OUSA Conference 2016 Gets Augmented Reality Presentation

Monday 20 Jun 2016 | KMi News

Last Saturday Mobile Applications Developer from KMi, Paul Hogan gave a 45 minute presentation on KMi’s work with Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) to students attending the 2016 Open University Students Asscociation Conference.

Paul’s presentation was well received and gave a detailed insight into the applications he has developed allowing students to see how the University will be using this technology in the future.

Of particular interest to the students was the application currently being developed to complement an upcoming module on the human circulatory system. This application presents the user with a anatomically correct 3D heart complete with beat annimations, label identifications, blood flow and audio.

KMi News Image 0 — Discussing label identifications

Congratulations to Doctor Ilaria Tiddi!

Friday 17 Jun 2016 | KMi News

Ilria Tiddi successfully defended her PhD on 16th June 2016. During the viva and in her thesis ("Explaining Data Patterns with Knowledge from the Web of Data"), she described her work at the intersection of knowledge discovery and semantic web research, using the Web of Data to generate explanations for patterns found in data through data mining techniques.

The examiners, Frank van Harmelen (VU Amsterdam) and Harith Alani (KMi) were impressed by Ilaria’s research, using a range of techniques from machine learning, data modelling and knowledge engineering to tackle an original and very complex problem.

Book on Intelligent Semantic Web Systems published

Wednesday 15 Jun 2016 | KMi News

A new book written by KMiers Mathieu d’Aquin and Enrico Motta has just been published by Morgan and Claypool publishers, in the series "The Semantic Web: Theory and Technology". This book entitled "The Epistemology of Intelligent Semantic Web Systems" is a reflection of the evolution of the Semantic Web, a young discipline in comparison to other areas of computer science. It highlights and discusses key questions that have animated the research community and introduces a simple conceptual framework which characterizes Intelligent Semantic Web Systems, as well as many examples of such systems.

"The Epistemology of Intelligent Semantic Web Systems" is the result of more than a decade working as researchers and application developers in the Semantic Web area and of the many discussions, exchanges and collaboration within KMi on the way the Semantic Web has been evolving. It is therfore a reflection of this evolution, with the aim to take a snapshot of where we are at this specific point in time, and also to show what the future will be like, or at least should be like!

Related Links:

Book on the publisher’s website

SlideWiki meets in KMi

Monday 13 Jun 2016 | KMi News

The second plenary meeting of the SlideWiki project took place on June 9th-10th in the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University. More than 30 representatives from 17 organisations across Europe travelled to Milton Keynes, in order to touch base on the latest project developments and plan subsequent collaborative actions. The meeting focused on the preparations for the release of the next version of the SlideWiki platform, which will take place before the end of the year.

SlideWiki is a new Horizon 2020 project, aiming at increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of education in Europe via widely available, accessible, multilingual, timely, engaging and high-quality educational material (i.e. OpenCourseWare). In this large-scale trial project, we are further maturing the SlideWiki technology platform (available at SlideWiki.org), integrating it with state-of-the-art educational platforms and performing large-scale trials in secondary education, vocational and professional training, higher education, as well as community-driven open-education.

Related Links:

The SlideWiki project

OU Analyse @ LAK2016

Thursday 09 Jun 2016 | KMi News

As part of this year Learning Analytics and Knowledge(LAK16) conference in Edinburgh, the OU Analyse team from KMi organised The Data Literacy for Learning Analytics Workshop. The organisation of this workshop was motivated by the success of the Machine Analytics workshop at LAK14 in Indianapolis.

The workshop ran the whole day on April 26th 2016 and attracted around 30 participants from Higher Education institutions from countries in Europe, America and Asia.

The workshop was divided into two parts. After the introduction by Annika Wolff, 4 accepted papers were presented, one of them by prof. Zdenek Zdrahal http://events.kmi.open.ac.uk/dataliteracy4la/papers/DLitLA-16_paper_4.pdf.

After the lunch break, the participants were divided by their interests into two groups – 1) Analyzing and visualizing learner data using The Open University Learning Analytics Dataset and 2) Communicating from aggregated data, discussing the issues how to communicate the results from Learning Analytics to different types of user, including expert and non experts, or faculty, tutors, or students.

Based on the feedback from all the participants, new connections and ideas based of these connections were made during the run of the workshop and we believe we will organise another event of the following LAK in Vancouver 2017.

All the accepted and presented papers together with all the information about the workshop can be found on: http://events.kmi.open.ac.uk/dataliteracy4la/

KMi at ESWC 2016!

Wednesday 08 Jun 2016 | KMi News

As with past editions of the Extended Semantic Web Conference, the Thirteenth edition (ESWC2016), once again held in Anissaras, Crete, featured a significant KMi delegation and a host of former KMi-ers. Five researchers – Prof. John Domingue, Alessandro Adamou, Carlo Allocca, Mathieu d’Aquin and Hassan Saif – attended as KMi delegates, and even more contributed from afar to the success of the conference.

Three items were presented by the KMi at the main conference:

Semantic Topic Compass – Classification based on Unsupervised Feature Ambiguity Gradation, by Amparo Elisabeth Cano, Hassan Saif, Harith Alani and Enrico Motta
SPARQL Query Recommendations by Example, by Carlo Allocca, Alessandro Adamou, Mathieu d’Aquin and Enrico Motta (demo)
SentiCircles: A Platform for Contextual and Conceptual Sentiment Analysis, by Hassan Saif, Maxim Bashevoy, Steve Taylor, Miriam Fernandez and Harith Alani (demo)

This edition of ESWC featured strong involvement of the KMi team in its organisation. STI International president and KMi director John Domingue chaired the STI International Board meeting and General Assembly and also the ESWC Organisational, Track Chairs and Steering Committee meetings. Mathieu d’Aquin served as one of the program chairs for this edition. Also worthy of note are the organisational roles of KMi alumni Stefan Dietze and Vanessa Lopez, who respectively co-chaired the ESWC Challenges and the Smart Cities, Urban and Geospatial Data research track.

KMi and its legacy were also very active in ensuring the success of pre-conference events. John Domingue gave a keynote talk titled Blockchains: A New Platform for Semantically Enabled Transactions at this year’s edition of the SALAD Workshop on Services and Applications over Linked APIs and Data (co-organised by KMi alumna Maria Maleshkova). Hassan Saif gave a keynote talk titled Sentiment Analysis in Social Streams, the Role of Context and Semantics at the Semantic Sentiment Analysis Workshop. This year was also the breakthrough of a dedicated Digital Humanities event at ESWC, in the form of the WHiSe workshop. The workshop was organised by KMi-ers Alessandro Adamou and Enrico Daga with University of Lancaster lecturer Leif Isaksen, and featured a multi-disciplinary program committee that included Open University researchers Carlo Allocca, Paul Mulholland, Ilaria Tiddi, Elton Barker, Francesca Benatti and Angeliki Lymberopoulou. It was very well-received thanks to its dual format, accommodating both presentations of peer-reviewed papers and round table open discussions, and was the second ESWC workshop in number of submissions and accepted papers. Also, Mathieu d’Aquin was among the mentors at the PhD symposium which took place before the main conference. Finally, the PROFILES Workshop on dataset profiling and federated search, once again co-organised by Stefan Dietze, had its third edition at ESWC.

Related Links:

ESWC 2016

FORGE: Closing the gap between learners & researchers

Wednesday 11 May 2016 | KMi News

The Forging Online Education through FIRE (FORGE) project has developed a new video introducing the main concepts behind the project to the general public. The video explains in simple terms what remote labs and online experimentation can bring to education and how FORGE is building on top of world-class experimentation facilities in order to close the gap between learners and researchers.

FORGE promotes online learning using Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) facilities and is a step towards turning FIRE into a pan-European educational platform for Future Internet. This benefits learners and educators by giving them both access to world-class facilities in order to carry out experiments on e.g. new internet protocols. In turn, this supports constructivist and self-regulated learning approaches, through the use of interactive learning resources, such as eBooks.

Related Links:

Congratulations Harith, Professor of Web Science

Monday 09 May 2016 | KMi News

On Thursday28 April the KMi team assembled to celebrate with a specially designed cake, the award to Harith Alani of the title Professor of Web Science.
Professor Alani has been with KMi since 2009, moving here after beginning his research career at Southampton University.
Harith’s work centres on Social Semantics and Web Science, he has authored around 120 scientific articles, including publications in the highest quality conferences and journals in his area of research. Harith has won over €3M in funding including some of his current co-ordination projects Decarbonet and most recently COMRADES ; This project will build an intelligent collective resilience platform to help communities to reconnect, respond, and recover from crisis situations.

Professor John Domingue, Director, KMi said
"I am delighted that Harith has had this recognition for his work and long known leadership skills. KMi is a vibrant, busy environment with multiple threads of research. Professor Alani’s work has relevance across many threads and he and his team are a real asset to our continued success in securing research grants for work that will have real impact in the OU.”

Stadium Live supports Digital Innovation Workshop

Thursday 05 May 2016 | KMi News

KMi’s Stadium Live technology was used this week to support remote attendees to a STEM workshop on digital innovation, held in the Hub Theatre and hosted by Patrick Mcandrew (Director, IET), Doug Clow (IET), Hazel Rymer (acting PVC, (Learning and Teaching) and Andrew Law (Director, Open Media Unit).

Initial ideas were prompted in response to a set of cue cards; then a set of learning scenarios were discussed which brought forth more ideas. Each group then had to decided which of their ideas was the best and one person from each table, including Lara Piccolo as representative of the remote group, had to present their idea – in just one minute – to the rest of the room. The best ideas were then voted for.

Running alongside the website, built by Damian Dadswell, Stadium’s streamed video allowed the remote audience to listen to proposals put forward by the physical audience while widgets were used to vote on the proposals that other tables had promoted.

There were a maximum of 14 remote users including one in South America.

Related Links:

Digital Innovation website

Digital Skills Gap in ICT Technologies

Thursday 28 Apr 2016 | KMi News

The 2nd annual NET FUTURES conference, which wishes to maximize the competitiveness of the European technology industry, took place last week in Brussels, Belgium. The aim of the conference is to bridge the gaps between research and innovation labs, businesses, marketing, entrepreneurship and policy-making communities, with the idea that innovations will more easily and effectively find their way to market. The conference gathered over 1,000 attendees forming an interconnected community of people from industry, research institutions and startup companies.

The Forging Online Education through FIRE (FORGE) project was well represented at this event. In the Digital Skills Gap in ICT Technologies session, Alexander Mikroyannidis from the Open University, an invited session speaker, presented the current state of the art in resources for remote experimentation and learning based on research carried out by the FORGE project. This session sought to address some of the foreseen future gaps and challenges for skills development in specialised IT jobs. Other invited speakers in this session were representatives from Cisco, Amazon, Empirica and IDC. The session was chaired by Sally Reynolds, Managing Director of AtiT.

Additionally, the FORGE team, represented by Johann M. Marquez Barja and Diarmuid Collins from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Daan Pareit from iMinds, Ghent University and Ciro Scognamiglio from University Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), demonstrated five courses in networking and telecommunication at the FORGE booth. FORGE is leveraging FIRE testbeds and is enhancing learning approaches by producing educational material reinforced with hands-on experimentation that is supported by multimedia resources for engineering educators and learners. To date, FORGE has produced over 10 courses covering a wide range of networking and communication domains that are freely available to download and utilize. These courses have resulted in over 20,000 experiments undertaken by more than 600 students at 7 universities across four continents.

Related Links:

Net Futures 2016

FORGE

KMi Projects Showcased at LAF2016 as part of OU Charter Day Celebrations

Wednesday 27 Apr 2016 | KMi News

KMi joined the celebrations of the OU’s Charter Day by being one of the chosen stands at the Learn About Fair (LAF) yesterday. In line with the fair’s theme ‘Innovation in Teaching and Learning: Putting Students First’ we showcased a selection of projects as part of our stand KMi:Future Technologies for Learning. These included:

OU Analyse – identifying students that are at risk of failure;

Blockchain – early experiments in placing Open Learn badges onto a blockchain.

Stadium Live – embedding interactivity within live webcasts in modules; also check out our latest KMi Review Newsletter which features this work.

and GreenData – capturing and sharing renewable energy generation data to allow OU students and courses to query data in a wide variety of ways.

In addition, Paul Hogan demoed a mobile and virtual reality application that was developed especially for the event using the LAF2016 logo to give a taster of the sort of developments we do here in the lab. Many people at the fair including our Vice Chancellor, Peter Horrocks experienced and explored the virtual reality world.
To download this app or see other mobile applications developed by KMi click here

#WWW2016: COME IN WE’RE OUVERT

Monday 25 Apr 2016 | KMi News

Every year the World Wide Web Conference provides an opportunity for many researchers from both academy and industry to discuss about topics that are centred around the World Wide Web.

In its 25th edition, which took place in Montreal (CA) from 11th to 15th of April 2016, more than a thousand people from 55 countries joined together to present progress in research, standards and applications, and envision future directions.

The conference had a special motto "COME IN WE’RE OUVERT" (which means "open" in French and in this particular case it stands for Open, Ubiquitous, Versatile, Education, goveRnment and healTh) and included many tutorials, workshops, poster session and research sessions with a wide coverage of topics such as social network and graph analysis, web science, security and privacy, economics and market, and many others.

Another key point of this conference were the keynotes. In this edition many influential people were invited to deliver a keynote, such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web), Martha Lane Fox (Chancellor of The Open University), Mary Ellen Zurko (Principal Engineer @ Cisco) and Peter Norvig (Director of Research @ Google).

In his keynote, Sir Tim Berners-Lee talked about web security, web payments, Web of Things and re-decentralization of the web. He explained that securing the web is important and it has to be ubiquitous also adding that hopefully we will move towards a form of passwordless online authentication. Afterwards, he claimed we need new and better payment methods: micro payments. He argued that transactions as little as $.02 have great value in the mass market, so we can tip musicians whose songs we listen to, bloggers and so on. In addition, he talked about our rights of ownership over our data, and that we should have full control on it and control where it gets stored. Lastly, with the introduction of the web of things we still have to face some challenges which are the development for open and semantic standards for light switches, media hubs, door locks and basically everything else.

Martha Lane Fox in her keynote outlined three current challenges in technology such as gender balance, skills gap and re-imagining public services. She pointed out that there is a huge benefit in diversity and including all different voices can foster the creation of better services and products.

Mary Ellen Zurko showed that users trust high reputation web sites more than malware warnings and this is mostly due to a bad representation of cyberthreats. She added that the web is for attackers and defenders, and security is still an open challenge. With the introduction of the Internet of Things we need to deliver security at every scale and stop coding using unsafe languages.

Last but not least, Peter Norvig talked about the evolution of the web from its beginning until the development of the Semantic Web. Then he summarised the current state of the web starting from the possibilities pointed out by Tim Berners-Lee and the obstacles outlined by Cory Doctorow, a famous American blogger. Thankfully, he says, so far many goals have been achieved, but the need to face the open research challenges is still burning.

Also in this edition, researchers from the KMi contributed in a variety of ways, in organising workshops, presenting papers and posters.
The workshops organised by our researchers are the following ones:

Francesco Osborne organised the SAVESD2016 workshop about the enhancement of scholarly data with semantics, analytic and visualization.
A. Elizabeth Cano with Aba-Sah Dadzie organised #Micropost2016 workshop about making sense of microposts.
Mathieu d’Aquin organised #Lile2016 workshop about learning and education with the web of data.

At SAVESD workshop Angelo Salatino presented the paper co-authored with Enrico Motta about the "Detection of Embryonic Research Topics by Analysing Semantic Topic Networks" which also allowed them to win the Best Paper Award of the workshop.

At Q4APS16 workshop Grégoire Burel with Paul Mulholland and Harith Alani presented the paper Structural Normalisation Methods for Improving Best Answer Identification in Question Answering Communities.

During the poster session, Francesco Osborne presented It ROCS! The RASH Online Conversion Service, while Helene De Ribaupierre presented a poster co-authored with Francesco Osborne and Enrico Motta about Combining NLP and semantics for mining software technologies from research publications.

The next edition of WWW will be held in Perth, Australia from the 3rd to 7th April 2017.

Useful Links:

Clipper project @ IIIF Audio/Video Workshop

Wednesday 20 Apr 2016 | KMi News

Last week the Clipper team participated in an invited workshop at the British Library, organised by the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) consortium. The purpose of the workshop was to collate use cases and start outlining a development road map for extending the IIIF to include support for Audio/Video annotation. This was a great opportunity to find out more about the IIIF and the collaborative design process that has produced it.

Joining the five IIIF editors were a further 14 representatives of organisations and projects with an interest in Audio/Video annotation and interoperability, including the British Library, British Film Institute National Archive, National Library of Wales, Harvard University, Indiana University, Oxford University, EPFL, WikiMedia, EUscreenXL and Europeana. The workshop gave us an opportunity to share our use cases and collate a common set that we could then prioritise, relate to existing standards, and outline potential levels of functionality for future implementations.

The IIIF editors will be reporting on the workshop next month in a specific session at the annual IIIF conference in New York, where there will be further opportunities to comment on and develop the use cases and inform the initial draft of an AV interoperability standard. Within the Clipper project we are planning to implement a structured data model using JSON-LD that will draw on the IIIF and W3C web annotation standard. We intend to feed in our experiences from the Clipper implementation to support the development of the AV standard, as well as learn from the advice and experience of the other contributors. The AV workshop has given us a great introduction to the standard and the community that are creating it.

Related Links:

FORGE at EDUCON 2016

Monday 18 Apr 2016 | KMi News

The 7th IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON 2016) took place last week in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Alexander Mikroyannidis presented a methodology for the design, delivery and evaluation of learning resources for remote experimentation. This methodology has been developed in the context of the European project FORGE, which promotes online learning using Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) facilities. FORGE is a step towards turning FIRE into a pan-European educational platform for Future Internet. This will benefit learners and educators by giving them both access to world-class facilities in order to carry out experiments on e.g. new internet protocols. In turn, this supports constructivist and self-regulated learning approaches, through the use of interactive learning resources, such as eBooks.

The IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) 2016 has been the seventh in a series of conferences that rotate among central locations in IEEE Region 8 (Europe, Middle East and North Africa). This is a major event for educators and researchers featuring a wide range of topics, such as Educational Methods and Learning Mechanisms in Engineering Education, Infrastructure and Technologies for Engineering Education, use of ICT in Engineering Education, and more. The conference proceedings will be published by IEEE Education Society Publications.

Make My City Smarter!

Thursday 07 Apr 2016 | KMi News

MK:Smart project was part of a select range of Open University projects showcased to parliamentarians, in the Atlee Suite of Portcullis House in Westminster on 9th March 2016.

The team comprising of Jaisha Bruce, Jane Whild and Mathieu d’Aquin from Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) and Daniel Gooch and Annika Wolff from the University’s Maths Computing and Technology Faculty (MCT), presented an overview of the MK:Smart project with a focus on the data, education and citizen engagement work to of MPs, parliamentary figures, committee clerks, representatives from the HE sector, civil servants and third party companies.

As part of the showcase, the team ran a competition for MPs and Parliamentarians offering two half day consultations; draw one offered half a day with Mathieu d’Aquin on the MK Data Hub and draw two offered half a day with Annika Wolff on the Urban Data School Initiative. In order to join the prize draw, MPs were asked to write their constituency area on a flag declaring they would like to make their city smarter and pin this to their location on a UK map. “Every MP will think their city or area is the best” mentioned Peter Horrocks, Vice Chancellor of the Open University, during his speech “however, now you can start on your path for smartness with the MK:Smart competition”

Related Links:

MK:Smart website

Open Data in Education: Now also a book

Thursday 07 Apr 2016 | KMi News

The use Open and Linked Data associated with education has been growing steadily, in part thanks to efforts involving KMi, such as data.open.ac.uk, LinkedUniversities, the LinkedUp project and now the AFEL project. The book "Open Data for Education: Linked, Shared and Reusable Data for Teaching and Learning" is therefore a timely publication. Edited by Dmitry Mouromstsev and Mathieu d’Aquin, it provides an overview of the state of Open Data in education from the perspecitives of various authors, several of them KMi members or former KMi members: John Domingue, Stegan Dietze, Olga Parkhimovich, Dong Liu, Fouad Zablith, Alexander Mikroyannidis and Maria Maleshkova. The book specifically focuses on the practical aspects of Open and Linked Data in education, providing perspectives on the current use of Linked Data to publish educational information and on the initiatives that are promoting and supporting the practice of Open Data for teaching and learning. More importantly, it also provides concrete examples of applications in various context of the way Open Data can support education-related activities.

CORE had 6 proposals accepted at the Open Repositories 2016 Conference

Monday 04 Apr 2016 | KMi News

In this year’s Open Repositories 2016 Conference, an international conference addressed to the scholarly communications community with a focus on repositories, open access, open data and open science, CORE had 6 items accepted; 1 Paper, 1 Repository Rave presentation, 1 Workshop, 1 Poster and 2 showcases in the Developer Track and Ideas Challenge. In our presentations we will explore topics on semantometrics, text and data mining and the integration of the RIOXX metadata and the IRUS-UK statistics in the CORE Dashboard. In the two developer track sessions we will demonstrate how to freely gather and compare the research performance of universities and how open access publications can be mined from the CORE API respectively.

Related Links:

Here you can find the summaries of our proposals.

Responsible Research Metrics

Wednesday 09 Mar 2016 | KMi News

At this year’s Jisc DigiFest Dr. Petr Knoth was invited to sit on a panel discussing Responsible Research Metrics. This panel was organised in the context of the recently published Metrics Tide report commissioned by HEFCE, which looked into issues surrounding the use of quantitative research metrics in REF. The other two panelists were Prof. Stephen Curry of Imperial College and Prof. Cameron Neylon of Curtin University.

In his talk, Petr argued for the need to develop a range of new research metrics that make use of article full-texts. We call these semantometrics. Petr also stressed that we need to move away from performance measures established axiomatically or ad-hoc without demonstrating their ability to capture aspects of research performance on data. These measures include especially the widely used higher-level metrics, such as the h-index. “We need to move towards data driven approaches to the development of research evaluation metrics“ he reiterated.

