Exploring multilingual requirements of the community of a learning portal: the case of Organic.Edunet

This paper presents an analytical framework for introducing multilingualism into web portals, aiming to facilitate bringing down the language barriers, bridging the current language divide between potentially interested users and the multimedia resources from around the world that are made available through such portals. The general problem addressed is the design affordances that shall allow multilingual web portals to meet different linguistic profiles, needs and user expectations. The paper describes the methodology used for the analysis of user requirements of the existing user community of Organic.Edunet, by focusing to the registered members (totalling around 2,500 at the time of the study, doubled already by today). Organic.Edunet, being a thematic web portal aiming to promote the discovery and best use of the wealth of educational resources on Organic and Sustainable Agriculture in a European and international scale, forms a typical example for understanding the language barriers between people of diverse linguistic profiles, and the affordances needed in such a “Learning portal” that will help bringing down those barriers. The paper concludes with some initial results and discussion of the findings and suggestions for future work.This paper includes research results from work that has been funded with support of the European Commission, and more specifically the project CIP-ICT-PSP-270999 “Organic.Lingua: Demonstrating the potential of a multilingual Web portal for Sustainable Agricultural & Environmental Education” of the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP)

Acquiring working knowledge with asynchronous multimedia conferencing.

Asynchronous text-based communication has long been established as having value in supporting the collaborative sharing of knowledge. However, in cases where learners or practitioners are seeking to acquire skills applicable in real-world working contexts, this kind of technology proves to be insufficient. Asynchronous multimedia conferencing seems both suitable and sufficient for supporting such a process. This paper presents a Web-based system for the support of co-ordinated, asynchronous multimedia discussions, based on a video representation of real-world working practices

Ontology-driven linked open (meta-) data services for e-research systems

This paper presents an ontology-driven approach for implementing Linked Open Data services for scholarly and research artifacts, to facilitate the dissemination of research results. The resulting ontology and the associated metadata Application Profile, built upon the Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles, have been used to enable the development of interoperable systems and services for the research community in the agriculture and aquaculture domains. The paper describes the implementation approach for the AgRes ontology, the ontology itself as well as the interoperability levels of the AgRes application profile. Furthermore, it outlines the creation and the management of the ontology with the MoKi collaborative Media Wiki-based tool

Learning Object Metadata in a Web-Based Learning Environment

The plethora and variance of learning resources embedded in modern web-based learning environments require a mechanism to enable their structured administration. This goal can be achieved by defining metadata on them and constructing a system that manages the metadata in the context of the learning environment. Both activities have to meet certain standards.

Acquiring Working Knowledge through Asynchronous Multimedia

Asynchronous text-based communication has long been established as having value in supporting the collaborative sharing of knowledge. However, in cases where learners or practitioners are seeking to acquire skills applicable in real-world working contexts, this kind of technology proves to be insufficient. Asynchronous multimedia conferencing seems both suitable and sufficient for supporting such a process. This paper presents a Web-based system for the support of co-ordinated, asynchronous multimedia discussions, based on a video representation of real-world working practices

Evaluating the effectiveness of an ODL hypermedia system and courseware at the National Technical University of Athens: A case study

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual framework for the evaluation of the effectiveness of an open and distance learning (ODL) hypermedia system (EONT-ODL system) and courseware developed and trial used at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece, within the EONT project. EONT is a partnership project between seven universities from seven European Union countries within the Socrates Framework Program. In this paper we deal with data elicited from the NTUA, since it was the only partner institution which provided adequate data for quantitative analysis. The evaluation framework is based on the assumption that ODL hypermedia systems are complex systems with a variety of organisational, administrative, instructional, and technological components. It has been hypothesized that the effectiveness of the EONT-ODL system would be influenced by a number of independent variables such as: design and presentation of the courseware; previous experience; time spent on working through the courseware; preference of mode of study; learning styles; interactions with peers, instructors and means of communication. In this evaluation research, two instruments integrated into one questionnaire for data collection were developed: the first was based on a number of standardized questions, reflecting the previously stated theoretica