was created in 2011 by technologists from Stanford University, The British Library and The Bodleian Library, The National Library of Norway and The National Library of France (BnF). This study will address the challenges and advantages of the IIIF’s implementation in digital repositories of CHIs and how the IIIF can enhance research, teaching and knowledge transfer in the social sciences and humanities. This study will also look at the IIIF implementation scenario in Europe and in Portugal through qualitative analysis of professionals’ responses to a questionnaire.A acessibilidade de recursos baseados em imagens é importante para a prática da investigação, ensino e transferência de conhecimentos nas Ciências Sociais e Humanas. Nos últimos vinte e cinco anos, as Instituições de Património Cultural (CHIs) têm vindo a digitalizar e a fornecer milhões de substitutos digitais dos seus artefactos, pinturas, livros, mapas, manuscritos e outros objetos em repositórios digitais e plataformas web. No entanto, a maioria desses recursos digitais ainda se encontram encerrados em silos, o que significa que lhes falta interoperabilidade e reutilização. Para abordar esta questão, o International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) foi criado em 2011 por tecnólogos da Universidade de Stanford, The British Library e The Bodleian Library, The National Library of Norway e The National Library of France (BnF). Este estudo abordará os desafios e vantagens da implementação do IIIF em repositórios digitais de instituições culturais e universidades e como o IIIF pode melhorar a investigação, o ensino e a transferência de conhecimento nas ciências sociais e humanas. Este estudo analisará também o cenário de implementação da IIIF em Portugal através da análise qualitativa das respostas dos profissionais a um questionário

Distributed Object Medical Imaging Model

Abstract- Digital medical informatics and images are commonly used in hospitals today,. Because of the interrelatedness of the radiology department and other departments, especially the intensive care unit and emergency department, the transmission and sharing of medical images has become a critical issue. Our research group has developed a Java-based Distributed Object Medical Imaging Model(DOMIM) to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of medical imaging applications in a distributed environment that can be shared and used by related departments and mobile physiciansDOMIM is a unique suite of multimedia telemedicine applications developed for the use by medical related organizations. The applications support realtime patients’ data, image files, audio and video diagnosis annotation exchanges. The DOMIM enables joint collaboration between radiologists and physicians while they are at distant geographical locations. The DOMIM environment consists of heterogeneous, autonomous, and legacy resources. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), and Java language provide the capability to combine the DOMIM resources into an integrated, interoperable, and scalable system. The underneath technology, including IDL ORB, Event Service, IIOP JDBC/ODBC, legacy system wrapping and Java implementation are explored. This paper explores a distributed collaborative CORBA/JDBC based framework that will enhance medical information management requirements and development. It encompasses a new paradigm for the delivery of health services that requires process reengineering, cultural changes, as well as organizational changes

DEPLOYMENT AND USABILITY EVALUATION OF MOBILE ACCESS TO INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY

An Institutional Repository is essentially a web application that is capable of capturing, preserving and disseminating the intellectual output of a University or research institution in dig ital formats. The advent of the Mobile Web has ushered in a new wave of mobile devices - with multi-touch facilities and thus there has been a shift from Web access to Mobile Web access. This has brought about the need to make web applications accessible via mobile devices. This study investigated the usability of the core functionalities of an Institutional Repository on various mobile devices. The work did not try to create a mobile version of the repository but rather test the existing web application on various mobile platforms. To achieve this, the core functionalities of the repository were modelled using Unified Modelling Language (UML). In addition, an Institutional Repository was built and deployed for Covenant University by leveraging on open source repository software – EPrints. Furthermore, the core functionalities of the Institutional Repository were tested on five different mobile devices. Finally, the usability of the Institutional Repository on the various mobile devices used was evaluated by identifying the usability attributes; designing a questionnaire based on those attributes and then analyzing the results with SPSS software. The results showed that overall the current web version of the repository had a good usability score on the mobile devices used