Related Links:

Presentation link

KMi Hosts Technical Talk on Blockchain Technology

Tuesday 01 Mar 2016 | KMi News

On 24 Feb. John Domingue, the Director of KMi, hosted a technical talk titled ‘Ethereum – A Blockchain Platform’ by Konstantin Kudryavtsev (Head of Technical Relations – Eth Core Ltd.) at the KMi Podium. It was well attended with representatives from several OU departments (i.e. Business School, MCT, Law etc.).

The highlight of this talk was Ethereum (www.ethereum.org) – an open source crowd-funded blockchain technology platform that has recently gained a lot of attention in the industry and media. Blockchain technology in particular is interesting because it offers an alternative model of network computing platform that is decentralised and trustless, the underlying properties that made Bitcoin popular.

Unofficially branded as Bitcoin 2.0, Ethereum claims to have overcome several deficiencies of the earlier Bitcoin technology so that it can be used for purposes other than just transferring currency. Recently, IBM and Samsung demonstrated how smart Internet of Things (IoT) devices based on decentralised platforms such as Ethereum can become autonomous and perform transactions by themselves. In this talk Konstantin presented an overview of Ethereum’s ecosystem, delved deeper into demystifying the platform with regards to what worked and what didn’t and finally provided some guidance on using ‘smart contracts’.

A recording of the webcast can be found at – http://stadium.open.ac.uk/2650

Related Links:

http://stadium.open.ac.uk/2650

EDV feature kicks off global Rethinking Debates report series

Thursday 25 Feb 2016 | KMi News

Earlier this month, the Election Debate Visualisation (EDV) project was the subject of a full-length feature as part of the Rethinking Debates project. This is the first of a series of reports on the impact of technology on electoral processes around the world, launched by Civic Hall, a US-based community centre for the world’s civic innovators.

After interviewing KMi’s Brian Plüss and Anna De Liddo, and EDV’s PI Prof Stephen Coleman from the University of Leeds, Civic Hall’s Civic Engagement Fellow, Christine Cupaiuolo, captured the spirit of the project and discussed in detail EDV’s research and tools in a great, passionate story.

The series will continue with stories on debate and technology projects around the world, and published in a comprehensive report to be released at a conference later this year.

Related Links:

http://edv-project.net/

http://civichall.org/civicist/political-debates-more-responsive-public-needs/

Petr Knoth is featured in a free ebook on Text Analytics

Wednesday 17 Feb 2016 | KMi News

The ebook "Text Analytics: 28 Experts Share How to Achieve Business Value" (download page) gives insights into how large industries are exploiting big unstructured data to drive business value. The free eBook was created to demonstrate the benefits of text analytics to a vast array of companies, customer intelligence professionals, and marketers.

In this ebook Dr. Petr Knoth discusses how text mining of scientific literature can help reveal meaningful connections, which are hard to discover otherwise. From his experience as a Senior Data Scientist in Mendeley and founder of COnnecting REpositories (CORE), a database that aggregates open access scientific papers, he gives three recommendations for how to successfully apply and derive value from text analytics; 1. the need for an evaluation framework with well-defined metrics, 2. the necessity to collect representative ground truth data and 3. realistic and clear communication with the customer. Knoth states that "text mining has so many application domains, it is absolutely incredible".

The SlideWiki project has kicked off!

Wednesday 17 Feb 2016 | KMi News

On January 18-19, the kick-off meeting of the SlideWiki project took place in Sankt Augustin, Germany hosted by the project ccordinator Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems. KMi and the Open University were represented by Alexander Mikroyannidis.

SlideWiki is a new Horizon 2020 project, aiming at increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of education in Europe via widely available, accessible, multilingual, timely, engaging and high-quality educational material (i.e. OpenCourseWare). In this large-scale trial project, we will further mature the SlideWiki technology platform (available at SlideWiki.org), integrate it with a state-of-the-art MOOC delivery platform and perform four large-scale trials in:

secondary education,
vocational and professional training,
higher education and
community-driven open-education.

The Open University is a key partner in this project, as it is leading two work packages: the integration of SlideWiki with multiple educational platforms, such as Learning Management Systems, and the coordination of large-scale pilots with informal learners via Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Related Links:

The SlideWiki project

KMi welcomed back Lady Kitty Chisholm

Thursday 11 Feb 2016 | KMi News

On the 10th February KMi welcomed back one of our co-founders, Lady Kitty Chisholm. Kitty is director of Boardwalk, a professional coach and facilitator supporting women in achieving their full leadership potential. Kitty has also recently co-authored a new book (published Nov, 2015) ‘Championing Women Leaders, Beyond Sponsorship’.

Kitty delivered an insightful and inspirational talk entitled ‘Women in Leadership: what really gets in the way and how to overcome the barriers‘. In her talk Kitty presented studies, which suggest that gender diversity can be beneficial to organisations by boosting creativity and innovation. However, while the benefit to organisations is apparent, gender diversity in the workplace is still a challenge. She presented statistics showing that a high percentage of women in some sectors (e.g., IT) dropout from senior management positions. Some of these statistics suggest that the problem is not about recruitment but retention of women in the workforce.

She mentioned that some of the factors that get on the way of women careers are deeply related to the organisational culture and the lack of assertiveness in women. She introduced a set of recommendations on how women can overcome such barriers. She suggested reinforcing women self-confidence by embodying a set of values, having a set of clear goals and by owning your career.

Her talk led onto an interesting discussion and shared of experiences. Some of the comments’ discussions included personal branding and social media; and issues related to the perception of women at work.

Tracie Farrell-Frey, a post grad student in KMi enjoyed the session, saying " this meeting was about helping women to feel empowered to pursue whatever professional goals they might have, which is a great first step. The next step, recognising that context also plays a huge role in advancing or limiting women’s careers, would be to deal with some of the elements of organisational culture that impact the success of women employees"

You can get involved in moving mind-sets on gender diversity by visiting some of the following links:

http://leanincircles.org/
http://acmukwomen.acm.org/

You can watch the recording here

Related Links:

http://kmi.open.ac.uk/20/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtmdHa1JNmc

OU Analyse the UK’s only significant headway in Predictive Analytics – says Higher Ed Commission

Thursday 28 Jan 2016 | KMi News

The Higher Education Commission is an independent body made up of leaders from the education sector, the business community and the major political parties

On the 26th January the Commission published their fourth report “From Bricks to Clicks – The Potential of Data and Analytics in Higher Education” The publication event was held at the House of Lords and KMi Director, professor John Domingue was there.

“This significant report on the value of data analytics in education is something that will help shape the way universities support students” said professor Domingue “and I am proud that the OU is seen as a leading light in this domain.”

The report offers 12 Recommendations for the HE sector on how to exploit big data in education and presents in detail two case studies: the Student Dashboard implemented at the Nottingham Trent University and the OU Analyse predictive analytics project developed and deployed by the OU’s Knowledge Media Institute.

The report acknowledges that whilst Learning Analytics is in relative infancy it is a powerful way for Universities to achieve their strategic goals, as well as provide real benefits for students and recommends that all HEIs should consider appropriate systems to improve student support and performance.

The Commission points out that the wealth of data generated and potentially processed in education will significantly change the landscape of the HE sector. If properly handled, the benefactors will be both the HE institutions and individual students. In the conclusion, the report states

“For example, predictive analytics can identify which students may not complete their degree on time or even hand in individual assignments, which is already being seen in the UK through the OU Analyse tool. Apart from the OU the Commission does not believe that any UK institution has made significant headway in this area.”

OU Analyse utilises machine-learning based methods for early identification of students at risk of failing. Student demographic data and fine-grained dynamic data taken from their VLE activity are modeled against data from previous students. This is used to build and validate predictive models, which are then applied to the current student cohort, identifying students at risk of failure on a weekly basis and prompting appropriate tutor interventions.

Related Links:

OU Analyse

From Bricks to Clicks

KMi Director Quoted in the Guardian Today

Tuesday 19 Jan 2016 | KMi News

Following input into a report compiled by the Higher Education Commission, From Bricks to Clicks: The Potential of Data and Analytics in Higher Education Prof John Domingue spoke to the Guardian about how comprehensive use of learning analytics could transform the sector. John will also attend the launch event at the House of Lords at the end of the month.

The report foresees a system in which students at risk of failing can be identified early on in their studies, in a similar vein one of KMi’s flagship projects, OU Analyse looks at the online behaviour of OU students to highlight those ‘at-risk’ of failing to alert module teams who may then judge whether or not to intervene.

“I think in 10 years there will be data for everything, these technologies are changing everything and I think it will change higher education” says Domingue.

Take a look below at some of the great work in KMi that inspired John’s input into this hot topic and to read the full article click here.

Related Links:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/19/big-brother-universities-data-higher-education-students

Collective Platform for Community Resilience & Social Innovation During Crises

Friday 15 Jan 2016 | KMi News

Response to crisis often reveals organisational and technological shortcomings, which threaten community recovery and sustainable. Even though some technological solutions exist, challenges of communication, interoperability, and data analytics remain. The rise of social media as an information channel during crisis has become key to community resilience and response. This project will build an intelligent collective resilience platform to help communities to reconnect, respond, and recover from crisis situations. COMRADES will achieve this through an interdisciplinary, socio-technical approach, which will draw on the latest advances in computational social science, social computing, real-time analytics, text and social media analysis, and Linked Open Data.

The open source COMRADES platform will extend the now standard data collection, mapping, and manual analysis functions provided by the underpinning, widely used Ushahidi crisis mapping tool, to include new intelligent algorithms aimed at helping communities, citizens, and humanitarian services with analysing, verifying, monitoring, and responding to emergency events. COMRADES platform will be deployed and evaluated with multiple, local and distributed, communities, using collective multilingual crisis information.

COMRADES is €2M project, funded by the European Commission under the CAPS (Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation) call. Project partners are OU, University of Sheffield, University of Agder, iHub, and Gov2u. COMRADES will run for three years, under the co-ordination of Dr Harith Alani from KMi.

Related Links:

Project website

Twitter

Linkedin

The AFEL project Kicks Off

Friday 15 Jan 2016 | KMi News

In December, the AFEL project had its first plenary meeting in the beautiful Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid. The goal of AFEL (Analytics for Everyday Learning) is to develop methods and tools to understand informal/collective learning as it surfaces implicitly in online social environments. To achieve this, the project gathers a range of skills in a consortium funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme including experts in data analytics, interaction with data, cognitive models of learning and collaboration, as well as the developers of online social platforms.
The objective of the meeting was for this team, including people from 5 different organisations in 4 different countries, to start working together and plan the work to do. The first planned deliverable of the project is due very soon and regards dissemination and communication channels, but it will be quickly followed by key work on what is at the heart of any project on learning analytics: Data.
Setting up the data platform, tools to obtain and import data from online social environments and checking what is available under the hood of the GNOSS platform will be amongst our first tasks, to prepare for the more sophisticated aspects of analysis and modelling.

Related Links:

AFEL project website

Congratulations Dr Simon Knight!

Wednesday 23 Dec 2015 | KMi News

On 17th December Simon Knight successfully defended his PhD thesis. Simon’s thesis Developing Learning Analytics for Epistemic Commitments in a Collaborative Information Seeking Environment (supervised by Dr. Bart Rientes, Prof. Simon Buckingham Shum and Prof. Karen Littleton) draws upon diverse literatures to present an instantiation of a theoretically grounded analytic development arising from socio-cultural theory.

This extract, taken from Simon’s thesis abstract, indicates the nature and scope of his work:

‘I argue for a recasting of epistemic cognition as "epistemic commitments" in collaborative information tasks drawing a novel alignment between information seeking and multiple document processing (MDP) models, with empirical and theoretical grounding given for a focus on collaboration and dialogue in such activities. Thus, epistemic commitments are seen in the ways students seek, select, and integrate claims from multiple sources, and the ways in which their collaborative dialogue is brought to bear in this activity. Accordingly, the empirical element of the thesis develops two pedagogically grounded literacy based tasks: a MDP task, in which pre-selected documents were provided to students; and a collaborative information seeking task (CIS), in which students could search the web. These tasks were deployed at scale (n > 500) and involved writing an evaluative review, followed by a pedagogically supported peer assessment task. Assessment outcomes were analysed in the context of a new epistemic commitments-oriented set of trace data, and psychometric data regarding the participants’ epistemic cognition. Demonstrating the value of the methodological and conceptual approach taken, qualitative analyses indicate clear epistemic activity, and stark differences in behaviour between groups, the complexity of which is challenging to model computationally. Despite this complexity, quantitative analyses indicate that up to 30% of variance in output scores can be modelled using behavioural indicators. The explanatory potential of behaviourally-oriented models of epistemic commitments grounded in tool-interaction and collaborative dialogue is demonstrated. The thesis provides an exemplification of theoretically positioned analytic development, drawing on interdisciplinary literatures in addressing complex learning contexts.

The examiners (Professor Sten Ludvigsen, University of Oslo and Professor Allison Littlejohn), OU commended the work presented in the thesis as: ‘very innovative’, making ‘very important contributions’ to the new field of learning analytics. Simon now has an opportunity to extend the work presented and will be implementing the key ideas and analytics he has developed in diverse pedagogic contexts at UTS, Sydney.

KMi Celebrates Christmas, Hawaiian Style!

Tuesday 22 Dec 2015 | KMi News

KMi’s traditional Christmas party, always includes friends and family who are invited to our Podium to join the festive cheer. This year had a bit of a twist, we brought a tropical flavour to Milton Keynes all guests were dressed in Hawaiian theme.
We had our KMi rules secret Santa, where choosing your present late in proceeding is a bonus as the chance for a ‘steal’ is significantly reduced. The event saw the first outing for the Knowledge Media Instruments (KMi)! KMi, led by Enrico Daga and Manu Bastianelli really got the party started when whole audience joined singing ‘let it be’.

A fantastic event, thanks to the organisers – high expectation for KMi Festive celebrations 2016!
(Photo credits: Aneta Tumilowicz)

Transforming Europe towards the Digital Age

Wednesday 16 Dec 2015 | KMi News

This week saw a premier European event “Transforming Europe towards the Digital Age” held in Luxembourg. This event addressed with the digital skills gap which will grow from 335,000 to 825,000 unfilled positions in areas related to ICT by 2020.

The event was opened by the Prime Minister of Luxembourg Xavier Bettel, Jean-Luc Martino the European Chief Information Officer of the Raiffeisen Bank Luxembourg and CIO of the year 2015 for Medium sized businesses and Kirsi Ekroth-Manssila Head of Unit, DG Internal Market, Industry, Entreperneurship and SMEs, European Commission.

Later panels featured key industrial stakeholders such as Karsten Simons, the Manager for Corporate Affairs Europe, Cisco who talked about the Internet of Everything consisting of over 50 billion connected devices and generating 45 million jobs 19 trillion dollars of global revenue. The BBC Steve Herrmann Executive Editor BBC News Online mentioned in his talk how useful Linked Data is for BBC News personalisation.

KMi’s Director joined a panel with Laurent Zibell Policy Adviser for the industriAll European trade union and Carmen Bunzl Boulet a Generation Programme Manager for McKinsey to discuss what digital skills are needed in the workplace to meet today’s industry demands. John’s presentation covered the on-going results of both the FORGE and European Data Science Academy projects which cover eLearning, MOOCs and eBooks in the areas of the Future Internet and Data Science respectively. He also highlighted OU Analyse which has already been used to analyse the learning behaviours of over 45,000 OU students.

Related Links:

Be interesting. It’s on the Syllabus.

Monday 14 Dec 2015 | KMi News

Syllabuses in science are not known for being interesting. They are typically shopping lists, itemising every fact and concept. The problem is, with all those items to check off, teachers spend most of the time drilling kids’ heads full of content instead of filling them with enthusiasm.

The new KS3 Science Syllabus from AQA is different. Jointly developed by the Open University (KMi)’s ENGAGE project for the European Commission, it’s a blueprint for a different kind of science teaching. Students have time to explore real-life controversial issues that affect their lives now, from genetics to climate change.

Our breakthrough design has two special ingredients, which reduce the content teachers need to cover, and show them how to put science in context. First are Big Ideas. Instead of presenting science as a list of facts and concept, our Syllabus sets it out as a set of principles and theories which have changed our view of the universe and ourselves. By reorganising the stuff in the National Curriculum around these 10 big ideas, we slashed the content by a half. Teachers can now see what their students really need to know.

Our second ingredient is a new section in each topic – Apply. Syllabuses usually just define knowledge. Which is strange, because applying what you know to new situations is what we really want students to be able to do. The KS3 Science Syllabus sets out in black and white the ways we want students to be able use their knowledge – including the real-life science students want to learn about.

And this is where ENGAGE fits in – making it easy for teachers to introduce science-in-news issues into the classroom. So Instead of just studying burning and writing equations, the Syllabus asks students to think about the applications and ENGAGE provides a lesson on the Diesel scandal. Students learn the chemistry by studying a diesel engine and wondering whether it’s a good idea to buy Diesel or not.

4000 UK science teachers already come to ENGAGE when they want to turn a conventional lesson into a provocative dilemma for students to solve. Now that these are on the syllabus, we hope these will become a regular part of students’ diets, and help to make learning science the exciting experience it should be.

Related Links:

ENGAGE project website

AQA website

Leveraging Data Mining and Visualization in Future Cities: Enrico Motta talks to RE.WORK

Friday 04 Dec 2015 | KMi News

RE.WORK caught up with MK:Smarts project director and KMi’s Prof. Enrico Motta ahead of the presenation he is giving at RE.WORK Connect City Summit in March 2016 to hear more about MK:Smart, and how we can use technology to address challenges of our cities.

Check out the full blog by clicking here.

Related Links:

http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/motta/

Enrico Motta speaks at British Ambassador’s Residence in Vienna

Friday 04 Dec 2015 | KMi News

As a prelude to European Utility Week an invitation-only networking reception was held on 2nd November in the centre of Vienna. KMi’s Professor Enrico Motta, project director of MK:Smart, took this opportunity to discuss the key issues related to smart cities within the context of utilities.

Following an introduction by HMA to Poland Robin Barnett, Professor Motta led the first session of the evening. He advised on what kind of role Big Data analytics play in the utility industry and what that means for privacy and data ownership. The ‘Digital Utility of the Future’ and the issues which surround Operational and Information Technologies appeared amongst the topics his talk covered.
Other speakers included Patrick Caiger-Smith CEO of Green Energy Options and Daniel Burgess, Senior Business Development Manager for Trade and Investment in the Welsh Government. The event served as an excellent opportunity to share the experience of the MK:Smart project with a wider audience. Attendees included delegates from industry, government and local authorities from across Central Europe.

Related Links:

http://www.mksmart.org/

MK:Smart a finalist at World Smart City Awards 2015

Friday 04 Dec 2015 | KMi News

The Barcelona based World Smart City Congress, a key annual event for Urban Innovation, has judged MK:Smart to be a great example of applied innovation derived from collaborative endeavour.

Alan Fletcher, KMi business development manager, Peter Marland, Leader of MK Council and Geoff Snelson, director of strategy Milton Keynes Council were delighted to accept the nomination on behalf of the project.

“Being a finalist in this competition is a fantastic endorsement for MK:Smart. Recognition at this level for our approach and application is fantastic for the entire consortium” said Alan Fletcher.

MK:Smart was shortlisted for this award against significant competition from around the world. This was warmly welcomed by Peter Marland, Leader of MK council. “Once again, MK is seen to be at the leading edge of innovation on the global stage. This is great news for the city on many levels” said Marland

Related Links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uks-smart-cities-recognised-as-world-class

Season’s Greeting from the Knowledge Media Institute

Friday 27 Nov 2015 | KMi News

The Knowledge Media Institute’s Paul Hogan has developed a mixed Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality mobile app to complement its Christmas card this year.

Users can simply point their device at the card and see it come to life. They can also use the app with Google Cardboard and enter a virtual winter wonderland and take a sleigh ride through the snowy landscape.

Although this is some festive fun it is a way to demonstrate the use of AR and VR in action. Google Cardboard is an inexpensive way to experience this technology, there are however other more sophisticated VR headsets availble on the market.

To get the app for both iOS and Android plus a copy of the card visit the URL below and sign in using your OUCU from your mobile device and follow the instructions.

http://appstore.open.ac.uk/xmas/

The FORGE iBook is live on the Apple Store

Friday 27 Nov 2015 | KMi News

The FORGE iBook is now live on the Apple iBooks Store and available in 51 stores worldwide. This is a fully interactive eBook for iOS and MacOS. It introduces a range of Future Internet topics using FIRE facilities. Readers have the opportunity to study in depth various aspects of networking protocols and infrastructure, watch instructional movies and screencasts, as well as conduct experiments using the FIRE infrastructure.

The iBook features a number of FORGE widgets offering access to various FIRE testbeds. Additionally, it features PT Anywhere, a network simulation widget developed in collaboration with the Cisco Networking Academy. PT Anywhere offers a simplified HTML5 interface to the powerful Packet Tracer network simulator.

Related Links:

The FORGE project

The FORGE iBook

KMi presents new methods for markerless motion capture method at CVMP

Wednesday 25 Nov 2015 | KMi News

Stefan Rueger of KMi presented recent work on markerless motion capture at a landmark Conference for Visual Media Production that was held at BFI Southbank. The significance of this joint work with Frederic Fol Leymarie, Prashant Aparajeya and Vesna Petresin of Goldsmiths is that it will allow a practical way of capturing the motion of articulated moving bodies from a standard single-camera video feed without depth information and without placing markers on the subjects. Potential applications might see dancing performances using computer-aided lighting and projections based on the motion analysis or real-time avatars in video games copying the players’ motions or reacting to them.

The Conference for Visual Media Production is a longstanding event where specialists from the worlds of film, broadcast and games meet with imaging and graphics researchers. The packed auditorium in BFI’s blue cinema saw industrial keynotes from NVIDIA, Google, Double Negative and Industrial Light and Magic

Related Links:

CVMP

OULAD – Open Data for Learning Analytics released

Monday 23 Nov 2015 | KMi News

The OUAnalyse team led by Prof. Zdenek Zdrahal has recently released the Open University Learning Analytics dataset (OULAD). This educational dataset is available under the CC-BY 4.0 license for everybody who wants to experiment with new ideas in Learning Analytics.

The uniqueness of the dataset lies mainly in the richness of data describing student behaviour in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It contains more than 10 millions of records from 22 course presentations generated by more than 32,000 students. To protect personal data, the dataset has been anonymised using the state-of-the art techniques k-Anonymity and L-Diversity.

The dataset was first publically presented at the Open Data Mashup challenge day held on 17th November 2015. This event organised by the Open Data Institute brought together academics, developers and students from a number of UK institutions interested in open data in higher education.

The OULAD team is really looking forward to hearing about novel uses of the dataset. If you need additional information about the dataset and want to download it, please visit https://analyse.kmi.open.ac.uk/open_dataset.

Related Links:

https://analyse.kmi.open.ac.uk/open_dataset

Open University Learning Analytics Dataset

Dasha Herrmannova and Petr Knoth succeed in WSDM Cup 2016

Wednesday 18 Nov 2015 | KMi News

Dasha and Petr have participated in the challenge which is part of the upcoming Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) conference. The challenge, coorganised by Microsoft and Elsevier, was to assess the importance of scholarly articles, using data from Microsoft Academic Graph — a large heterogeneous graph comprised of more than 120 million publications and the related authors, venues, organizations, and fields of study. Dasha and Petr (team called BletchleyPark) were the best out of 32 teams in the training round of the competition and after the validation round were invited to take part in the second phase of the challenge as one of the eight best of the 32 teams. They will also present their method at the workshop in San Francisco, California, in February.

Related Links:

WSDM Cup Challenge

Another new Doctor in KMi

Wednesday 18 Nov 2015 | KMi News

Yesterday, Gregoire Burel successfully passed his viva to become the forth new doctor in KMi this year!

Greg’s thesis entitled ‘Community and thread methods for identifying best answers in online question answering communities’, introduces the concepts of qualitative and structural design in order to investigate if features derived from community questionnaires can enrich the understanding of best answer identification in Q&A communities and if the thread-like structure of such communities can be exploited for better results.

Gregoire is currently working on the KMi co-ordinated EU project Decarbonet – http://www.decarbonet.eu/

Congratulations Greg!

FORGE and Go-Lab meet in Dublin

Friday 06 Nov 2015 | KMi News

Representatives from all FORGE partners met on November 4th and 5th in Trinity College Dublin. This plenary meeting offered an opportunity to check on the progress of the individual work packages of the project, as well as prepare a work plan for the third and final year of the project.

Denis Gillet, technical coordinator of the Go-Lab project, joined the meeting in order to present the latest technological and pedagogical developments of the Go-Lab project, as well as plan the next steps of the ongoing collaboration with the FORGE project. The two projects have initiated an active collaboration by establishing a Special Interest Group (SIG): Remote Labs and Online Experimentation. The SIG has been established within the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL) in order to drive and promote remote labs and online experimentation and to offer the technologies that can help stakeholders build experimental infrastructures and use them across different domains.

The next steps of the FORGE – Go-Lab collaboration will focus on the integration of the technologies offered by the two projects. This will be achieved by offering FORGE widgets via the Go-Lab repository, as well as by enabling FORGE users to access Go-Lab virtual and remote labs via FORGEStore and FORGEBox.

European Data Science Academy at ICT 2015

Thursday 05 Nov 2015 | KMi News

The middle of October saw the European Data Science Academy (EDSA) at ICT 2015. ICT is the major European Commission event in the communications and computing area and this year had over 7,000 registrations. The opening talk included speeches from Günther Oettinger the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society and Anibal Cavaco Silva the President of Portugal.

EDSA addresses the data science skills gap within the EU – within the UK alone there may be 750,000 technical vacancies by 2017 and industry reports that 77% of Big Data roles are “hard-to-fill”.
Within the event EDSA organised a Networking Session, entitled: “Addressing the Big Data and Data Science Skills Gap” chaired by John Domingue. The objective of the session was to bring together researchers and key industrial players to discuss ways of tackling the Big Data and Data Science skills. Three speakers presented short perspectives on the problem:

Market View – Gabriella Cattaneo, Associate Vice President, IDC European Government, Consulting
Industry view – Oscar Corcho Professor Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Computer Science School
EDSA view – Elena Simperl, Associate Professor & Director Data Science Master’s University of Southampton

Overall the session was a great success with attendees extending discussion well beyond the allotted time.

John Domingue also presented the vocabularies and ontologies used within the project at a separate networking session on “Co-designing a taxonomy of digital skills”.

Related Links:

European Data Science Academy website

ICT Conference website

AR app for TV series – The Hunt

Wednesday 28 Oct 2015 | KMi News

The Knowledge Media Institute’s Paul Hogan has developed an augmented reality mobile application for the Open Media Unit to be used in conjunction with their HUNT poster campaign, that compliments the new OU/BBC series ‘The Hunt’ which begins on 1st November on BBC 1.

The app, available on both Android and IOS, provides the user with an augmented reality enhanced view of the HUNT poster. A 3D movie cube is displayed when the user points their device at the poster and they can interact with the cube to view films from the TV series narrated by Sir David Attenborough, with some additional exclusive to the OU content. There are also short films with scientist interviews that will be released in parallel with each aired TV episode.

Broadcast Project Manager for The Hunt, Caroline Green, from The Open Media Unit project managed the development of the app from concept to release.

Please note: the app is not available to download until Monday 2 November.

More details about the The Hunt TV series can be found here http://www.open.edu/openlearn/thehunt

Award winning participation at K-CAP

Wednesday 28 Oct 2015 | KMi News

Every two years the ACM conference highlights significant research on the extraction of knowledge from diverse information sources. Main themes this year included capturing Scientific Knowledge, acquisition of complex Logical Knowledge, Knowledge Processing with Big Data and Semantic Web Technologies such Linked Data, Knowledge Extraction from structured and unstructured sources, Crowdsourcing, and Knowledge Base Learning. The acceptance rate at this conference was 29%.

The conference launched this year. The 1st International Workshop on Capturing Scientific Knowledge (SciKnow 2015), where KMier Alan Third presented "Capturing Scientific Knowledge on Medical Risk Factors.” coauthored with KMi Director John Domingue, in collaboration with Eleni Kaldoudi, Stefanos Roumeliotis, and Kalliopi Pafili (Democritus University of Thrace), and George Gkotsis (ex-KMi, now King’s College London).

Three out of sixteen papers in the main conference track were contributions from KMi

Thomas Dickinson presented "Identifying Prominent Life Events on Twitter”, a paper written in collaboration with Miriam Fernandez, Paul Mulholland, Harith Alani and Lisa A Thomas Pam Briggs from the Northumbria University (presentation slides).

The second paper was "An Ontology Design Pattern to Define Explanations”, a work by Ilaria Tiddi, Mathieu d’Aquin and Enrico Motta, in the session dedicated to Ontology Engineering.

Finally, Enrico Daga presented "Propagation of Policies in Rich Data Flows”, co-authored with Mathieu d’Aquin, Enrico Motta and Aldo Gangemi (ISTC-CNR, Italy and Université Paris 13, France), during the closing session on Ontology and Knowledge Base Learning (slides).

Mathieu d’Aquin continued to participate in steering the committee, and chaired the session dedicated to K-Cap 2013, including papers from the proceedings of the previous edition of the conference, cancelled due to weather conditions in 2013.

While waiting for the next edition in 2017, you can check out the proceedings.

Strong KMi presence at ISWC 2015

Wednesday 28 Oct 2015 | KMi News

The International Semantic Web Conference this year witnessed another populous KMi delegation, with 8 people from the lab attending the conference, which took place in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, on October 11-15. The KMi contributed in a variety of ways to the main Semantic Web conference, both with a significant presence in the organising committee and by presenting a keynote, a research paper, two workshop papers and three demos.

Mathieu d’Aquin served as In-Use and Software Track chair and also gave the keynote at the 1st International Workshop on LINKed EDucation workshop, entitled “Sharing knowledge is what we do: The Education and/or The Semantic Web”. Miriam Fernandez served as Workshop and Tutorial Chairs and was one of the senior researchers involved in the mentoring lunch, which is an annual ISWC event that brings together students and early-career researchers with experienced researchers.
In the competitive research track (22% acceptance rate), Francesco Osborne and Enrico Motta authored a paper on the automatic generation of huge ontologies of research topics titled “Klink-2: Integrating Multiple Web Sources to Generate Semantic Topic Networks”.

Aba-Sah Adzie and John Domingue contributed to the workshop “Visualizations and User Interfaces for Ontologies and Linked Data“ (VOILA 2015) with the paper “Visual Exploration of Formal Requirements for Data Science Demand Analysis”. At the Doctoral Consortium, Angelo Salatino, a first year PhD student at KMi, presented the paper “Early Detection and Forecasting of Research Trends“ and discussed it with PhD students and senior researchers.

KMi also contributed three exciting demos to the Posters and Demos session:

Ilaria Tiddi presented “BASIL: A Cloud Platform for Sharing and Reusing SPARQL Queries as Web APIs” on behalf of Enrico Daga, Luca Panziera and Carlos Pedrinaci
“Bottom-Up Ontology Construction with Contento” by Enrico Daga, Mathieu D’Aquin and Enrico Motta from KMi and Aldo Gangemi from CNR-ISTC Rome
“The RASH Framework: enabling HTML+RDF submissions in scholarly venues” co-authored by Francesco Osborne.

The next ISWC will be held in Kobe, Japan, USA on October 17-21, with Carlos Pedrinaci as sponsorship chairs

Related Links:

The 14th International Semantic Web Conference ISWC

Thomas 2.0: Dr. Ullmann

Tuesday 27 Oct 2015 | KMi News

We have a new doctor in the house: Thomas Ullmann passed his viva today with flying colours, defending his thesis on ‘Automated detection of reflection in texts’.

Thomas investigated in his monograph, how natural language processing and machine learning techniques can be utilised to support the automated recognition of reflective writing, thereby developing a new unified model of reflection as well as rigorously evaluating a set of algorithms apt to identify the different aspects contributing to creative sense-making of the past.

Thomas was supervised by Peter Scott and Fridolin Wild.

Congratulations, Dr. Ullmann 🙂

Double Award at VMworld Europe

Friday 16 Oct 2015 | KMi News

We’re pleased to announce that the MK Data Hub has received two prestigious awards in an event run by a global leader in Virtualisation and Cloud Computing.

The MK Data Hub received awards for "Best virtualisation and disaster recovery project" and the top prize of "Best at show" at the VMworld Europe User Awards 2015. The event held in Barcelona, Spain this year took place at the European conference for Virtualisation and Cloud Computing hosted by VMware, which is the second largest annual conference of its kind.
Senior Systems Manager of the Data Hub Technical Operations (DTOP) team, Robbie Bays was pleased by the double-win, commenting:

"We’re excited that the project has received further recognition for the work by the DTOP team. We were all proud to win ‘Best virtualisation and disaster recovery project’, but ‘Best at Show’ was the cherry on the top!"

The award wins were announced on Computer Weekly’s website, where it was noted that:

"With the smart city initiative gaining momentum worldwide, projects such as this are important to highlight for best practice purposes for other towns and cities looking to do something similar."

The DTOP team have implemented a Disaster Recovery solution using Arcserve UDP after a successful proof of concept in a tight timeframe. The deployment is helping to maximise the availability of the MK Data Hub, safeguarding the reputation, and ultimately the success of, the MK:Smart initiative.

For further details, read about all the award wins here.

Related Links:

Computer Weekly review of the winners at VMworld 2015

The passing of Al Selvin

Thursday 15 Oct 2015 | KMi News

We would like to express our sorrow at the sudden death of Al Selvin.

Al worked with us here from 2003-2011, when he wrote his PhD thesis "Participatory Knowledge Creation as Facilitated Art: An Investigation into Practitioner Ethics and Aesthetics."

As a member of Simon Buckingham Shum’s team, Al also made key contributions towards numerous projects which extended the Compendium software he originally invented (Hypermedia Discourse, e-PhD, CoAKTinG, Co-OPR), also co-founding the Compendium Institute to support the tool’s international user and developer community.

Al’s working relationship with Simon continued after they left KMi and last year they published “Constructing Knowledge Art: An Experiential Perspective on Crafting Participatory Representations”.

He will be sadly missed.

FORGE Runs an EU Commission Future Internet and Digital Skills Workshop

Friday 02 Oct 2015 | KMi News

At the request of the EU Commission FORGE, an EU project coordinated by KMi, ran a workshop at the headquarters of the Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) unit in Brussels on Digital Skills and the Future Internet. The workshop was attended by senior FIRE representatives including the unit’s Head and Deputy Head as well as representatives from the eSkills unit in Luxembourg by video link.

In addition to presentations from members of the FORGE project there were presentations from the European Research and Education network GEANT and Cisco.

The key theme of the event was that there is a growing digital skills gap which deeply affects European industry. For example, one recent study estimates that the UK is losing 2 billion pounds per year due to unfilled roles which require digital skills. Piotr Pluta Director of Corporate Affairs at Cisco Systems stressed the importance of digital skills within their corporate vision of the Internet of Everything (people, things, processes and data) which will soon be the foundation of a 19 trillion dollar market.

KMi’s FORGE team (John Domingue, Alex Mikroyannidis and Aitor Gomez-Goiri) and Andrew Smith of MCT are liaising with Piotr and other senior Cisco managers to see how our FORGE results can meet their significant training requirements. One specific technology is PT Anywhere which embeds Cisco’s powerful internet simulator within eBooks. The event was chaired by John Domingue.

Related Links:

FORGE website

PT Anywhere website

5th ESWC Summer School 2015

Wednesday 30 Sep 2015 | KMi News

“Definitely would recommend ESWC Summer School not as a regular event you can visit, but as a unique part of my life”

Just a statement from one of our 24 students who attended ESWC Summer School in Kalamaki, Southern Crete last week. Prof John Domingue, Director of the School and President of STI International lead a very successful 5th ESWC Summer school with Dr Elena Simperl (University of Southampton) and a team of tutors who included KMi’s Allan Third.

The school, which was completely taught outdoors, combined a number of tutorials, hands-on sessions, a poster session and also a group mini-project to ‘prepare the next generation of young researchers in Semantic Web and Linked Data’. Highlights of the week included five fantastic and inspirational keynotes from both an industrial background, James Hodson and Chris Welty and also prominent figures in academia; Marko Grobelnik, Martin Hepp and Lora Aroyo.

Next year, the Summer School moves to Dubrovnik – look out for registration opening soon!

Related Links:

http://summerschool2015.eswc-conferences.org/

Two New Senior Researchers

Thursday 24 Sep 2015 | KMi News

We gathered at the Town Meeting today to celebrate promotions for Carlos Pedrinaci and Mathieu d’Aquin. Both members of staff are now officially "Senior Lecturers."

Director, John Domingue congratulated the pair, and with a glass of bubbly and a slice of cake, they each gave a brief speech.

Mathieu admitted that, although he had put in the hours and the effort to get to this point, he couldn’t have done it without such a hard-working team.

Carlos echoed these sentiments and reported that this was a particularly happy time for him, as he and fellow-KMi’er, Anna De Liddo expect the birth of their first child. In fact, Carlos said he had only a number of hours before he would board the plane to Italy to visit Anna.

Congratulations to all three from the whole lab!

Building Remote Labs for Online Scientific Experimentation

Thursday 24 Sep 2015 | KMi News

The FORGE and Go-Lab projects have jointly organised the hands-on workshop “Building Remote Labs for Online Scientific Experimentation”, which was collocated with the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF), the International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL) and the International Conference on Engineering Pedagogy (IGIP). The workshop took place on 20 September in Florence, Italy.

Alexander Mikroyannidis and other representatives from the FORGE and Go-Lab projects presented the methodologies and tools that have been developed by these two projects for building remote labs. The full programme of the event is available here.

This has been the first event of the recently established Special Interest Group (SIG): Remote Labs and Online Experimentation. The SIG has been established within the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL) in order to drive and promote remote labs and online experimentation and to offer the technologies that can help stakeholders build experimental infrastructures and use them across different domains.

Related Links:

The FORGE project

The Go-Lab project

FORGE at the 5th ARTEL workshop in Toledo

Thursday 24 Sep 2015 | KMi News

The FORGE project has organised the 5th Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in Technology Enhanced Learning (ARTEL 2015), which was held in the context of the EC-TEL 2015, in Toledo, Spain on 15 September 2015.

The workshop aimed at:

Providing a forum for presenting and discussing research on awareness and reflection in TEL.
Creating an interactive experience that connects participants’ research, current tools or latest prototypes and models with real end users’ learning experiences and requirements regarding reflection technology.
Creating an agenda for future ARTEL research and development.

Alexander Mikroyannidis from KMi presented the Learning Analytics approach of FORGE, which aims at supporting awareness and reflection both for learners and educators in online scientific experimentation.

The workshop proceedings will be published as open access by CEUR. The workshop will be accompanied by a special issue on Awareness and Reflection in Technology Enhanced Learning published in the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL).

Related Links:

The FORGE project

ARTEL 2015

Keep up-to-date with our news on iPhone or Apple Watch

Wednesday 02 Sep 2015 | KMi News

The Knowledge Media Institute have built The Open University’s first Apple Watch app to help you keep up-to-date with KMi’s news. The mobile version is also available for the iPhone.

KMi’s Paul Hogan has ensured that it is easy to use on the Apple Watch – you simply tap on the news story which interests you and scroll down to read. Return to the list with a quick tap and choose another article. Think there’s a recent story you may have missed? To read older news items simply tap and hold (also known as force-tap) and you will be able to access the archive.

If you can’t wait for it to arrive in the app store contact Paul.Hogan@open.ac.uk to download it for the iPhone or the Apple Watch.

Watch the trailer for the KMi News app for Apple Watch here.

KMi wins over 2 million euros in funding from H2020

Wednesday 26 Aug 2015 | KMi News

Once again, the lab has been successful in winning significant sums of funding from Horizon 2020. As a result, we are pleased to announce four new projects due to begin in January 2016.

The lab won funding for four of the six successful ICT projects at The Open University. These projects will be pushing the boundaries in terms of moving analytics into the everyday, helping to deliver MOOCs through collaborative technology and integrating the use of wearables.

What’s more, as mentioned at KMi’s 20th anniversary, social responsibility is a recurring theme throughout our work. The new projects detailed below focus on supporting learners in different contexts and helping us deal with crisis situations. Of the four new projects, we are proud to be coordinating one – COMRADES.

AFEL (Analytics for Everyday Learning)

PI – Mathieu d’Aquin

The goal is to develop, pilot and evaluate methods and applications, which advance informal/collective learning when it takes place in online social environments.

Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining traditionally relate to the analysis and exploration of data coming from learning environments, especially to understand learners’ behaviours. However, studies have for a long time demonstrated that learning activities happen outside of formal educational platforms, also. This includes informal and collective learning usually associated, as a side effect, with other (social) environments and activities.

AFEL will tackle the main challenges of informal learning analytics through 1) developing the tools and techniques necessary to capture information about learning activities from (not necessarily educational) online social environments; 2) creating methods for the analysis of such informal learning data, based on combining visual analytics with cognitive models of learning and collaboration; and 3) demonstrating the potential of the approach in improving the understanding of informal learning, and the way it is better supported; 4) evaluate all the former items in real world large-scale applications and platforms.

COMRADES

Coordinator – Harith Alani

This project will build an intelligent collective resilience platform to help communities to reconnect, respond, and recover from crisis situations.

The rise of social media as an information channel during crises has become key to community resilience and response. However, existing crisis awareness applications, such as Ushahidi, while vital for information gathering, often struggle to address the challenges of real-time social data analysis and aggregation of crisis micro-events, and filtering of unverified content and reporters.

COMRADES will achieve its aims through an interdisciplinary, socio-technical approach, which will draw on the latest advances in computational social science, social computing, real-time analytics, text and social media analysis, and Linked Open Data. The open source COMRADES platform will go beyond the now standard data collection, mapping, and manual analysis functions provided by the underpinning, widely used Ushahidi crisis mapping tool, to include new intelligent algorithms aimed at helping communities, citizens, and humanitarian services with analysing, verifying, monitoring, and responding to emergency events.
COMRADES is funded under the CAPS (Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation) H2020 call, and its consortium consists of the Open University, I-Hub (Kenya), University of Sheffield, University of Agder (Norway), and Government To You (Brussels).

SLIDEWIKI

PI – John Domingue

This project will develop a state-of-the-art MOOC delivery platform which enables collaborative slide creation.

A major obstacle to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of education in Europe is the lack of widely available, accessible, multilingual, timely, engaging and high-quality educational material (i.e. OpenCourseWare). The creation of comprehensive OpenCourseWare (OCW) is tedious, time-consuming and expensive, with the effect, that often courseware employed by teachers, instructors and professors is incomplete, outdated and inaccessible to those with disabilities. With the open-source SlideWiki platform (available at SlideWiki.org) the effort of the creation, translation and evolution of highly-structured remixable OCW can be widely shared using crowdsourcing.

As part of this project we will run four large-scale trials in secondary education, vocational and professional training, higher education and community-driven open-education. Each of these large-scale trials will be performed with hundreds of educators and thousands of learners in countries all over Europe.

WEKIT

PI – Fridolin Wild

Wearable TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) platforms enhance human abilities to acquire procedural knowledge on the factory floor.

Smarter products and services will improve workflows, enhancing (re)training of workers whose skill sets need upgrading to cyber-physical systems present in a Smart Factory. By building on multi-discipline research (e.g., human-centred methodology integrating cognitive models, ergonomics, an understanding of worker’s wellbeing) we will accelerate how we identify, acquire and exploit skills valued by industry.

WEKIT aims to encourage early adopters (e.g., in manufacturing) who will experienced Augmented Reality (AR) training in situ with live expert guidance, often in new situations, which have a high impact on effectiveness in production. WEKIT is strongly aligned with EU job/training policies (e.g., Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs). It enhances the industrial value chain, reduces fragmentation/cost and improves efficiencies with impact regarding speed and scale in production. The final outputs will be made suitable for workplace integration via industry-standard repositories and toolkits.

Related Links:

Ushahidi

Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation

Slide Wiki

Changing the way businesses look at textiles

Thursday 20 Aug 2015 | KMi News

The TCBL project kicked off last month – What’s it all about?

Textile & Clothing Business Labs (TCBL) aims to create a transformational ecosystem capable of constantly innovating with the business and process models of the European Textile and Clothing (T&C) industry. The latter sector shows the greatest dependence on price based competition (a race to the bottom, globally) and at the same time the greatest promise of potential impact of new trends such as mass customisation, home production, etc. on business and process models.

Principal Investigator, Fridolin Wild and his collaborators will be facing the challenge of exploiting and governing these trends to strongly re-direct EU’s T&C sector away from competing on price towards competing on knowledge, to reach economic, environmental, and social sustainability. To approach this on a global scale, the project aims to act on knowledge transforming processes as elements of an emergent business ecosystem that includes more agile, cheaper, more reliable supply chains, which during this project will become increasingly customer-driven (from B2B supply chains, to C2B supply chains and variants on them such as ad hoc bulk purchasing, C+C).

We will be carrying out research on equipment and materials as well as customer creativity and aspirations; experimenting on and integrating innovative processes into business systems; and developing complementary ICT services supporting the shift towards complex and distributed, but flexible and responsive value chains.

Pilot actions will also include proof-of-concept applications to sectors other than T&C, such as footwear or furniture, both to evaluate the transferability of the business model concepts and to explore potential new cross-sector business propositions. A core set of partners will “seed” pilot activities and extend them to external actors participating in the TCBL Associates Programme.

Student Analytics mentioned on BBC

Thursday 06 Aug 2015 | KMi News

On Tuesday 28 July the BBC posted a news story about how students at the OU are going to have their progress monitored by software to spot if they need any extra support. This related to Zdenek Zdrahal’s project – OU Analyse.

KMi’s new Director, John Domingue and Ruth Tudor, President of The Open University’s Students’ Association represented the University and explained that the scheme is designed to observe students’ paths through courses and engagement with online learning modules.

Related Links:

BBC article

KMi technologies feature in the FT

Wednesday 29 Jul 2015 | KMi News

The Financial Times published an article at the weekend on how universities, including The Open University, are using student data to predict academic performance.

Our former Director, Peter Scott, introduced journalist, Helen Warrell to OU Analyse, a project led by Zdenek Zdrahal (see photo). The data collected by the technology created by Zdenek’s team includes how much of the online textbooks students have read and how they have engaged on student forums.

Peter mentioned how student data can inform HE institutions to encourage learners to head in the right direction. He went on to say that data could also be used by the student themselves to maximise their chances of succeeding.

“We want to give you the data so you manipulate yourself.” – Peter Scott

When the FT came to visit us they also filmed some our work to find out how digital technology is changing the way people learn. Fridolin Wild and Giuseppe Scavo took this opportunity to showcase their work with Augmented Reality and how it can help people learn skills remotely. The “Ghost Hands” technology, featured in the video on the FT’s site, allows an instructor to talk pupils through complicated manoeuvres via the Internet.

Read the full article here.

Related Links:

Article – Students Under Surveillance

Video – Predicting student success

Angelo reports on SSSW 2015

Friday 17 Jul 2015 | KMi News

Last week, the 11th Summer School on Ontological Engineering and the Semantic Web took place.

Unlike other years, it was held in Bertinoro (Italy) instead of Cercedilla (Spain) and relied on an extended organising committee such as Mathieu d’Aquin, Valentina Presutti and Oscar Corcho. KMiers, Ilaria Tiddi and Enrico Daga also helped to organise the summer school and arrange the social events.

There were tutorials from Claudia d’Amato, Philippe Cudre-Mauroux, Laura Hollink, Axel Ngonga, Axel Polleres, Maria-Ester Vidal, as well as talks from Frank van Harmelen, Steffen Staab, Roberto Navigli, Luc Steels and a hackday from IBM which aimed to engage students in research and the open challenges that the scientific community is currently facing.

Angelo Salatino, attended the summer school as a PhD student, along with other 58 students from different institutions all around the world:

“During the summer school I had the chance to learn many things about the Semantic Web and how other research fields can be improved with the technologies it provides. I also attended some interesting talks from experts in this field and I worked on some of the current challenges in research which I consider useful for my career.

However, one of the most important things was that I had the chance to meet new people, that hopefully I will meet again in conferences and maybe we will have the chance to work together! If somebody were to ask me how I would describe the summer school, in brief I would say: exciting and useful to build your network of contacts!” – Angelo Salatino, PhD student at KMi

Related Links:

SSSW 2015

Augmented Reality on Show

Friday 17 Jul 2015 | KMi News

Last week Mobile Applications Developer from KMi, Paul Hogan gave a 45 minute presentation on KMi’s work with Augmented Reality (AR) for visiting staff and academics from the Shanghai Open University at the OU’s Business Development Unit (BDU).

Paul’s work shows how you can use a printed image or 3D object as an AR "target" that your app uses as a trackable reference, over which it can display its augmentation. We’ve been using this technique for various purposes in the lab. For example, at KMi’s 20th celebration a 3D heart burst out of KMi t-shirts that beat along to the wearer’s own heart rate.

Augmented Reality is central to the TELL ME project, in which it supports learning at a distance, and it is even a feature in The Open University’s prospectus (see image below).

Speaking through an interpreter, Paul displayed a number of AR apps. His captivated audience had lots to ask about the technique and how it can be manipulated for different purposes.

Related Links:

TELL ME

Inquiry-Based Learning with Online Labs and Mobile Apps

Tuesday 14 Jul 2015 | KMi News

Representatives from the European projects weSPOT and Go-Lab organised and delivered a joint hands-on workshop at the JTEL summer school, which took place last week in Ischia, Italy. The workshop was entitled "Inquiry-Based Learning with Online Labs and Mobile Apps" and allowed participants to experiment with the inquiry toolkits developed by the weSPOT and Go-Lab projects in order to perform scientific inquiries collaboratively using virtual labs and dedicated mobile apps. weSPOT was represented by Alexander Mikroyannidis (KMi) and Go-Lab by Denis Gillet (EPFL), Sten Govaerts (EPFL) and Yiwei Cao (IMC).

This workshop has built on the successful collaboration between the two projects, which was initiated in last year’s JTEL summer school. During that event, a first step towards the technical integration of the toolkits offered by the two projects was achieved. This year’s joint workshop strengthened this collaboration and presented the outcomes of both projects in a pedagogical and technological way.

The JTEL summer school (Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning) is an annual event for PhD students working on topics from a broad range of domains, which contribute to advancing the field of Technology Enhanced Learning. This year, the JTEL summer school was co-located with the EMMA summer school on MOOC Design.

Related Links:

The JTEL summer school

VPH Share rated ‘Excellent’ in final review

Tuesday 14 Jul 2015 | KMi News

VPH Share has concluded with a very successful final review in Eindhoven this month, where the reviewers described the project as "excellent and important". VPH Share is focused on providing a cloud environment enabling clinical researchers to develop simulation and decision support workflows to allow raw medical data to be refined into meaningful diagnostic and therapeutic information. The review presentation focused on the user stories enabled by the VPH Share "infostructure", for clinical, educational, industrial and research users, each of which have real-world problems which can be addressed using the project. The sustainability of the project was highlighted, showing how it can continue to contribute to the various user groups beyond the life of the project.

KMi’s contribution to the project is in the area of semantic services. By supporting semantic annotation of VPH Share services using the SWEET and iServe technologies, clinical researchers are enabled to discover and create new workflows relevant to their data, and datasets already published on the VPH Share platform.

Particular mention was made of the positive and open attitude of the project and its service to users.

Driving a car – with just your mind

Tuesday 14 Jul 2015 | KMi News

KMi researchers sometimes get to do some pretty strange things and this week project officer Chris Valentine got the chance to be one of the first people in the world to drive a car using just the power of thought.

"Technicians working for insurance comparison website MoneySuperMarket.com combined the very latest in commercial electroencephalogram (EEG) neuro headsets with the type of remote car control technology you might have seen on TV programmes such as Fifth Gear, and added some clever interpretation software to allow a person to actually drive a car purely using the power of thought.

"Based in a blacked-out movie studio deep in the heart of Hampshire, a short but twisty circuit is projected on the studio floor using lasers. A single forward-facing camera is the only feedback the driver gets that the car is actually following their instructions. And I can tell you – its not easy! Each driver has to train the software first, thinking lefty and righty thoughts that the computer can learn and recognise and relay to the remote systems via a local wireless network. In addition, a forward tilt of the head accelerates the car from standing to a safe five miles per hour; a tilt backwards stops it immediately – a good thing when large concrete blocks are deployed to protect sensitive equipment. A telematic system inside reports on how smoothly – or not – the driver is managing to control the car. The whole system took two months from initial idea to fruition and to their knowledge is a world-first.

"Three people were invited to test the system and report back. Each of us took different amounts of time to train and it was soon obvious the lone female among us was far more suited to the task, getting a peak brain training score of 90% – whereas I could only reach 40% by shutting my eyes – not conducive to driving the car round the course.

The training process was frustrating and I’m afraid I won’t able to be consistant in my controlling the car. It’s obvious that this technology is leading edge – something we’re used to in KMi – but we are a long way off being able to do this sort of thing in the real world. What really is amazing is just how cheap the hardware is – the company’s top-of-the-range headset is only $499"

Related Links:

Emotiv EEG headsets

MoneySuperMarket Car Insurance Epic Mind Drive experience

International recognition of CORE in the Best of Business Web

Monday 13 Jul 2015 | KMi News

KMi’s project COnnecting REpositories (CORE) was included in the June issue of the Best of Business Web newsletter.

According to the editor’s, Robert Berkman, comment, CORE … is a real gold mine of a research site. You can perform precision searches by using the advanced search to quickly search via phrase or Boolean; limit by author, publisher and year; choose to only return articles available in fulltext; and search the entire text or limit to those found in the title and abstract. After the list of initial results are returned, you can further refine the list by publication type, language, journal and other fields. CORE also will suggest similar articles and displays these via a visually impressive interactive graph. While only 10% of the items are available in PDF fulltext, even for those that are not, full bibliographic information and an abstract are provided. Consider this site if you are looking for academic and scholarly papers from around the world, including those in languages other than English.

The Best of Business Web is a monthly newsletter addressed to market researchers, information professionals, entrepreneurs and business librarians. The newsletter is run by the New School of Public Engagement, New York City, USA.

This demonstrates the international attention that CORE receives and its important role in promoting open access to scholarly scientific results.

Secondary pupils present three ‘urban inquiries’ projects created through weSPOT at the International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation

Tuesday 23 Jun 2015 | KMi News

Seven secondary pupils and two Science Educators represented Stantonbury School at the ICTPI 2015 international conference today. They presented three urban inquiries on: Energy Consumption, Electric Cars and Solar panels. "Urban Inquiries" is an initiative coordinated by the Knowledge Media Institute, supported by Ale Okada, Alex Mikroyannidis and Annika Wolff. Its aim is to help educators and learners develop authentic inquiry based projects and promote Responsible Research and Innovation.

The theme of the 15th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI) focused on ‘ICT and Science in a Complex World’. It attracted a large audience interested in: Education Futures, Smart Cities, New Economy, Data Security, Energy and MK: Enterprise Growth. This event also included a poster session on STEM Education in Schools, organised by Cliff Zintgraff (University of Texas), Gerd Kortuem and Annika Wolff (MCT, The Open University).

Among others, a team from King Henry VIII School, Coventry presented their Robotic project, which was a finalist at the 2015 Vex Robotics World Championship. Wavendon Gate school demonstrated some games they have been making and Stantonbury school discussed their work related to the Urban Inquiries project, which draws on MK:Smart, WeSpot, ENGAGE and nQuire projects.

The first pilots of Urban Inquiries were developed by five researchers, two science teachers and a group of 26 students (13 years old). They used weSPOT and nQuire-it to develop their investigations and interact with researchers, science educators, non-academic experts and parents.

First, learners created scientific questions and collected data in weSPOT. Second, they discussed data to facilitate their analysis in nQuire-it. Third, arguments were co-constructed to support their evidence-based reports in Litemap tool. Three posters were co-authored by participants and presented at the ICTPI conference. Educators and researchers created the activities and provided support based on pedagogical approaches: Scientific Dilemma, Group discussion, Data Inquiry and Storytelling.

The Stantonbury School team was very excited to participate in an international conference. Young students mentioned that it was the first time they participated in an international event. “It was a great opportunity to discuss our projects, obtain interesting feedback and increase our network”.

Related Links:

Urban Inquiries Project

weSPOT – inquiry based learning technologies

nQuire it – citizen science platform

ENGAGE – inquiry based learning OER

MK:smart portal

Urban Data School

Promoting Partnerships among Universities, Schools and Research Centres for Smart Citizenship

Tuesday 23 Jun 2015 | KMi News

The Open University hosted the 15th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI) on 17-19 June 2015. ICTPI’15 conference brought together leading representatives of academic, business, and government sectors worldwide to present and discuss current and future issues of using science and technology.

The theme of ICTPI 2015 focuses on ‘ICT and Science in a Complex World’. This event attracted large audience interested on: Education Futures, Smart Cities, New Economy, Data Security, Energy and MK: Enterprise Growth. Professor Enrico Motta presented the project MK:Smart including ‘MK Data Hub’, which supports the acquisition and management of vast amounts of data relevant to city systems from a variety of data sources. Annika Wolff gave a talk on ‘Bringing Smart City Data Skills to Schools’ as part of MK:smart project.

Ale Okada introduced the project Urban Inquiries, which is based on various international and national projects. It applies pedagogical approaches such as scientific dilemma (ENGAGE), data inquiry (MK: Smart) and inquiry based learning technologies (weSPOT, LiteMap and nQuire-it). Urban inquiries aims to support educators and learners to develop authentic inquiry based projects and promote Responsible Research and Innovation. She also presented the paper developed with Annika Wolff and Alex Mikroyannidis: ‘Promoting partnerships among Universities, schools and research centres to foster Responsible Research and Innovation for smart citizenship’.

This pilot research discusses three ‘urban inquiries’ projects on: Energy Consumption, Electric Cars and Solar panels, which were developed by Stantonbury school. This study indicated evidence on co-inquiry based learning focused on the collaborative construction of scientific questions. It showed how Personal Learning Environments supported young smart learners to develop collective inquiry and share outcomes. Secondary pupils co-authored 3 videos, 3 posters for international conference and 1 conference presentation through ‘urban inquiries’.

Urban Inquiries, RRI and Partnerships from Alexandra Okada

Related Links:

15th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI)

Urban Inquiries project

ENGAGE – inquiry based learning OER

MK:smart portal

weSPOT – inquiry based learning technologies

Urban Data School

KMi project wins Storage Award at annual event

Monday 22 Jun 2015 | KMi News

The OU-led digital initiative MK:Smart was successful at the 22nd annual Storage Awards, held at the prestigious Grand Connaught Rooms in London. The MK Data Hub was nominated (and won!) in the “Best Storage Solution” category for its “Data protection project”, this was built in conjunction with NCE Europe, Arcserve and CMS Distribution. Attending and receiving the award was staff from NCE, Arcserve and CMS and from KMi representing the Open University was Paul Alexander, Jane Whild and Jai Gadhvi.

“It’s pleasing to both be nominated and successful in receiving the award”, noted Technical Operations Lead of the Data Hub Technical Operations (DTOP) Paul Alexander. “The work put in by the team to build the MK data hub was immense, with everyone working long hours in a short space of time to get it up and running. So it’s especially pleasing for their efforts to be recognised and I’m keen for us to take this forward as a motivational tool to gain more success”.

The MK Data Hub infrastructure is at the heart of the project, running in central Milton Keynes. It supports the acquisition and management of vast amounts of data relevant to city systems from a variety of sources, such as local and national open data repositories; data streams from both key infrastructure networks (energy, transport, water) and other relevant sensor networks (e.g., weather and pollution data); satellite data; data crowdsourced from social media or through specialised apps; and others.

Related Links:

MK:Smart Project

Farewell Celebration for Peter Scott

Thursday 18 Jun 2015 | KMi News

Members of KMi and colleagues from across the University gathered in the lab to say goodbye to our Director.

Peter will be sorely missed in his role as a leader and a mentor in KMi. After twenty years of service to The Open University, and seven years as KMi’s Director, Professor Scott will soon become Assistant Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

KMi’s Director-designate, Professor John Domingue, gave a talk reflecting on the many years they’d spent working together and Professor Scott’s contribution to the lab. Having joined the lab when it was set up twenty years ago, Professor Domingue, will be beginning his role as Director on 1 August.

A number of leaving videos were contributed – students:

Staff:

And from the KMi secretarial staff:

Case Study of the Week for the OU’s SUPI project

Tuesday 09 Jun 2015 | KMi News

The Open University’s Schools University Partnership Initiative (SUPI) is being featured as the ‘Case Study of the Week’ on the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s (NCCPE’s) website.

Over the last year Trevor Collins (KMI), Peter Devine (IET), Rick Holliman (Science) and Mark Russell (Denbigh School) ran a series of participatory design workshops to explore the perceptions of school-university partnerships held by young people and university researchers, with the purpose of developing some information resources for schools and researchers that communicate the values underpinning the initiative. A case study explaining the approach was written up as part of the annual report for the initiative and has been selected for publication on the NCCPE site along with some supporting resources.

Through a series of five school sessions and one university session we worked with six school pupils and twelve university researchers to draw, group and review a set of positive and negative attributes they associate with school-university engagement practices. Once started the pupils and researchers found drawing a quick and easy way of generating attributes that would have been more challenging to write as a list of words (see the stop-frame animation in the case study linked below). Comparing and contrasting the attributes identified by students and university researchers led to further discussions of the form and format of engagement activities. We then worked with the Denbigh pupils to develop a design for a wristband that will be used as a means to communicate and promote the values of the partnership initiative.

In this case, collaboration through participatory design led to an outcome that neither group would have produced individually. Working together was the only way to gain an insight into the priorities and values held by pupils and researchers, which was a necessary foundation for communicating effectively the goals of the initiative. Being showcased by the NCCPE brings this work to national attention and provides a further means for sharing the participatory design approach with the wider engagement community.

Related Links:

The Communicating Partnership case study featured on the NCCPE website.

Engaging Opportunities – The OU’s Schools University Partnership Inititive project.

The RCUK’s Schools University Partnership Initiative site.

The NCCPE’s Schools University Partnership Initiative pages.

The Open University and Cisco at the exp.at conference

Monday 08 Jun 2015 | KMi News

The 3rd Experiment@International Conference (exp.at’15) took place last week in the beautiful island of Sao Miguel in the Azores. This biannual conference is dedicated to online experimentation, providing a forum of discussion and collaboration between academics, researchers, web designers, K-12 teachers and industry, trying to bridge the gap between academic applications and results as well as real world needs and experiences.

The results of the ongoing collaboration between members of the Open University and the Cisco Networking Academy were presented at the exp.at conference. Alexander Mikroyannidis (Knowledge Media Institute) and Andrew Smith (Faculty of Mathematics Computing and Technology) from the Open University together with Nuno Guarda (Head of Corporate Affairs for Cisco in the UK and Ireland), presented the latest developments of transforming Cisco’s Packet Tracer educational software into a web platform that can be accessed by any web browser, as well as embedded and used inside an online course or an interactive eBook.

This work is funded by the FORGE project, as part of its initiative in driving and promoting the concept of experimentally driven research in education by using experiments as an interactive learning and training channel for both students and professionals.

Related Links:

The exp.at conference

The FORGE project

KMi celebrates its 20th Anniversary

Thursday 21 May 2015 | KMi News

Yesterday we reflected on how far we’ve come as a lab and discussed what’s next for Knowledge Media.

We were joined by guests and former colleagues from a range of academic institutions to celebrate this wonderful milestone for KMi.

The event was opened by the OU’s new Vice Chancellor, Peter Horrocks and special guests included some of KMi’s founders: Marc Eisenstadt, Tom Vincent and Kitty Chisholm. Guest speakers reminisced over the achievements of the lab over the years and looked to the future.

The talks concluded with a panel discussion, chaired by John Domingue KMi’s Director-designate, on the future of Knowledge Media. Next, our Master of Ceremonies, Enrico Motta steered everyone to the Library for a buzzing exhibition of our current hot projects.

For more details about the day visit http://www.kmi.open.ac.uk/20

Rutgers workshop on social and collaborative information seeking

Monday 18 May 2015 | KMi News

PhD student Simon Knight has just returned from a week at the School of Communications and Information at Rutgers University where he was an invited attendee of the DIMACS (Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science) funded Workshop on Social and Collaborative Information Seeking (SCIS) held under the auspices of the Special Focus on Information Sharing and Dynamic Data Analysis. The workshop was an opportunity for interdisciplinary researchers to present their work around SCIS and discuss future development of research agendas, collaborations, funding, and the general development of the field.

The week also provided more time to work with collaborators in Chirag Shah’s collaborative information seeking lab and opportunities to talk with colleagues in Clark Chinn’s epistemic cognition group in the Graduate School of Education. This included giving a demo of the Coagmento tool (jointly with Matt Mitsui from Chirag’s group), developed in Chirag’s lab, and used in Simon’s research on epistemic cognition in information seeking. The week also included a celebratory event at the ASIS&T Distinguished Lecturer award presention to Michael Buckland who talked on “Information Science Past and Future: A Personal View” giving insight into the development of the field over his years in the field.

Related Links:

DIMACS SCIS workshop website

Coagmento website

Collaborative information seeking lab, Rutgers

image URL

EATEL SIG Remote Labs and Online Experimentation is established

Friday 08 May 2015 | KMi News

The European projects FORGE and Go-Lab have jointly established the Special Interest Group (SIG): Remote Labs and Online Experimentation. The SIG has been established within the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL). The EATEL supports a network of European research laboratories and groups via free services, sponsoring high profile TEL events, a knowledge interchange, and a set of very active Special Interest Groups.

The main goal of the new SIG is to drive and promote remote labs and online experimentation and to offer the technologies that can help stakeholders build experimental infrastructures and use them across different domains. The SIG aims at creating an open community and ecosystem where a wide range of educational resources and different setups for scientific experimentation are shared among the community members. The SIG also aims at developing best pedagogical and technical practices to broaden the adoption of remote labs and online experimentation in the teacher and provider communities.

To keep up to date with the latest SIG news and activities join the mailing list: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/sig-remote-lab

Related Links:

SIG Remote Labs and Online Experimentation

Teaching Award for Student Connections Team

Thursday 30 Apr 2015 | KMi News

Kevin Quick, Jon Linney, Ben Hawkridge and Chris Valentine received an OU Teaching Award at the Charter Day on 23 April 2015.

The Faculty of Social Sciences launched Student Connections in May 2014 in order to bring OU students and academics together to build a mutually beneficial community. Student Connections is made up of numerous elements including an annual online conference where students can connect with each other via a range of media; other elements or ‘mini-connections’ (such as Activate sessions, The Podmag and This Student Life) are all aimed at enhancing the overall student experience.

Visitors not only watched the event, broadcast from the KMi Podium using the Livestream multicast service, but could also take part through the live chat and interactive widgets built by Kevin Quick and Jon Linney.

FORGE in Bulgaria

Tuesday 28 Apr 2015 | KMi News

Last week, a two-day event was held in Troyan (Bulgaria) to present new ICT solutions to Bulgarian universities. In this event, John Domingue presented the FORGE project to members of Bulgarian universities. The audience become aware of the possibility of using FIRE‘s experimentation facilities for teaching purposes and how FORGE can facilitate this. Particularly, John presented the ongoing Open Call which will provide training and support to any associate partner interested in reusing or creating new courses using FORGE’s tools and processes.

This presentation was complemented by a hands-on session where more technical insights about both the project and its Open Call were presented. First, Daan Pareit (iMinds, Ghent University) presented some sample FIRE experiment facilities and their typical lifecycle. Afterwards, he showed how to use FORGE’s tools to operate a sample testbed. Finally, Alexander Mikroyannidis guided the audience on how to produce an iBook which contains FORGE’s resources.

The event was organized jointly by Bulgarian Research and Education Network (BREN) and Kontrax. See more information here.

Related Links:

Event programme

OU staff find out about Knowledge Media

Friday 24 Apr 2015 | KMi News

The Open University’s Charter Day celebrations concluded with the Learn About Fair yesterday.

People from all over the OU found out more about a variety KMi projects, including Engage and EDV. It was a particularly good opportunity for the latter to showcase the Democratic Replay tool, as we quickly approach the UK General Election next month.

The two day fair was well attended and we exhibited to several VIP guests. Zdenek was pleased to discuss OU Analyse with Chancellor, Martha-Lane Fox, who showed a real interst in the work behind it. Members of MK:Smart were also given the chance to meet Vice Chancellor Peter Horrocks and Mark Lancaster, MP for North East Milton Keynes.

There was clear interest in our technologies from different faculties. We were approached about exhibiting our AR demo and CORE work at an OU conference in June. There was lots of interest in Paul Hogan’s AR app promoting MK:Smart. Take a look at it in action in the photo gallery.

CHI2015 SIG panel on Online Deliberative Processes and Technologies

Tuesday 21 Apr 2015 | KMi News

A new Special Interest Group on Online Deliberation will be launched this 22 of April 2015!

Online Deliberation (OD) is an important and increasingly common Internet phenomenon that has drawn attention from researchers in various disciplines. A series of events, projects and workshops have been convened by organizers of this SIG. From 2003-2010 there were four International Conferences on Online Deliberation [1]. Over the past five years, gatherings have moved to workshops hosted by conferences in specialized – although interdisciplinary – areas such as Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) (e.g., ACM CSCW 2012 [2], COOP 2012, Communities and Technologies 2013 [3]); Social, Political and Media Communication [4]; Collective Intelligence, Sensemaking, and Computer-Supported Argumentation [5, 6]; and Natural Language Processing [7]). Examples of recent studies of large-scale deliberation emerged from these workshops can be found in a 2015 journal issue [8].

The trend toward fragmentation across specialized areas partly reflects the difficulties encountered in the early attempts to bring researchers from many disciplines together. The fundamental assumptions (such as the meaning of “deliberation”) differ particularly across the computer science and social science communities. Nonetheless, the problem of designing deliberative processes and technologies remains inherently interdisciplinary. The goal of this SIG meeting is to map these connections and set the research landscape for the HCI community to study and design online deliberative processes and technologies.

This SIG meeting will help bring together a diversity of researchers and practitioners and lay common ground for the definition and organization of research and design for online deliberative processes and technologies.

We expect to

provide more rigorous definitions of the topics under scrutiny in relation to existing theories, methods, and technologies (e.g., to set criteria for “good” online deliberation to guide design);
map the space of design problems and promising solutions relevant to researchers and practitioners developing online deliberation technologies; and
identify horizontal challenges, and the strategies to approach them, when studying and designing online deliberation (e.g. licenses, formalizing, gamification, visualization).

After the SIG meeting, we will continue to build a multidisciplinary network for studying and designing technology-mediated deliberation (e.g., build an email list, open a Facebook group, dedicate a website to the community, organize regular workshops, publish special issues and books, promote collaborations on grants and projects, and generate patents and commercial products). We anticipate that the fostered communication and collaboration among researchers will promote more awareness of research and practice from different domains, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the design and evaluation of deliberation technologies.

CHI2015 SIG panel at CHI2015!
If you are interested in joining the offline discussion on April 22, 2015 (11:30am to 12:50pm, Room 318A, Seoul COEX convention center), please sign up here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1al8wyvWztw3EjN3DlaShG6Pf5JSYPCEomTmd-im7f6w/viewform?usp=send_form

If you are not able to make to the offline discussion, you are welcome to visit our online community and join our ongoing deliberation on the research field. In this website, you will be able to contribute to different threads of discussions, vote for those issues that interest you the most, as well as sign up for an online discussion that will happen in parallel to the actual offline discussion.
http://deliberatorium.mit.edu/signup?E-1O3FEEL-6

Here are the links to the two video tutorials on:
1) How to access the Deliberatorium: http://www.screencast.com/t/YghqPsS4fliH
2) How to contribute to a deliberation map: http://www.screencast.com/t/Ey0l8Q9V

We look forward to meeting you both online and offline!

The SIG Organization Committee

Lu Xiao (The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada)
Weiyu Zhang (Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore)
Anna Przybylska (Center for Deliberation, Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Poland)
Anna De Liddo (The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom)
Gregorio Convertino (Informatica Corporation, Redwood City, United States)
Todd Davies (Stanford University, United States)
Mark Klein (MIT, Cambridge, United States)

Organizers of the SIG meeting
The seven organizers truly represent the multidisciplinary and international nature of the SIG. We are from the US, Canada, Poland, Singapore, and the UK. Four of us are from the HCI community, and three from the communication discipline. Six of us are from academia and one is from industry. Four were co-organizers of previous workshops on ideation and deliberation systems at various venues such as CSCW, COOP, and C&T. These characteristics of the organizing team imply that SIG attendees will benefit from a well-balanced set of topics and a broad range of research experiences and perspectives. Specifically:

Lu Xiao is an information scientist with a keen research interest on the role of the shared rationales in online deliberations, and technologies to support rationale extraction, rationale articulation and reuse.
Weiyu Zhang is a communication scholar interested in exploring the connections between technological innovations and deliberative processes.
Anna Przybylska is a programme manager of the Centre for Deliberation at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw; and a manager of an applied project “New perspectives for dialogue: The model of deliberation and ICT tools in decision-making processes” financed by the National Centre for Research and Development within the Social Innovations Programme.
Gregorio Convertino is Senior User Research at Informatica, co-editor of a recent special issue “Large-Scale Ideation and Deliberation: Tools and Studies in Organizations” in the journal of Social Media in Organizations. Also a co-editor of the special issue,
Anna De Liddo is a Research Fellow in collective intelligence infrastructures and has an interest in knowledge construction through discourse, and the role of technology in scaffolding dialogue and argumentation in contested domains.
Todd Davies co-edited the book Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice (2009). His research lies in the intersections of cognition, computation, deliberation, decision-making, and informatics.
Mark Klein is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and led the development of The Deliberatorium, a platform that enables online large-scale deliberation.

References
[1] Online Deliberation Resources. http://online-deliberation.net
[2] Collective Intelligence as Community Discourse and Action: Conferences & Talks. www.parc.com/ciorg
[3] Large Scale Idea Management and Deliberation Systems at C&T 2013. http://www.gi2mo.org/2013/
[4] Fourth International Conference on Online Deliberation. http://www.od2010.di.unimi.it/
[5] The First Essence09 Workshop. http://events.kmi.open.ac.uk/essence/index.html
[6] ODET 2010: Online Deliberation Emerging Tools. http://www.olnet.org/odet2010
[7] First Workshop on Argumentation Mining. http://www.uncg.edu/cmp/ArgMining2014/
[8] Large-Scale Ideation and Deliberation: Tools and Studies in Organizations. https://www.mitre.org/jsmo

Related Links:

CHI2015 Conference Website

Why we need EDV

Thursday 09 Apr 2015 | KMi News

Even though social media is thoroughly embedded in voters’ culture we have yet to come up with an engaging, interactive way to share our feedback on election debates, but perhaps all that is about to change.

The Election Debate Visualisation (EDV) project – a collaboration between KMi and the University of Leeds has created an attractive feedback tool which could provide an alternative to sharing your feedback through Twitter. What’s more, the project also aims to analyse the responses of users.

Viewers can express their feelings and thoughts by using digital cards which capture different reflective statements. They can say – for instance – ‘I’m losing interest’ or ‘S/he’s just saying what people want to hear’ and so on. At the same time, viewers can also watch the live feed of reactions from other users interacting with the tool.

When the first televised debates took place ahead of the 2010 General Election, research identified a public appetite for understanding more about the political parties and their policies, but discovered viewers were often left feeling disengaged.

Last Thursday saw the first of two televised debates between candidates for this year’s General Election on 7th May. Halfway through the debate you could be forgiven for feeling disconnected with your fellow voters. The audience feedback available from following #ElectionDebate on Twitter, although occasionally amusing, arguably didn’t really provide a high quality insight into the public’s reaction to the arguments being made. Some users also found that they were quickly being spammed by tweets from political parties giving their own feedback to the speakers’ performances.

Once the debate was finished, it was over to the BBC to analyse the public’s reaction using “the Worm”, which shows quantitative rather than qualitative data and does not provide the split of negative and positive feedback in discernible detail.

Alternatively the EDV’s Democratic Reflection app, available on laptops, tablets and mobile devices, aims to capture viewers’ views and feelings and use this to build a richer understanding of our democratic needs, engagement and reflections on the political debate.

You will be able to try it on 16th to have your say on the Challenger Debate between five opposition party leaders – Labour, SNP, UKIP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru. Keep your eye on KMi’s website for news of when it goes live.

Peter Scott to bring STEM research to life

Tuesday 07 Apr 2015 | KMi News

The Director of KMi will be a keynote speaker at the eSTEeM Conference on 16 April 2015.

There’s only one day left to register for this conference, which will bring together academics in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to promote innovation, scholarship and enterprise in open and distance learning.

Peter will be taking the opportunity to present some of Trevor Collins’ work on technology-enhanced fieldwork frameworks that we are now supporting via the EU funded WeSPOT project and our Field Network System (FNS). The aim is to integrate the field and mobile experience of the learner with social connection and the work of other ‘field researcher students’ directly in a field context.

Peter will also look at some of the wider live science-in-the-laboratory work that we have begun with the OU Science Faculty, exploring how we might socially enhance live and interactive web broadcasts, also known as labcasts, to provide a more engaging student experience of remote lab work. And finally, Peter will provide the audience with a glimpse into a virtual and augmented reality future of the science lab. He will do by demonstrating the work we have been conducting in an industrial and manufacturing context of the EU TELLME project, which is augmenting the view of workers and learners.

Other speakers will include:

Paul Jones, Research Fellow, Cranfield University

Multi-level learning and the use of technology.

Linda Price, Senior Lecturer, IET

Using technology in teaching and learning: is it scholarly?

Related Links:

Register for the eSTEeM Conference by 8th April

eSTEem Conference

Augmenting the world (at MIT media labs)

Wednesday 01 Apr 2015 | KMi News

Last week saw the chair of the IEEE standards association working group on Augmented Reality Learning Experience Models, KMi’s own Fridolin Wild, present vision and working plan, while also kicking off the initial use case collection.

Hosted by the MIT media labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the AR community meeting brought together the global experts in the field, also with representatives of working groups in other standards organisations such as Khronos, OGC, Oasis, Mipi, W3C.

A report about the use cases collected will be available in a few weeks of time.

Doctor, doctor give me the news…

Tuesday 31 Mar 2015 | KMi News

KMi is proud to announce that there are two new doctors in our midst. In a turn up for the books, and after years of hard work, Hassan Saif and Petr Knoth both passed their vivas today.

We celebrated with a bottle of bubbly and speeches from each candidate. Both were very thankful for the support they had received from colleagues and friends at KMi. Petr highlighted that “KMi is a great environment to work in,” and Hassan commented “When I first joined KMi I dreamed that this day would come.”

FORGE Wins Hottest Pitch at NetFutures 15

Tuesday 31 Mar 2015 | KMi News

NetFutures is the main event for EU research and innovation under DG Connect and had over 1,000 attendees this year. The main event was opened by Commissioner Guenther H. Oettinger, followed by Arnis Daugulis, Deputy Secretary of State for Latvia and Sara Mazur, Vice President and Head of Research, Ericsson. During this opening session the official documentation launching the Alliance on Internet of Things Innovation (AIoTI), a high profile EU industrial initiative, was signed by the Commissioner and board members of Bosch, Philips and Sigfox.

Other Keynotes at the event included David del Val Latorre, President and CEO Telefonica Research and Development, Matt Brittin, Vice President, Google UK, Robert Madelin, Director General DG CONNECT, Carlo Ratti, Director of the Senseable City Lab MIT and Mario Campolargo, Director Net Futures, DG CONNECT.

FORGE was heavily involved in the event. The FORGE methodology and infrastructure for supporting educational ecosystems around Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) facilities was presented in two preceding workshops. We were also present in an invitation only FIRE/GEANT meeting. GEANT is the pan-European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), connecting over 50 million users at 10,000 institutions across Europe and operating at speeds of up to 500Gbps. During the FIRE Board meeting a FIRE Steering Group was established to oversee, generate and execute a plan for the long term sustainability of FIRE facilities and testbeds. John Domingue was seconded to this body due to his expertise associated with educational ecosystems and setting up and leading networking research institutions.

One of the highlights of the conference was the Perfect Pitch Panel where eight projects each selected by the head of their home unit competed against each other in terms of market readiness and take-up and overall economic and societal impact. Within this session John Domingue gave a live demo of the FORGE iBook including the on-the-fly creation of a simulated internet on a shared area running on a KMi server and setting up and running internet experiments on iMinds w-iLab.t test facility running in Ghent. The first demo is part of a collaboration between KMi and Cisco where we are extending their Packet Tracer software which is used to train over 1 million network engineers globally each year. To keep the crowd entertained (the event ran from 5-7pm) a live band played during the breaks and a live cartoonist was employed (see figure). We were very happy to have been officially awarded the ‘Hottest Pitch’ prize which was presented by Mario Campolargo, the Net Futures Director.

All in all it was a really great week – watch this space for more updates on FORGE results!

Related Links:

Perfect Pitch Panel website

NetFutures 15 website

FORGE website

KMi at LAK15 – Poughkeepsie

Friday 27 Mar 2015 | KMi News

A group of KMIers have just returned from the 5th ACM Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) conference, this year held in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Zdenek Zdrahal, Martin Hlosta, and Jakub Kuzilek were attending to present work on OU Analyse, which as well as attracting interest from participants was highlighted in OU PVC Belinda Tynan’s keynote talk on Thursday.

Duygu was presenting her PhD work on the Xerox Incremental Parser (XIP) and Simon his work on epistemic-commitments in information seeking tasks (video of extended talk at Rutgers the following week to follow). Simon also co-organised a workshop on the Temporal Analysis of Learning Data – It’s About Time – proceedings pieces for the short paper and workshop are on ORO.

Beyond KMi (and of course, ex-KMIer Simon Buckingham Shum) the OU was very well represented, with (Best Paper Award recipient) Sharon Slade from the Business School; Bart Rienties, Rebecca Ferguson, and Denise Whitelock all from IET; and head of Analytics Kevin Mayles with PVC Belinda Tynan. This year’s conference included a number of talks considering both institutional issues in developing analytics strategies, and research around discourse-centric learning analytics: both areas well represented by the OU.

Check out the papers in the proceedings, and get your train tickets early for a local LAK16 in Edinburgh!

Related Links:

LAK15 conference website

OU Analyse

Its About Time: 4th International Workshop on Temporal Analyses of Learning Data Workshop Website

Exciting Packet Tracer widget developments

Thursday 26 Mar 2015 | KMi News

This is what Nuno Guarda, Head of Corporate Affairs for Cisco in the UK and Ireland, tweeted yesterday after a very successful event held at the Open University. Alexander Mikroyannidis and Aitor Gomez-Goiri (Knowledge Media Institute – KMi, The Open University) presented their latest work on rich interactive learning materials, featuring the development of an HTML5 widget, which is based on Cisco’s Packet Tracer. Packet Tracer is a network simulation tool used by millions of Cisco’s Networking Academy students worldwide. In collaboration with Andrew Smith (Faculty of Mathematics Computing and Technology, The Open University), KMi is building a web interface of Cisco’s software in order to integrate Packet Tracer in a variety of learning activities within online courses and interactive eBooks. This work is funded by the EU project FORGE (Forging Online Education through FIRE).

The event was organized jointly by CompTIA, Cisco and the Open University and was entitled “Delivering Industry Education within Academic Programmes”. It featured several stimulating talks from Nuno Guarda, Andrew Smith, Monica Grady (The Open University), James Stanger (CompTIA) and Hannah Robertson (Pearson Education).

At the same time, this work was being presented by John Domingue in Brussels in front of an audience of 1,000 people. Details to follow soon!

Related Links:

The FORGE project

The Cisco Networking Academy

KMi welcomes Director-designate John Domingue

Friday 13 Mar 2015 | KMi News

We’re pleased to announce that Professor John Domingue has been appointed as KMi’s 4th Director since its founding in 1995. John will be taking up his post in August this year, when the current Director steps down. Today KMiers welcomed this appointment with a gathering to celebrate with a slice of cake and a bit of bubbly.

Professor Domingue is one of KMi’s early pioneers, having joined the lab when it was set up twenty years ago. He arrived at The Open University in 1983 and was supervised by KMi’s founder Marc Eisenstadt, and has already been acting as Deputy Director for many years.

“Having worked in KMi since it was conceived I have seen the lab go from strength to strength under the leadership of its three Directors. I am really looking forward to taking on this role and leading KMi in this very exciting time of Big Data and Data Science further enhancing the OU’s signature reputation in the Knowledge Media domain.”

After twenty years of service to The Open University, KMi’s current Director, Professor Peter Scott will be moving on to shores new in Australia this summer – to become Assistant Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Technology, Sydney. Lifting a glass of Champange for John’s appointment, Professor Scott said "We have much to celebrate in the success of knowledge media research over these last 20 years, but yet more exciting is the new generation of KMi researchers that John will lead".

The KMi team is planning "a significant knowledge media event" for 20th May 2015, being our 20th Birthday. "Save the date, and watch this space" said Director designate Domingue!

Successful collaboration with Chinese university

Wednesday 11 Mar 2015 | KMi News

This month we said farewell to Zhou Rui who came to visit KMi for several months from Anhui Radio and TV University, China. Zhou came over from his home faculty of Educational Technology to work on OU Analyse. His research interests, which include data mining and data analysis, meant that he provided useful support for the OU Analyse team.

We hope this may be the beginning of a strong collaborative relationship with Zhou’s institution and we look forward to keeping in touch.

Volunteers rate the debate

Tuesday 10 Mar 2015 | KMi News

Yesterday a user group had the opportunity to test out a prototype Election Debate audience feedback tool at KMi.

A group of voters gathered in our Podium space to watch one of last year’s political debates and log our reactions to the speakers’ performances using an innovative online tool. The prototype application was tested on laptops, tablets and smartphones to capture the user’s experience.

Testers chose from 20 different statements presented as coloured buttons on the screen to indicate their reaction to a debater’s performance. Examples of the statements included, “This is useful and informative” or “S/he’s speaking to us as if we’re stupid”.

The testing session was followed by a lively debate between the volunteers on the merits of the tool and the possible impact it could have on viewers’ behaviour. Some suggested that giving political parties such detailed feedback on what reactions individual statements and phrases had on them would give them too much power, while others relished the thought of being able to share their views dynamically with others and found the tool empowering .

Personally, I’m looking forward to testing the next iteration of the app which will help make sense of what could be a seven-party debate leading up to the General Election on 7 May 2015.

To find out more about the Election Debate Visualisation project watch this space for further details about how you can register for a talk from the project’s lead Anna De Liddo which will be part of The Open University’s Open Minds series.

Related Links:

EDV website

The European Data Science Academy has kicked-off!

Tuesday 10 Mar 2015 | KMi News

The kick-off meeting of the European Data Science Academy (EDSA) took place last week in Luxembourg. EDSA is a flagship project for the EC with regards to bridging the gap in the demands for data science skills in Europe. Apart from the project partners, the meeting was attended by the Project Officer for EDSA Carola Carstens, the Head of Unit Data Value Chain DG Connect Marta Nagy-Rothengass, the Deputy Head Unit Data Value Chain DG Connect Beatrice Covassi, as well as via teleconference from Brussels Heidi Cigan, Policy Analyst DG Communications Networks, Content, Technology Unit F4 European Semester and Knowledge Base.

The EDSA project will establish a virtuous learning production cycle whereby we: a) analyse the required sector specific skillsets for data analysts across the main industrial sectors in Europe; b) develop modular and adaptable data science curricula to meet these needs; and c) deliver training supported by multi-platform and multilingual learning resources based on our curricula. The curricula and learning resources will be continuously evaluated by pedagogical and data science experts during both development and deployment.

The project has a duration of 3 years and is coordinated by John Domingue (The Open University). The project consortium consists of 9 partners from 6 European countries (UK, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia, The Netherlands and France). Partners represent universities (OU, KTH, SOUTHAMPTON, TU/e), research institutions (FRAUNHOFER, JSI) and SMEs (ODI, IDEXLAB SAS, Persontyle Limited) covering different forms of organisations.

EDSA has already published its first Data Science MOOC in Coursera and is currently establishing collaborations with FutureLearn and edX in order to publish MOOCs of high quality addressing a wide range of data science skills.

Related Links:

The EDSA web site

Breaking the rules is not a strategy to win

Monday 09 Mar 2015 | KMi News

Evaluating learning technology and approaches regarding their impact is an extremely challenging task, with wrong choice in methodology often leading to low-impact, academic ivory tower research that nobody cares for.

Effie Law (University of Leicester) and KMi’s Fridolin Wild therefore have compiled an inventory of relevant methods and approaches in order to help researchers pick the right instrument for the right aspect.

The inventory is available free of charge as Open Access to interested parties, click on the link below to download your copy.

Image: http://www.chess.com/groups/team_match?id=147376

Related Links:

Evaluation Methodology Inventory

New standard for Augmented Reality

Friday 20 Feb 2015 | KMi News

KMi research in the Theme ‘Learning by Experience’ was rewarded today with the establishment of a new working group within the IEEE standards association.

The expert working group within will elaborate a proposal for augmented reality learning experience models (IEEE AR-LEM), with an early draft scheduled for the late summer and a first ballot possible as early as 2016.

The proposed Augmented Reality (AR) learning experience model will specify how to represent learning activities and their according workplace reference models in a standardized interchange format in order to lower entry barriers for authoring of learning experience spanning real world interaction using sensors and computer vision, and web applications.
Purpose of the standards working group is to develop an overarching integrated conceptual model and the according data model specifications for representing activities, learning context and environment (aka ‘workplace’), and potentially other data model components needed for AR-enhanced learning activities.
Separation of slow-changing data for, e.g., environment descriptions from fast-changing data as, e.g., required for step by step guidance is intended and isolation in linked, but physically separate interchange formats is intended to facilitate efficient handling and storage.
The new standards committee (NesCom) of the IEEE has appointed KMi’s Fridolin Wild to chair this working group.

“This new standard will help bring down production costs of augmented reality experiences significantly, turning normal web-designers into augmented reality engineers”, so Wild. He denotes further: “I’m very glad that we’re entering this working group with a strong Open University proposal, that we’ve elaborated with partners across the EU in our TELLME research project”.

Interested parties are invited to contact the chair of the working group, Fridolin Wild, for more information on how to participate in the community process. A dedicated website with more information will follow soon

Related Links:

IEEE New Standards Committee Recommendation

OpenMinds – the future of learning

Monday 19 Jan 2015 | KMi News

How people learn is changing. KMi Director Professor Scott explored what this means for The Open University at the first in a new series of talks: Open Minds on Tuesday 20 January.

The new OpenMinds series of talks from The Open University are showcasing the University’s thought leadership in learning and teaching and the application of research to policy and practice across the UK. The sessions aim to bring cutting-edge research and developments to both physical events in the OU’s Berrill Lecture and through live video streaming, providing a platform for those who watch or attend to engage with leading academics and respected figures within specific research fields.

In the first of this series, Peter was joined by OU Professors Eileen Scanlon and Mike Sharples and Professor Siân Bayne, Professor of Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh to discuss the "future of learning".

Peter discussed why we continue to use paper assessments in our fast-paced digital age and will invite discussion on what we need to do to move our practices forward. What’s more, through demoing Augmented Reality (AR) technology, he also showcased how OU students can explore the University’s prospectus in a way we never expected.

Also in this session:

Professor Eileen Scanlon, Associate Director (Research & Innovation) at the OU’s Institute of Education, reviewed the way school children learn, how this is changing, and described her work with teachers to demonstrate new technologies and how the impact of these new technologies can be maximised.

Professor Mike Sharples, Chair in Educational Technology at the OU’s Institute of Education, addressed learning on a bigger scale and outlined the changes he predicts may occur within social learning in 2015.

The final speaker, Professor Siân Bayne, Professor of Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, talked about changing conceptions of space in digital education and what it means to be a distance learner in a traditional university.

Related Links:

OpenMinds Future of Technology Talks on OpenLearn

COMPOSE nominated for IoTAwards

Friday 16 Jan 2015 | KMi News

Every year the #IoTAwards honour the year’s best products and ideas shaping the Internet of Things, may they be novel business ideas or disruptive devices. For 2014, KMi’s EU project COMPOSE has been nominated for the best integrated solution for supporting the development of Internet of Things applications.

COMPOSE competes in this category with well-established, commercial solutions such as Dweet.io, Temboo.com, and DGLogik, which highlights the high regards that the IoT community hold of COMPOSE’s results.

KMi plays a central role in the project with our very own Carlos Pedrinaci serving as Scientific Director, and Luca Panziera leading core infrastructure for the discovery and use of sensors and services to support novel IoT Big Data applications.

COMPOSE has just entered its last year and shall soon be releasing the final version of its entirely open source platform which shall include even greater functionality. Keep tuned!

Related Links:

IoTAwards

COMPOSE Project

Responsive Open Learning Environments: New book published by Springer

Wednesday 14 Jan 2015 | KMi News

A new book edited by Sylvana Kroop, Alexander Mikroyannidis and Martin Wolpers has just been published by Springer. The book is entitled “Responsive Open Learning Environments” and presents the outcomes of 4 years of educational research in the EU-supported project called ROLE (Responsive Online Learning Environments). ROLE technology is centred around the concept of self-regulated learning that creates responsible learners, who are capable of critical thinking and able to plan their own learning processes. ROLE allows learners to independently search for appropriate learning resources and then reflect on their own learning process and progress. To accomplish this, ROLE´s main objective is to support the development of open personal learning environments (PLEs). ROLE provides a framework consisting of “enabler spaces” on the one hand and tools, content, and services on the other. Utilising this framework, learners are invited to create their own controlled and preferred learning environments to trigger and motivate self-regulated learning.

Authors of this book are researchers, developers and teachers who have worked in the ROLE project and belong to the ROLE partner consortium consisting of 16 internationally renowned research institutions, including those from 6 EU countries and China. Chapters include numerous practical tutorials to guide the reader in creating innovative and useful learning widgets and present the best practices for the development of PLEs. Additionally, each chapter has been commented by experts outside of the ROLE consortium, who have offered their perspectives on PLEs.

The book is available online as Open Access, meaning that it can be downloaded for free: http://bit.ly/role-book

Related Links:

The ROLE book

KMi Develops Augmented Reality Prospectus Mobile App

Wednesday 14 Jan 2015 | KMi News

KMi has developed an Augmented Reality enabled mobile application to bring the latest undergraduate prospectus to life.

The user of the app just points their device at the appropriate page in the prospectus and a 3D object will appear. The displayed objects also allow user interaction such as swiping to rotate.

Related Links:

View OU Alive in the App Store

Social Attitudes of Young People

Friday 02 Jan 2015 | KMi News

A new report from the UK Government Cabinet Office sets out to explore the social attitudes of young people, with a KMi contribution on changes in technology and in particular social media and social networking. The report comes fresh from the Horizon Scanning Programme which has also recently analysed critical emerging technologies such as Big Data and the demographic changes in emerging economies.

The Cabinet Office team explore how sustained changes in the attitudes of people in different generations may lead to long-term, changes in societal attitudes. They draw upon survey data to see whether there are differences in the attitudes of today’s young people and the attitudes of older generations when they were young. The work offers a very interesting analysis of challenging topics such as privacy, and what young people’s understanding of, and feelings about ‘private data’ may mean.

Particulary to be commended, the report puts fearful and over-hyped press reporting of topics around possible negative impacts of technology change and ‘risk taking’ etc into the context of the evidence and presents a thoughtful reflection on what the real changes may mean to our future.

It also presents a very good review of the evidence around changes to: values and personal autonomy; attitudes to society and government; aspirations; and of course the touch-stone of ‘wellbeing’. The report also explores the how young people’s circumstances may change over the next 10 years and evolve over time.

The conclusion is actually pretty positive. Despite concerns "…for instance around declining mainstream political engagement, low levels of social trust and the potential negative impacts of digital technologies", there are some very positive stories to tell about the next generation:

"For example, a range of risk behaviours and negative outcomes are declining amongst young people, such as drug taking, teenage pregnancies, drinking, smoking and crime. Also, the high levels of aspirations amongst young people, emphasis on personal responsibility and community engagement provide good reasons for optimism about social change over the next 10 years".

A recommended read for the kick-off of 2015.

Related Links:

Research and Analysis from the Cabinet Office: SAOYP report

The Horizon Scanning Collection from the Cabinet Office

Related Link: Horizon Scan on big data

First thesis using weSPOT: ICT and Entrepreneurship – new paradigms…

Monday 22 Dec 2014 | KMi News

Congratulations to Karine Souza who passed her PhD viva last friday – 19th of December. She was a visiting PhD researcher from University of Minho Portugal supervised by Dr. Bento Silva and by Dr. Ale Okada during her visit at the Open University UK. In KMi, Karine has been participating in the COLEARN – open research network since 2013. She collaborated to the European project weSPOT by developing a co-inquiry on entrepreneurial learning with students and lecturers in Portugal and Brazil. Her work contributed to one of the weSPOT pilots on “School of the Future” – new educational approaches.

Her thesis "ICT & Entrepreneurship: new paradigms and apprenticeships of young entrepreneurs and their technological innovations” investigates three issues:
1.    Network changes and its impact on the economy (e-economy sector, especially creative economy);
2.    Educational innovation in mobile and ubiquitous territories;
3.    Entrepreneurship education and skills for Co-entrepreneurship.

The Doctoral Examination Committee included Dr. José Pacheco, Dr. Bento Silva, Dr. Maria João Gomes and Dr. Lia Oliveira, from University of Minho Braga Portugal; Dr. Fernando Costa from University of Lisboa Portugal, Dr. Gladis Falavigna University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil and Dr. Ale Okada from the Open University UK.

Karine highlights entrepreneurial education as a relevant approach for guiding young people to lead their project themselves, seeking for opportunities and transforming their reality. With these purposes, she worked with young people (high school/ secondary students) who created projects for connecting entrepreneurship and ICT and reflecting on social impact in their communities.

These young colearners from Brazil started online synchronous and asynchronous interaction in 2011. Their community expanded with participants from Portugal in 2012. At the beginning of 2014, these participants were invited to interact in the weSPOT online platform to co-investigate Entrepreneurial Education. Approximately 20 people (colearners , facilitators, educators, lecturers and collaborators) contributed to a co-inquiry project in weSPOT organised by Karine from February to March 2014. Several interfaces of weSPOT – “Working Environment with Social Personal and Open Technologies for Inquiry based Learning”, were used in this co-inquiry project:

Question: Why collaborative entrepreneurship in networks is relevant in the digital age?
Discussion: Participants included relevant references and comments about Entrepreneurial Education.
Mindmap: Participants mapped key skills for entrepreneurial learning from documents and discussions.
Data collection: Participants contributed by collecting useful images related to competences and skills from reports, books and documents.
FM web conference: Participants reflected on the whole process, including the uses of ICT and diverse technologies that contribute to entrepreneurial education and ubiquitous learning.
Conclusions: Facilitators summarised key outcomes from synchronous and asynchronous interactions in a paper presented in a conference. The principal investigator also developed a presentation in Prezi.

Some participants who have previously interacted in VLE mentioned that they found weSPOT very useful, particularly for structuring various phases of the co-inquiry, rating, voting and visualising the most popular information. All these features helped colearners to act as co-investigators and entrepreneurs, and contribute towards a meaningful co-inquiry project.

Well done Dr. Karine Souza!

The Video Journal of Open Education is out!

Friday 19 Dec 2014 | KMi News

The first issue of the Video Journal of Open Education has just been published. This issue is dedicated to presenting the presentations of the 2014 OCWC Global Conference held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on April 23-26. The issue features an interview of Alexander Mikroyannidis talking about Open Education challenges and future directions.

The Video Journal of Open Education has introduced a new set of tools enhancing viewing experience. You can annotate the videos and exchange your comments with colleagues and friends, choose and compare these comments and notes in a simplified environment.

Related Links:

The Video Journal of Open Education

UK REF confirms OU as World Leading and Internationally Excellent!

Thursday 18 Dec 2014 | KMi News

Computer Science and Informatics at the OU (including KMi and Computing and Communications) performed very strongly in the recent HEFCE REF exercise, with 75% of outputs rated world-leading or internally-excellent (up from 70% in 2008), an excellent research environment (100%), and a 30% larger submission (31 FTE, up from 24 in 2008).

This result places Open University computing research (REF panel 11) neatly in the top third of UK universities overall, and if you consider "Research Power" (taking into account the number of submitted researchers) we are rank 21 out of the 87 submitting UK Universities.

KMi colleagues also contributted to the Education REF submission which saw an excellent rating also with 69% of outputs rated world-leading or internally-excellent. Indeed, the "Research Power" ranking for the Education panel (25) places OU education research at rank 2 out of the 76 submitting UK Universities – a spectacular result!

Related Links:

REF 2014

Explore the REF results visually yourself via Prof. Jo Woods at City University

The third edge: knowledge in social networks, book launched in Brazil

Wednesday 17 Dec 2014 | KMi News

Dr. Izabel Meister, who was a PhD student in KMi in 2012, has just published a book about her thesis, which was launched today in Brazil.

Her thesis co-supervised by Dr. Okada – “The weaving of knowledge in social networks habitat of collective intelligences” – focused on social networks as a space of creation and acquisition of knowledge. She analysed some social networks in FaceBook and in the OER Tool-Library of the European Project: OpenScout developed by KMi team: Dr. Alexander Mikroyannidis, Dr. Suzanne Little, Dr. Ale Okada and Dr. Peter Scott.

FOREWORD written by Ale Okada

“The third edge: knowledge in social networks” is an interdisciplinary book that points out the collective intelligence of social networks as well as the convergence and expansion of knowledge from the “Relevant Status”.

The curious title proposed by Izabel Meister is an invitation to reflect on the social network knowledge as a means of transcending the delimited boundaries via the third edge which leads to the break-up of delimited spaces. So, according to Foucault (1997:356) “a place without a place, that exists by itself”; refers to a space without space, or better put, a space of every space. In this sense, the author discusses contemporary knowledge on the web, based on the abundant access to, information and sources, in which the process of construction transcends the predetermined spaces and times that were established for this purpose. Here a third way flourishes, which invites us readers to think differently about the construction of knowledge of and within the social networks (Okada, 2014).

This work studies the interdependent processes in which knowledge is updated and expanded to connections between many participants, in a complex, chaotic and hyperdynamic way – aspects of the web and of the openness movement towards cyberculture studied by many authors (Castells, 2005; Jones, 1998). Nevertheless, “The third edge” proposes a different look at the emergence of collective intelligences which can be activated at any time and space as soon as they have been visualised by the “relevant status”, term defined by Meister as “due to its importance according to its utility, timeliness or meaning”.

Meister’s contribution offers us a valuable new outlook on Education and Cyberculture through the innovation of the process of construction of knowledge, which is based on her dissertation at Mackenzie University in São Paulo and the Open University in Milton Keynes (UK). At the Open University, she worked at the Knowledge Media Institute on and with open search networks as part of the Colearn project – Collaborative Open Learning (colearn.open.ac.uk).

In the three chapters of this publication, we can find the initial point of this research, the methodology of investigation and the conceptional and empirical principles of interactive, complex and chaotic culture, from which social networks emerge. Based on the interconnection of these three seminal references, we can consider the threading of web knowledge and the theory of Relevant Status explained in the last chapters.

This book is a source of discussion for many readers:

Creators, co-learners and network users in many fields, including individuals responsible for spreading knowledge and information on social media.
Researchers and webdesigners for educational learning that incorporate educational resources on the web and new media;
Academic researchers in the fields of formal and informal education, including Cyberculture, Online Pedagogy, Teacher Training courses including ICT and Colearn in the digital era;
Professionals interested in using social network for educational and/or organizational projects;

The objectives of “The third edge: knowledge in social network” for all of us – participants, co-learners and co-authors of knowledge in 21st century Cyberculture – are:

Contributing to an understanding of contemporary education;
Considering that the social web is a space for the construction of knowledge;
Understanding that the social networks have different and proper processes of construction of knowledge, with specific issues related to Cyberculture and social webs;
Understanding that this knowledge can only be provided by a relevance in time, based on observed Relevant Status;
Acknowledging that this process implies collective, collaborative and open intelligence;
Emphasising the fluid and transcendent aspects of the boundaries between work, culture, leisure and social fields.

When we drive our attention to the fragments of human knowledge within the sophisticated and complex virtual social networks, we shall have to consider the discussion proposed by this book and the invitation to contribute to the reflective discussion on the space of contemporary knowledge. From here arises the opportunity to meet the Third Edge.

Welcome to the journey!

EDEN 2014: Open Distance Learning: Doing Things Better: Doing Better Things

Wednesday 17 Dec 2014 | KMi News

EDENRW8, which was held in Oxford on 27-28 October 2014, provided a good overview of the current state of online, open and distance learning in Europe. This event was organised by Professor Antonio Moreira Teixei ra, President of EDEN from the Open University of Portugal, and Professor Belinda Tynan, Pro Vice-Chanchellor on Learning & Teaching at the Open University UK, with official Rapporteur, Professor Tony Bates.

Ale Okada presented “Developing 21st Century Skills through Colearning with OER and Social Networks”. Her research focuses on COLEARN, an open research network constituted by communities of educators, students and researchers who have been participating in various OER international projects, including OpenLearn (2006-2009), OpenScout (2010-2012) and weSPOT(2013-2015).This study presented a group of skills that emerged in the COLEARN network during the production of the research book “OER and Social Networks”. The coauthoring process was based on colearning approach with OER and social networks. Her work presented in EDEN was also published in the book “Key competences for colearning in the digital age” by WhiteBooks Publishers in Portugal, which was launched during the event.

Almost 150 participants from more than 30 countries presented over 40 selected research papers. There were lots of opportunity for deep dialogues and feedback on our research through very interactive sessions: team symposia, ‘research-speed-dating’ papers, demonstrations, poster sessions, a connect lounge and informal sessions.

Tony Bates presented great comments during the workshop and in his blog, which were summarised below.
Research on Open Education:

Most practitioners – instructors, teachers and computer scientists – are unaware of the major research findings and best practices about online teaching and learning particularly to the management of online discussions and online course design
Some mistakes being made through MOOCs: unmonitored student discussion, the re-invention of the wheel through online courses for the masses, discovering what has already been known for many years: students like immediate feedback.
More and more instructors are moving into blended and hybrid learning, but are unaware of knowledge about online learners and their behaviour.
Successful innovation is more cumulative than “a leap into the dark”.

The complexity of teaching and learning:

Learning is a process, not a product.
There are different epistemological positions about what constitutes knowledge and how to teach it,
Above all, identifying desirable learning outcomes is a value-driven decision
If we want to develop the skills needed in a digital age, the traditional lecture-based model, whether offered face-to-face or online, is inadequate.
Academic knowledge is different from everyday knowledge; academic knowledge means transforming understanding of the world through evidence, theory and rational argument/dialogue.
Learning is heavily influenced by the context in which it takes place: one critical variable is the qualities of course design; another is the role of expert teachers/instructors.
These variables are likely to be more important than any choice of technology or delivery mode.

Some challenges for Researchers on Online teaching and learning:

Poorly funded by the research councils.
There are many different variables which affects learning
Most studies are small scale, qualitative and practitioner-driven.
Most research in online learning is published in journals that are not read by either practitioners or computer scientists
Integration of research findings is difficult, although Anderson & Zawacki-Richter (2104) have done a good work
Online learning is still a relatively new field, less than 20 years old
Most instructors at a post-secondary level have no formal training in any form of teaching and learning

Multiple audiences to be reached:

Practitioners: teachers and instructors
Senior managers and administrators in educational institutions
Computer scientists and entrepreneurs interested in educational services or products
Government and other funding agencies.

Next Steps:

How best to identify the key research findings on online learning around which most experienced practitioners and researchers can agree
The best means to get these messages out to the various stakeholders.

“I believe that this is an important role for organizations such as EDEN, EDUCAUSE, ICDE, but it is also a responsibility for every one of us who works in the field and believes passionately about the value of online learning”. (Bates, 2014)

Related Links:

Eden Conference 2014

The secretary of Digital Inclusion of Brazil Government and the president of Open Education Consortium in KMi

Tuesday 16 Dec 2014 | KMi News

Ligia Puppato, the Secretary of Digital Inclusion of Brazil Government visited the Open University to get a clear picture of the future of Knowledge Media Technologies particularly applied to open education and smart cities. She also participated in the webinar held in KMi podium to launch the 3rd edition of the book “Open Education Resources and Social Networks” with Peter Scott the director of KMi and the book editor Ale Okada.

This webinar was opened by Larry Cooperman, the president of Open Education Consortium from California and Danilo Mendonca OEC Brazilian member. There were also several co-authors of the book from different areas in Brazil and some attendees from “Telecentros”, which are ICT centres installed in remote areas, part of Brazil Government strategies for promoting Digital Inclusion.

During her talk, Ligia congratulated all the participants in the book and highlighted Online Education as a key strategy for opening up formal, informal and non-formal learning in Brazil – a country that has continental dimensions with many social differences and diversity among the regions. “Our challenge today, with so many projects being conducted, is to include people digitally, but mainly that they can have a sense of ownership of these technologies through open education”.

Larry Cooperman emphasised some key issues for a “Global open education infrastructure, and if we can achieve this, we can reduce the cost of the university education, we can spread higher education, and for that matter K-12, to new populations that haven’t had access – and that ultimately is the social goal behind all of the work that is reflected in the OER and Social Networks book”

The OER and Social Network Book is available at oer.kmi.open.ac.uk. It was also published by EDUEMA in Brazil. Five hundred copies printed in colour were distributed free.

KMi approach to wearable-enhanced learning presented to EC

Monday 15 Dec 2014 | KMi News

The annual performance review of the TELLME project last week in Luxembourg saw KMi present work on learning by doing with a wearable, mixed reality job performance aid to the European Commission.

Innovation and technological advances in manufacturing created a skills gap across the globe, shifting demand for human labour from robotizable production jobs to the before and after markets in inception, prototyping, setup, operation, services, and the like.

TELLME aims to fill this gap by reinventing learning technology for human-centred and service-oriented manufacturing workplaces in small and medium enterprises.

The work presented includes progress in tracking learner behaviour from interaction with the real world. Moreover, the work includes facilities for encapsulating learning experience and workplace descriptions in models (to establish interoperability), and a new glyph language for visual instruction in production, quality assurance, and maintenance.

The video below shows an example of the new technology, a guided setup of a Dornier Lindauer Weaving Mill in the production of textiles.

Related Links:

Example: wearable-enhanced job performance aid

TELLME project

MiData Personal Data and Trust Lab

Friday 12 Dec 2014 | KMi News

In August we published a story entitled Citizen Data – empowering citizens about how KMi had joined a three-month feasibility study on how to empower citizens with their own data. A report detailing the outcomes of the study has now been released and can be downloaded here.

Other organisations involved in the research include the Digital Catapult, consultancy Ctrl-Shift and non-profit trade organisation, The Open Identity Exchange (OIX). Together we have just completed a project to understand how a new type of "personal data lab" might be constructed. The idea is that it would work with volunteers and service providing organisations to design and test services underpinned by user volunteered personal data.

During the project 130 citizens, 15 small digital innovators and four corporates were interviewed. We found that they had a desire to work with such a lab subject to some clear conditions.

1. The citizens wanted to see benefit in return for volunteering their data. Their preference was not for a cash incentive, but rather for the services they use to work better.

2. Citizens were also much more comfortable with their data being held and used by a local organisation, rather than a central/national organisation.

3. The application of pseudo-anonymisation and privacy preserving techniques make citizens more likely to volunteer their data.

4. SMEs, corporates and councils were happy to engage, as long as the Lab was able to focus on well-defined problems, which were of business interest to them. This was a clear indication that any Lab should be problem driven, rather than a purely experimental facility.

You can read more about the lab on Digital Catapult’s blog.

Related Links:

Digital Catapult

Ctrl-Shift

Open Identity Exchange

KMi presents OU wide workshop on EU grant management

Friday 12 Dec 2014 | KMi News

On 12th of November, KMi’s Aneta Tumilowicz presented a workshop on the use of European Commission’s Participant Portal for EU grant management.

This is the second workshop of this type organised by the KMi (the first one was presented in June 2013) at the Open University. The aims of this workshop were:

To communicate new requirements for financial reporting in FP7 framework
To assist attendees in developing their skills in effective FP7 framework reporting
To introduce new online tool for H2020 framework grant management – SyGMa

The workshop was addressed to the OU’s administrators and researchers who are responsible for project management.

With its successes in obtaining funding from the European Commission, KMi is known at the Open University for its expertise in that area. We are offering the training and support for other OU departments both in terms of official workshops and individual support provided on request.

OUAnalyse Featured On National Radio

Thursday 11 Dec 2014 | KMi News

At the end of November Martin Hlosta presented OUAnalyse at DatConf2014 at Brno University of Technology (TU Brno).

Martin was one of the ten speakers presenting on the theme of data in the second largest city in Czech Republic. The Open University have a strong relationship with TU Brno, displayed through an agreement between the two institutions regarding the Erasmus programme. As a result, KMi have hosted a number of their students who have demonstrated notably good knowledge and programming skills.

The audience of 200 was interested to hear about the value that The Open University places on learning analytics, which Mr Hlosta clearly demonstrated through his presentation on the OUAnalyse project. Such was the interest in the topic of Martin’s presentation that Martin was interviewed by national radio station, Cesky Rozhlas. The interview was for a morning current affairs program, and they were keen to find out how the project’s analysis of at-risk students works and how accurate these predictions are.

Related Links:

Web presentation of the conference

Facebook page

Twitter page

A successful first year review for FORGE!

Thursday 04 Dec 2014 | KMi News

On the cold 2nd of December FORGE project had its first year review in Brussels.

Professor John Domingue and Aneta Tumilowicz represented the KMi team at the review and were also responsible for the overall project presentation as KMi is the project’s coordinator.

A panel of four international experts, chaired by the EC project officer Georges Lobo, assessed the project with the first year project outcomes being accepted and giving FORGE the second highest evaluation score possible.

FORGE is a three year long project funded by the European Commission under FP7 framework with a budget of almost €2.5 million. The overall objective of FORGE is to introduce the FIRE experimental facilities into the eLearning community, in order to promote the concept of experimentally driven research in education by using experiments as an interactive learning and training channel for both students and professionals by raising the accessibility and usability of FIRE facilities.

Highlights from FORGE’s first year include:

(1) shortlisting for Irish Lab Award in category Educational Laboratory of the Year
(2) release of first project iBook
(3) organisation of Beyond MOOCs session at FIA Athens
(4) winning of FIA 2014 Best Poster award
(5) release of first newsletter

The first version of an interactive electronic book for the iPad and MacOS that contains a number of networking courses produced by FORGE that use FIRE facilities for introducing basic networking concepts to the reader/learner can be downloaded from project’s website: http://ict-forge.eu

Our newsletter is available at: http://ict-forge.eu/newsletter/FORGE-newsletter-1.pdf

Related Links:

FORGE website

FORGE newsletter

International Joint Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning EC-TEL and Knowledge Technologies and data-driven Business I-KNOW

Wednesday 03 Dec 2014 | KMi News

KMi had an impressive participation in the EC-TEL and I-KNOW conferences including eleven KMi researchers responsible for six presentations and four papers. This joint event took place in Graz, Austria, September 16-19, 2014. The key themes were open learning and teaching in educational communities as well as the integration of data-centric and user-centric approaches.

In EC-TEL: Fridolin Wild, Alex Mikroyannidis and Thomas Ulmann coordinated the workshops on “Awareness and reflection in technology enhanced learning”. Annika Wolff and Paul Mulholland presented “Cultural learning across the Smart City” in the Smart City Learning workshop.

During the conference, Fridolin Wild presented “An augmented reality job performance aid for kinaesthetic learning in manufacturing work places” with Peter Scott. Ale Okada presented two papers in EC-TEL “Reliability of web-based information in inquiry projects” with Andre Correia and Cintia Rabello and I-KNOW “Social, open and personalised environments for communication and knowledge management between business and educational organisations” with Renata Colonego and Roberto Serra.

KMI made a special contribution towards two innovative research papers “developed by end users” about the weSPOT European project. Andre Correia, a PhD student and a Biology teacher , developed a pilot study on “Biodiversity in Gardens” in weSPOT with his group from UNESP University and Bauru School in Sao Paulo. Renata Calonego, an undergraduate on Business Management and the youngest KMi visitor, developed a pilot study on the “Food and Health” project coordinated by NESTLE enterprise with schools in Brazil. Both researchers were the first users to complete a pilot in weSPOT and write a research paper with contributions from their colleagues and great feedback from reviewers.

The integration of both conferences held at Messe Congress Graz offered thought-provoking and rich opportunities to think and talk to colleagues from Knowledge Management and Education fields. Interesting common themes were discussed by keynotes on Big Data, Design Thinking and Open Learning and Teaching.

Etienne Wenger opened the event with an inspiring keynote on “Open learning and teaching: perspectives from social learning theory". He emphasised that the 21st century is going to be the century of identity. The process of forming, transforming and developing individual and collective identities has become increasingly important through landscapes of knowledge and competences in the community.

“Learning is often viewed as something individuals do as they acquire information and skills. It is usually associated with some form of instruction. … Learning is also an inherent dimension of everyday life and that it is fundamentally a social process… Learning is not merely the acquisition of a curriculum, but a journey across a landscape of practice, which is transformative of the self… From this perspective, a living “body of knowledge” can be viewed as a collection of communities of practice… Achieving a high level of “knowledgeability” is a matter of negotiating a productive identity with respect to the various practices that constitute this landscape. Education is then a guided tour of the various practices that constitute this landscape. Teaching is one of these practices, located like all others in a complex landscape, but with the additional twist that it has to prepare students for their own trajectory through landscapes of practice.” Wenger(2014)

This is what KMi is doing: expanding knowledgeable communities of practices with its visitors and young students.

Riding Giants: How to innovate and educate ahead of the wave

Wednesday 03 Dec 2014 | KMi News

The ALTC 2014, annual conference held at Warwick University, was one of the key events at the forefront of learning technology this year. The inspiring theme “Riding Giants: How to innovate and educate ahead of the wave” attracted interesting keynotes, speakers, researchers and various professionals involved in the field of learning technology.

This event was organised through the metaphor of surfing:
1.     Predicting Giants: What are the forthcoming big questions, big challenges, and big changes?
2.     Learning to ride: What are innovative examples of collaboration and knowledge exchange in Education?
3.     Evidence on board: How do we collect evidence at scale (from experiments and full scale deployment)?
4.     Staying up, mobile and personal: How is digital (& learning) technology changing the learning journey?
5.     All agog: What are the results for emerging technology and teaching practice in significant action?

Ale Okada presented her work “Co-authorship and Colearning through OER at UKOU” on knowledge exchange and collaboration (Learning to ride) within the scope of activities conducted by CoLearn, an international community of educators, researchers and students engaged in the use of technologies for collaborative open learning.   CoLearn’s association and collaboration with the UKOU’s OER initiatives have been most significant in three specific projects – OpenLearn, OpenScout and weSPOT. Hence, aspects of these projects have been selected for discussion, providing not only evidence of impact but also, crucially, indications of ways in which co-authorship can, and indeed does foster pedagogical innovation.

Okada discussed five issues related to the conference:
1.     Predicting Giants: We have been promoting knowledge media technologies for participants to re(create) knowledge through OER since OpenLearn(2006-2008). Our research analysed a few innovative examples, such as the Project Santos Dumont’s life, which won the 1st Microsoft prize for innovative Educators. Teachers and students from Brazil, Portugal and France used Blogs and the OpenLearn FM webconferencing tool to investigate and reconstruct collaboratively the aviation pioneer’s life story using social media. New research questions then emerged, such as: How could we empower OER colearners through knowledge media technologies to interact as OER coauthors instead of OER consumers?
2.     Learning to ride: During the European project OpenScout (2009-2013) our goal was to develop a tool-library of OER technologies. Colearners could then recommend tools, practices, examples and methods for readapting and recreating OER. We tested the OpenScout Tool-Library based on the social platform ELGG to promote knowledge exchange and collaboration. More than 30 research groups with more than 100 participants interacted in the Tool-Library to co-author a book – OER & Social networks. There are a variety of chapters and coauthors: scholars, lecturers, PhD researcher undergraduate students, teachers and web users. Coauthors not only produced a variety of OER together (image, video, maps, activities, text) but also contributed towards describing the tools and practices used in their chapters in the Tool-Library.
3.     Evidence on board: Our next step is to collect and analyse evidence at scale. This is not easy considering that the project finished, however the community are still engaged in discussing strategies for OER – knowledge reconstruction and dissemination through “knowledge media technologies”. We started our next project weSPOT (working environment for social personal open technologies). We are currently investigating what are the key competences and skills that colearners can develop using OER in open social and personalised platforms for inquiry based learning? Which instruments and methods can we use to identify and analyse evidence?
4.     Staying up, mobile and personal: Although we are still developing the key functionalities of weSPOT, our pre-pilots and initial case-studies show that colearners as co-investigators can develop their skills and knowledge through personal mobile interfaces for inquiry based learning.
5.     All agog Co-inquiry platforms, which integrate personal, mobile and even wearable interfaces can be considered emerging technologies for educators to empower colearners as co-investigators. There are already a few significant outcomes which were spotted by weSPOT users (undergraduates, teachers and PhD students) who not only tested weSPOT to create their inquiries with useful feedback to improve the tool but also led research publication presented at international conferences.

We had a few useful questions and comments, to continue the debate:

Knowledge exchange: How could OER projects promote more knowledge exchange between stakeholders and in particular colearners?
Collaboration: What are the OER tools that can support collaboration among learners with different skills and levels of digital literacy? How can they use collaborative platforms to develop their skills, competences and literacies?
Co-authorship: What are the next steps for co-authorship at scale? How are we aiming to make an impact on more active, collaborative and inquiry learning?

We definitely agree with one of the Conference participant’s thoughts, Jorge Freire, which has been adapted slightly: “The conference reinforced our belief that the focus should be on a “co” learner-centred approach to TEL, and that our job requires us to be “co” learners: we try things, implement then, take risks, make mistakes and handle change. And that’s the only way to ride the wave”.

Related Links:

Alt-C Jorge Freire Blog

Alt-C Robert Farrow Blog

The second edition of the top 10 book – Knowledge Cartography is now available!

Wednesday 03 Dec 2014 | KMi News

We are delighted to announce that the second edition of the book Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques has been published this month with five new chapters. The aim of this book is to present how mapping techniques and software tools can be used for learning, teaching and knowledge management.

The readers will find 540 pages with all the maps and images in colour presenting the current state-of-the-art in the field. This pioneer book in the area of Knowledge Cartography includes 22 chapters from 45 leading researchers and renowned practitioners. Learners will find new perspectives and tools to expand their visual thinking repertoire, while researchers will find rich enough conceptual grounding for further scholarship.

The book presents six chapters about OU research work, four European projects: OpenLearn, Engage, weSPOT and Catalyst and three KMi tools: Compendium, Cohere and Litemap. Dr. Anna de Liddo, co-author and head of the collective intelligence group in KMI, suggests this book to learners, educators, and researchers in all disciplines, as well as policy analysts, scenario planners, knowledge managers, team facilitators and research project coordinators.

Ale Okada, chief editor, highlights that it was a great experience for her to bring together renowned authors, practitioners and learners from across the world in various areas and divserse range of mapping techniques.
"Various pioneers in mapping techniques and tools each authored a chapter. The book also includes innovative case studies developed by my students. We are now in the decade of BIG DATA. Knowledge mapping therefore became more relevant as a key skill for this digital age – useful in various fields for visualisation, sensemaking, management and collective intelligence. It is really fruitful to see that this book has been helping lots of new PhD students, educators, research groups and technologists. It has also been an important reference for various funded research projects”.

The first edition of this book was one of the top most downloaded eBooks in the Springer Collection. We think that the second edition will be popular too.

Current funded projects in KMi, which include mapping techniques:
In Education led by Dr. Okada:
WeSPOT
ENGAGE
In Collective Intelligence led by Dr. DeLiddo:
Catalyst
EDV

The book is also available at the Open University Library soon!
Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. and Sherborne, T. (2014) Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. London: Springer Verlag.

See more at: http://www.springer.com/computer/hci/book/978-1-4471-6469-2

KMi and weSPOT in Dubai

Monday 01 Dec 2014 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis represented KMi and the weSPOT project last week at the IEEE International Conference on Web & Open Access to Learning (ICWOAL), which was held in Dubai. The event was highly successful, featuring a keynote from our very own Mike Sharples.

Alexander presented a paper about the Inquiry-Based Learning platform developed in the context of the weSPOT project. weSPOT (Working Environment with Social, Personal and Open Technologies for Inquiry Based Learning) is a European project now entering its 3rd and final year. weSPOT is propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today’s curricula and teaching practices. The weSPOT inquiry space integrates personal and social learning elements in order to lower the threshold for linking everyday life with science teaching in schools by technology.

You can try here the weSPOT inquiry space and learn here what weSPOT offers to teachers, students and developers.

Responsible Use of Social Media Data

Friday 28 Nov 2014 | KMi News

It is excellent to see today’s publication of the Responsible use of data report by the Commons Science and Technology Committee. The OU has a long track record of research expertise in social media and other forms of big data, and provided both written and oral evidence to the Committee’s inquiry on Social Media and Real-time Analytics which culminated in today’s report.

We commend the committee for highlighting the importance of users’ informed consent in the use of their social media data, as Professor Peter Scott, Director of The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, says:

"One click after a millisecond glance at a document designed for an American court room does not attribute real consent. Much more effort needs to go into understanding how we can effectively communicate the value consent offers and the risk it carries. It is particularly important for the public user to be able to differentiate the real from the imagined risks, and to understand the real value of sharing data."

The call in the report for a new set of information standards for internet providers and social media companies is also to be highly commended. The oral evidence by KMi’s Dr Mathieu d’Aquin emphasised the need for Government policy to support and extend funding for research in this field. Employees need to see the data that employers hold about them and value the opportunity to do so, as Dr d’Aquin explains:

"Even in our early research we have found that employees are actually quite reassured. Knowing that data is collected, it is incredibly valuable to be able to see it. Policies to ensure that there are mechanisms in place to support this and guidelines to enforce it are essential. Transparent trustability is critical here. It is very important to give back the data to the citizen that is collected about them."

The Open University is to lead on a new European Data Science Academy that aims to provide a range of new skills to the public consumer, the policy maker and professionals to increase our understanding of the use of data in the new online world. The ethics of data use and the meaning of the data we provide through our online lives will be critical to the success of that new initiative.

Related Links:

The Commons Report

The European Data Science Academy

DecarboNet – The Best Is Yet To Come

Tuesday 25 Nov 2014 | KMi News

Lara Piccolo, Miriam Fernandez, and Harith Alani from KMi travelled to Brussels last week to run the successful first review of the FP7 CAPS DecarboNet project. Harith Alani; the coordinator of DecarboNet, told the reviewers in his opening presentation to ‘Keep Calm, because the best is yet to come’ from this three year project.

The review was also attended by representatives of all other DecarboNet partners; University of Sheffield, Vienna University, Modul University, Green Energy Options, World Wide Fund Switzerland, and Waag Society.

DecarboNet addresses the vital societal challenge of battling climate change, by incentivising change in people’s behaviour towards energy consumption. Behaviour change has been found to be key for reducing the consumption of energy, and for engaging the public in energy debates. The project is a multidisciplinary effort to tackle these problems by identifying determinants of collective awareness, translating awareness into behavioural change, and providing novel methods and strategies to influencing, measuring, and monitoring this change.

In its first year, DecarboNet objectives were to (i) gather requirements from two use cases, as well as from users, through a set of co-creation sessions aimed at studying user engagement in energy debates, and what information could be used, and how, to raise their awareness of the problem and potential remedial solutions and actions, and (ii) to conceptualize and develop the methodological and technological basis to guide and facilitate the further evolution of the DecarboNet platform.

Highlights from DecarboNet’s first year include (1) production of a Utility Toolkit for engaging groups in co-creation workshops to raise awareness towards energy, (2) release of three environment-related text analyses tools; ClimaTerm, ClimateMeasure, and Recognyze for entity extraction, (3) analysis of 14 million tweets to identify patterns of engagement around Earth Hour campaigns on social media, (4) extension of Media Watch for Climate Change with several functionalities and visualisations, and (5) development of Climate Challenge; an application with a gamification strategy to help people test their climate knowledge against other players.

The project so far produced 17 scientific publications, one of which won the best paper award, two invited talks, and organised 3 workshops and 2 tutorials.

The first FORGE newsletter is out!

Friday 21 Nov 2014 | KMi News

It is hard to believe that only a year has passed since our project started given all of the events that we’ve participated in and the extent of our results.

As you will read FORGE has the ambitious aim to transform FIRE into a learning resource – making world class experimental facilities available to students within eBooks. We have already developed a first interactive eBook available from our website and also components, described below, to enable developers to create their own FORGE-based educational resources.

Looking back over the year for me personally the highlight was the Future Internet Assembly in Athens where we led on the session Beyond MOOCs: the Future of Learning in the Future Internet and where the project won the Best Poster prize.

Several FIRE projects, National Research and Education Networks (such as BREN) and large companies (such as Cisco) have already expressed keen interest in our results. If you are at all excited by what you see below then I would urge you to please join us through our Open Call.

– Prof John Domingue

In this issue:
– Welcome message
– About FORGE
– FORGE iBook
– Wireless LAN Course
– Open Call

Continue to read the whole Newsletter

OU reaching for the stars…

Monday 10 Nov 2014 | KMi News

After 10 years of flying through space, the spacecraft of the Rosetta mission is close to reaching its final destination – comet 67/P.

KMi honours this Big Day with the production of an augmented reality enhanced film – showcasing how new knowledge media can be used to create new types of learning materials.

The film features Dr. Natalie Starkey of the OU’s Planetary and Space Sciences interacting with the spacecraft and the Philae lander that holds the instruments the OU developed for the mission.

We wish our colleagues of the OU’s Planetary and Space Sciences and all others who contribute to the mission the best of luck for a successful landing on Wednesday, November 12th.

Fingers crossed – this will be an exciting moment in history!

Related Links:

The Film

Would you prefer to take a cold shower every day- or – shower only twice a week?

Tuesday 04 Nov 2014 | KMi News

Comfort, well-being, safety… what really matters to us? How can we change our behaviour to mitigate climate change, but keep in line with our inner values?

The Daring Dilemmas on Facebook is a DecarboNet initiative of periodically launching intriguing questions to make people reflect upon and discuss habits and everyday choices – and how they may impact the environment.

This idea is based on The Commons Dilemma, a type of social dilemma first discussed in 1968 in the “Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin. The dilemma is “whether to reduce their individual rates of consumption, sacrificing their own desires, freedom to consume, and perhaps personal well-being for the future of the group, or to continue using the resources at the same rate, risking the common pool” (Edney, 1980).

Together with WAAG Society and other DecarboNet partners, the KMi team is evaluating this approach to engage people with Energy Saving and Climate change issues, and invites to you to Like it, discuss the questions among your friends and have fun!

Related Links:

Daring Dilemmas on Facebook

MK Data Hub Installation begins

Tuesday 04 Nov 2014 | KMi News

On 27 October Paul Alexander’s team arrived at UCMK with the first load of data hub equipment to begin the installation.

The MK Data Hub is the key component that will curate all data involved in MK:Smart, which is a collaboration between a range of public sector and commercial partners. The Open University, who are leading the project, are collaborating with the University of Bedfordshire, who will be hosting the MK Data Hub at UCMK (University Campus Milton Keynes).

The technical design of the MK Data Hub has been primarily undertaken by project partners OU and BT, supported by UoB and others in the development of a computing architecture that will gather, store and analyse significant volumes of data, allowing for innovative apps and services to be developed that will inform and support the growth of Milton Keynes.

The Data hub Technical Operations Team have given themselves the nickname MK:Smart DTOP and each stage of the installation process has been documented on Twitter.

It all began with the team tweeting a picture of the stacks of boxes containing data hub equipment they would be building at UCMK in Central Milton Keynes. Since then it’s been non-stop – installation of power distribution, blade chassis, management servers, networking and firewall equipment, including connecting everything up with hundreds of metres of both copper and fibre cabling.

The giant 3D puzzle has required the Data hub Technical Operations Team to work long hours, and take regular breaks to refuel with pizza, but nothing has dampened their spirits, not even the interruptions caused by unexpected rain showers – not ideal for carrying electronic equipment between buildings!

In the coming weeks significant progress will be made configuring the equipment to connect to the internet, internally communicating between the two main site locations and building and installing the software that will run the MK Data Hub.

Follow Paul’s team’s progress on Twitter via @MKSmart_DTOP.

Related Links:

@MKSmart_DTOP on Twitter

MK:Smart

DataCore User Group to be held at KMi

Monday 03 Nov 2014 | KMi News

The third in a series of annual, invitation only, end-user focused events, organised by leading software defined storage vendor, DataCore and partner organisation NCE, will be held in KMi’s Podium on 2 December 2014.

We look forward to welcoming guests from a variety of sectors and giving them an introduction to what the Knowledge Media Institute has to offer in terms of delivering applied research solutions, both as prototypes and real life systems.

We’ll also give our guests a quick tour of the activities surrounding one of our current hottest projects – MK:Smart. It’s a £16 M Smart City, Big Data project, which will have considerable benefits for local businesses. The Open University are leading the project, alongside a consortium of commercial and public partners including BT, Anglian Water and Milton Keynes Council.

KMi docks at ISWC 2014

Sunday 02 Nov 2014 | KMi News

The International Semantic Web Conference this year witnessed another flood of KMi personnel and talent, with 9 people from the lab attending the conference which took place in Riva del Garda, Italy, on October 19-23. The range of contributions from KMi to this flagship Semantic Web conference this year has never been as diverse, ranging from papers, to keynotes, to posters.

Two workshop keynotes were delivered by KMi. Mathieu d’Aquin gave the keynote of the Semantics for Smarter Cities workshop, with his talk on “Dealing with Data Diversity in a Smart City Data Hub”. Harith Alani gave a keynote at the workshop of Linked Science – Making More Sense Out of Data workshop, with a talk titled “Making More Sense Out of Social Data”.

Enrico Motta continued to participate in steering the conference through his membership of the Semantic Web Science Association (SWSA). Enrico, with Harith Alani, served on the ‘mentoring lunch’, which is an annual ISWC event that brings together graduate students and early-career researchers with experienced researchers from both, industry, and academia, for a lively discussion and question-answering session. This event was co-organised by another KMier – Miriam Fernandez, who served on the organisation committee of ISWC this year as a “Student Coordinator”.

The Research Track of ISWC, with a 21% acceptance rate, had two full paper presentations from KMi. Hassan Saif presented a paper entitled “Semantic Patterns for Sentiment Analysis of Twitter”, co-authored with Miriam Fernández and Harith Alani from KMi, as well as with Yulan He from Aston University (ex-KMier). The second paper was presented by Elizabeth Cano, which was titled “Stretching the Life of Twitter Classifiers with Time-Stamped Semantic Graphs”, co-authored with Yulan He, and Harith Alani.

The Posters and Demos session was also buzzing with KMi contributions, where two booths were setup for KMi demos – one authored by Keerthi Thomas, Miriam Fernandez, Stuart Brown and Harith Alani, titled “OUSocial2 – A Platform for Gathering Students’ Feedback from Social Media”, and the other one by Alessandro Adamou, Mathieu d’Aquin, Helen Barlow and Simon Brown, titled “LED: curated and crowdsourced Linked Data on Music Listening Experiences”.

As for posters, two were presented, one by Hassan Saif, Miriam Fernandez and Harith Alani, titled “Automatic Stopword Generation using Contextual Semantics for Sentiment Analysis of Twitter”, and the second poster was authored by Amparo E. Cano, Yulan He and Harith Alani, titled “The Topics they are a-Changing — Characterising Topics with Time-Stamped Semantic Graphs”. A total of five workshop papers were also presented by KMi at ISWC this year:

– Francesco Osborne, Silvio Peroni and Enrico Motta “Clustering Citation Distributions for Semantic Categorization and Citation Prediction” – Linked Science workshop

– Keerthi Thomas “Privacy Implications of Online Consumer-Activity Data: An Empirical Study” – Privacy Online workshop

– Miriam Fernandezm, Harith Alani, Arno Scharl (MODUL University, Vienna), and Kalina Bontcheva (Sheffield University, UK), “User Profile Modeling in Online Communities” Workshop on Semantic Web Collaborative Spaces (SWCS2014)

– Enrico Daga, Mathieu d’Aquin, Aldo Gangemi and Enrico Motta, “Early analysis and debugging of linked open data cubes”, Semantic Statistics workshop

– Ilaria Tiddi, Mathieu d’Aquin and Enrico Motta “Walking Linked Data: A graph traversal approach to explain clusters” – Consuming Linked Data (COLD2014)

The next ISWC will be held in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, with Mathieu d’Aquin as In-Use Track co-chair, and Miriam Fernandez as Workshop and Tutorial co-chair.

Related Links:

The 13th International Semantic Web Conference ISWC

KMi receives the best paper award at IHC 2014

Saturday 01 Nov 2014 | KMi News

This week, a KMi’s paper led by Lara Schibelsky Godoy Piccolo received the best paper award at IHC 2014, the third Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computer Systems.

KMi’s paper "Energy Consumption Awareness in the Workplace: Technical Artefacts and Practices" presented a study evaluating the role of three different technologies to promote energy awareness in a research workplace: a debate tool, smart monitors, and a tangible device to motivate engagement (an energy tree).

The analysis of the role of each technology considered assessments and interviews, and also the content of the online discussion, which encompassed more than 170 ideas for changing behaviour for around 100 issues about how the energy has been consumed. Results demonstrated that for raising energy awareness, beyond technology, it is also necessary to deal with formal and informal elements, such as institutional practices and individual’s motivation.

This paper is the result of a joint effort between two different European Projects, CATALYST (http://catalyst-fp7.eu/) and DecarboNet (http://www.decarbonet.eu/), led by two different units within KMi, which has proven to be a very fruitful and successful collaboration!

Boo! says the KMi AR Ghost

Monday 06 Oct 2014 | KMi News

Just in time for Halloween, the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University is proud to announce the release of its first ghost, "Cuthbert 1.0", who now spooks the institute’s hallways. “Cuthbert is state-of-the-art, not one of these timeworn second hand ghosts, who’ve been around for a couple hundred years”, says Fridolin Wild, the principal investigator.

“He is very 2014 and he is visible to anyone with paranormal sensitivity”, Paul Hogan, ghost coder, adds jokingly, “for example, anyone wearing the Epson Moverio BT200 augmented reality glasses”.

Cuthbert is very attached to the room he resides in, the institute’s media lab, but he interacts with his environment, in particular with people approaching him (see video). Attached is to be understood in a literal sense here, as the technology behind his presence is channeled utilizing optical features of (and computer vision over) a fiducial marker calibrated on objects in the room.

“The working principle for the ghost is pretty much the same one we apply in our TELLME project in industry”, says Wild, “in that work, we are enabling ‘learning by experience’ in diverse manufacturing environments from helicopter maintenance, bespoke furniture production, to textile weaving. There is an immense potential in this approach to deliver instruction ‘to the point of impact’, as it says in the new tech trends report of Deloitte, which we were interviewed by about our work in wearables-enhanced learning".

In TELLME’s ‘ARgh!’ application (appropriately named for our Cuthbert prototype!), cheap, printed markers are used to track and connect objects in the real world to virtual learning activities, thus providing feedback and guidance where required, superimposed over what human eyes naturally perceive.

Or super-naturally perceive.

Muahaha.

Happy Halloween!

Related Links:

Meet Cuthbert 1.0 (Video)

Deloitte Tech Trends 2014: Wearables p.55ff

TELL-ME project

EA-TEL SIG ‘wearables-enhanced learning’ SIG WELL

Live Fresher’s Week Events, October 2014

Monday 06 Oct 2014 | KMi News

This week saw KMi support two linked live and online "Fresher’s Week" events for the new October 2014 intake of Students. OU Student Assoication (OUSA) radio kicked off with a broadcast on Monday 29th September and then the University’s Student Hub Live ran over two days Wednesday and Thursday, of that same week. OUSA Radio was a "talk-show radio" format webcast live 29th September with direct student-to-student interactions running from the student offices here in Milton Keynes, UK. The Student Hub Live video session on 1st / 2nd October 2014 was also live from the campus and was intended to appeal to new students who want to get involved with the OU Community, talk to other students, Associate Lecturers, Module chairs and leaders of the institution.

The first ever live broadcast of OU Student Radio from the OU Students Association saw experienced OU students Sue, Mark and Neil presenting a guide to the world of an OU student in this 2 hour special. There was a chance to ask the community your student problems, find out how other students go about their OU student lives and hear some topical OU interviews. The radio event even allowed callers to phone in questions and comments via the conventional telephone (which even in this online world many OU students still have!) and join in the debate.

Live from the KMi Podium, the Student Hub Live saw OU presenters Karen Foley and Dave Middleton interviewing guests, introducing role play sessions, and even conducting a live quiz with a highly interactive remote student participation.

Some comments from users during the events:

"Thanks team! It’s been a really lovely experience 🙂 Really buzzing to get started!" "What a blast!!! OU ROCKS!!!"
"The team should be cracking open the bubbly tonight most definitely!
"For the organisers, it was lovely! We want more of those, please! I enjoyed them immensely, and I am not #new2OU, been here since 2005 ;)"
"Thank you all for these events, been with the OU for 9 years now, but this is the first time I attended something like this. Keep up the good work!"
"Thanks to every one involved. Really enjoyed this 🙂 "
"Makes one proud to be an OU student."
"I have came away with so much that I didnt know despite completing 5 modules. Need more of this…"

As the students said – well done team!

Related Links:

The Student Hub Live website

SHL On LiveStream

OUSA Fresher’s Radio Live

OU Student Radio on Facebook

Cambridge Masters students learn about MK:Smart

Monday 06 Oct 2014 | KMi News

Over thirty Master’s students from Cambridge University visited KMi on Friday, to learn about our smart city project.

Project Director, Prof Enrico Motta gave an overview of the project while Dr Mathieu d’Aquin presented the work on crowd analysis in more detail, which is carried out in the context of the wider action on enabling intelligent mobility. The session was part of the students’ orientation programme as part of their Masters course on Technology Policy. Students visit examples of past and current infrastructure challenges, and MK:Smart provided a particularly interesting case study for them, since it deals with managing the potential strain on city infrastructure caused by the population growth expected in Milton Keynes.

Dr d’Aquin explained that we are building the MotionMap solution, which (among other things) will allow users to measure pedestrian ‘busyness’ in Milton Keynes. Trials have taken place in The Open University refectory to map the movements of customers, and more recently small-scale trials have been set up in Central Milton Keynes. The aim of these activities is to provide the initial building blocks of an app allowing people to make informed decisions about whether and how to travel in Milton Keynes.

A successful first workshop on Linked Data for Knowledge Discovery

Monday 29 Sep 2014 | KMi News

The first workshop on Linked Data for Knowledge Discovery (LD4KD) took place in Nancy (North-East of France) on Sept. 19th, during the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML/PKDD). The event was organised by two KMi members, Dr. Mathieu d’Aquin and PhD student Ilaria Tiddi, in collaboration with a former KMi member, Prof. Nicolas Jay from the LORIA lab of Nancy.

The workshop aimed at creating collaborative channels and discussions between experts of the long-standing field of Knowledge Discovery, with experts of the newer one of Linked Data technologies. Although it took place the day after the conference, LD4KD was the second most popular workshop of the conference (in number of registrations), attracting more than 30 people in the audience throughout the day. The real success here is that LD4KD managed to bring together experts and practitioners from both domains, to attend 8 presentations and a final discussion on the research directions these domains should jointly explore, as well as to share thoughts, questions and suggestions through a collaborative document and twitter (see http://events.kmi.open.ac.uk/ld4kd2014/collaborate/).

The success of the workshop showed that a collaboration between the two fields is possible, and motivated the organisers to repeat the experience in the future.

First Seminar on Responsible Research and Innovation and Science Education in Europe

Thursday 25 Sep 2014 | KMi News

The ENGAGE project meeting and the First Seminar on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Science Education was held in Paris at the “L’espace des Sciences Pierre-Gilles de Gennes” – ESPCI ParisTech during the 22nd to 24th of September.
This European event was organised by Alexandra Okada (OU – KMi) and Matteo Merzagora (TRACES). There were more than fifty experts in RRI including Inquiry based Learning as well as more than twenty leaders representing more than twenty five European projects.
The aim of this seminar was to create an opportunity for knowledge exchange among FP7 and H2020 projects and experts that contribute(d) to connect Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE).
“RRI is an inclusive approach to research and innovation (R&I), to ensure that societal actors work together during the whole research and innovation process. It aims to better align both the process and outcomes of R&I, with the values, needs and expectations of European society.”
Some keys identified in the RRI approach are “Engagement”, “Gender Equality”, “Science Education”, “Ethics”, “Open Access” and “Governance”. Formal and informal education play a crucial role to mainstream these approaches in the scientific and social practices. By embedding the above mentioned areas in the teaching practices, we contribute to the shaping of the vision of science in future generations. This is why several recent FP7 and H2020 projects (ENGAGE being one of them) put efforts in developing the links between RRI and Science Education (with a special focus on IBSE).
This event in Paris intended to identify existing specific expertise in other projects that are useful for ones’ own project, in order to avoid missing connections between people and projects.

The OU Welcomes our new Chancellor!

Wednesday 10 Sep 2014 | KMi News

Today marked an exciting day for the OU, Baroness Martha Lane-Fox was installed as our new Chancellor in the Milton Keynes degree ceremony at Milton Keynes theatre. As part of the days celebration’s, KMi were invited to have a stand at the post ceremony showcase at the Walton Hall campus in Milton Keynes.

KMi presented our new pipeline technologies in three broad themes: the future of scholarly knowledge; a future of data; and the future of place.

Our ‘Future Place’ theme is significantly wide-reaching to have had its own stand at this showcase, where it showed the new work of MK:Smart via a future vision of Milton Keynes.

Similarly, on the KMi stand we presented some ‘Place’ themed technology, such as your individual library of texts via interactive eTextBooks; and your own laboratory via ‘webcasting live and interactive’.

The ‘Future Scholar’ theme showcased two projects:

CORE – which is already ‘plugged in’ to the OU’s Open Research Online service (ORO), and represents a vision of the future of open knowledge exchange, as it reads, integrates and shares the world’s open texts;

Rexplore – which maps the changing shape of scholarly disciplines via research people and publications.

The ‘Future Data’ theme showcased three projects:

OUAnalyse – which is creating a dashboard to help us predict and support student success via behavioural data;

OUSocial – which reminds us that ’emotion’ is a key part of any analysis, and indicates how we might mine social spaces for learning-related emotion;

DiscOU – which presents a range of Apps that leverage Linked Data to discover and connect OU resources to the world.

We welcomed to be part of this exceptional occasion for both graduates and the wider OU community!

Fourth ESWC Summer School ‘Awesome’

Monday 08 Sep 2014 | KMi News

"It was an awesome experience."

"ESWC Summer School was awesome, seriously! I would not expect at all to meet so many cool people (tutors and students) there and learnt a lot from them. Thank you all tutors, students and whoever involved making this summer school happen. I would definitely recommend the ESWC Summer School to other students…."

"…. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the ESWC summer school organizers for such a fantastic event and the tutors to share their valuable time and experiences. I enjoyed the whole learning process with the experts and peers, along with the informal gatherings and discussions. I could not envision a better way of learning and connecting, and becoming a part of the Semantic Web community. I wish to stay in touch with all the awesome people I met here and wish them all the best for their future endeavors."

"Many thanks to all tutors for organizing the summer school in that place, in that way and for sharing with us a lot of their positive energy and knowledge. I ended the week with new friends and that is really invaluable. I don’t think that would have been possible in other summer schools, so just keep the secret formula.."

"Thanks to all the tutors and students for the knowledge, I really learned a lot, personally and professionally…"

"As a first summer school, really it was a great and enriched experience with awesome persons ! Thank you all tutors for sharing knowledge and being generous and thanks to all students and hope sincerely to see you all again."

The above represents just a small portion of the feedback we received from the attendees of the Fourth ESWC Summer School which was held last week in the beautiful village of Kalamaki in Southern Crete. The school has the aim of fostering a new generation of Semantic Web and Linked Data researchers through a combination of Keynotes, interactive hands-on sessions, poster sessions and a collaborative mini project. The core technical part of the School’s curriculum is based upon the results of the EUCLID project enabling us to provide rich interactive material to students before they attend.

The school is conducted in a relaxed atmosphere – we are for example actually able to teach outside due to the favourable climate – which results in the students engaging in a highly enthusiastic fashion. Keynotes this year included Marko Grobelnik from JSI, Avi Bernstein from ETH Zurich, Dominic Oldman from the British Museum and Guus Schreiber from the Free University of Amsterdam.

KMi’s involvement in the event comprises of providing a School Director (John Domingue), organisational support (Aneta Tumilowicz) and the school website (Damian Dadswell). We also used a portion of our emerging semantic sensor network platform developed within the context of our CARRE eHealth project.

Given the sustained success of the event we have now formalised the school’s governance through a Steering Committee which is comprised of number of leading institutions within the Semantic Web area, specifically: KIT, JSI, FORTH, STI International, the University of Southampton, the University of Innsbruck and KMi. We are already looking forward to next year’s event.

Related Links:

ESWC Summer School 2014 website

CARRE project website

The EUCLID project website

Calling MK citizens – come and talk Personal Data

Friday 05 Sep 2014 | KMi News

If you care about how your Personal Information is used and want to be involved in the thinking that will help shape the public and private services that citizens engage with online, these workshops will allow you to explore some live use cases and propose solutions.

22nd September 2014 3.30 to 5.30pm Register here

23rd September 2014 12.00 to 2.00 pm Register Here

24th September 2014 6.00 – 8.00 pm Register Here

Venue: 4th Floor, Berril Building, the Open University Walton Hall Campus.

Aligned to the MK:Smart project, the Open University (KMi/MCT) and Milton Keynes Council are engaged in a 3 month feasibility study with govt and other agencies on Personal Information. We want to make sure that the voice of MK citizens is heard. Your Personal Information includes age, gender, ethnicity, address, location, financial, opinion and health information amongst others

A new market is emerging for Personal Information Management Services (PIMS) – services that help individuals gather, manage and use information (including personal information) to make better decisions and manage their lives better. This market is forecast to be larger than the UK automotive industry. To be part of the activity that will shape this market, help the OU be at the forefront of this thinking.

 Parking is free
 Refreshments are provided
 Expenses will be reimbursed (details on request)

For more information contact:
alan.fletcher@open.ac.uk
rachel.yarrien@open.ac.uk

LED to be featured at DLfM and ISWC 2014

Friday 29 Aug 2014 | KMi News

The Listening Experience Database has earned two slots in upcoming academic events on Digital Libraries and the Semantic Web, both themes much cherished by KMi folk in the realm of Web science.

On September 12, LED will be presented at the first International Digital Libraries for Musicology Workshop (DLfM 2014) by Royal College of Music researcher Simon Brown and KMi researcher Alessandro Adamou. This event is organised in conjunction with the ACM/IEEE Digital Libraries 2014 conference and is its first dedicated forum on musical and musicological topics, which had been featured in shorter sessions during previous instalments of the conference. Simon and Alessandro will be presenting their paper S. Brown, A. Adamou, H. Barlow and M. d’Aquin: Building listening experience Linked Data through crowd-sourcing and reuse of library data.

On October 21, LED will also be demonstrated during the Poster and Demo session of this year’s International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2014). Alessandro and Mathieu will stand as delegates of the LED project on the KMi’s yearly appointment with this major conference.

This marks the debut of the technological edge of LED – whose development is carried out entirely at the KMi – in dealing with real-time management of curated and crowd-sourced linked data. These events also pave the way for the now-imminent release of the first LED open dataset.

Related Links:

Original story from LED website

OU Analyse: turning barriers into opportunities!

Tuesday 26 Aug 2014 | KMi News

At the beginning of August, the OU Analytics team in KMi received the following letter from the Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic):

"Zdenek and team, At the office of PVC-A Team Away Day I asked colleagues to nominate people who they work with and who deserve a special thank you. The team were nominated for "turning barriers into opportunities and ignoring boundaries to produce a weekly model for predictions whether students will progress. Thank you from me and my team for all you do to support us".

It is great to acknowledge the work of the Analytics team in breaking barriers and facilitating the work of the OU Student Support Teams University wide.

Well done all!

Related Links:

The OU Analyse project

KMi Receives 12 Bottles of Quality Champagne as an Expression of Thanks for Our Research

Tuesday 19 Aug 2014 | KMi News

Two mysterious boxes of quality champagne have been delivered to KMi on Friday last week. After an original uncertainty about the sender and the true recipient, it has been revealed they were sent by a London based company Research Research Limited. The champagne was addressed to Petr Knoth and his team developing the CORE system as an expression of thanks for producing the service. The company has started using the CORE dataset and services to improve the performance of their classification algorithms, which are applied in production as part of their business. The adoption of CORE helped to dramatically boost their performance indicated by a substantial increase in F-measure. The champagne has been sent as special thanks for the CORE outputs and Petr’s help in setting this use case up.

The event triggers an interesting question of whether the next REF should use champagne as one of the impact indicators.

Citizen Data – empowering citizens

Monday 18 Aug 2014 | KMi News

KMi joins three-month feasibility study on how to empower citizens with their own data.
Five organisations have come together to run a three-month feasibility study to explore how to empower citizens with their own data. The miData Studio initiative is a collaboration between the Open University ( KMi and MCT) and:
Milton Keynes Council
Ctrl-Shift                                                   Specialist consultancy
Cabinet Office                                           Govt dept supporting the Cabinet/PM
Connected Digital Economy Catapult       Government-funded innovation centre

The miData Studio project aims to create an open, collaborative environment where citizens, the council and developers explore how empowering citizens with their own information can enable better services, better quality of life and efficiency in the delivery of public services.
The project will develop exemplar use cases that deliver benefit to the council and citizens and the local economy more generally.
The project will look for new ways for citizens to gain control of their information, exploring how they can give controlled access to trusted service providers for the services they want or need. It will also act as a pilot for the Cabinet Office’s identity assurance scheme in a local authority context.
This overarching project aim is to empower citizens with their own data in a way they can trust. The project will create a space for learning about working with citizens’ data, building a safe environment to try things out and study what works and what doesn’t work. Crucially the project aims to understand how to do this in such a way that individuals are in control of their data. As such the project is being run in accordance with seven Trust Principles:
i.      Access – citizens own their shared data and can copy or withdraw it at will
ii.     Control – consent must be given for any type of data use;
iii.   Minimization – only the data needed for the specific processing operation should be used;
iv.   Transparency – the citizen must know about use of their data;
v.     Correctness – the data source must be correct and easy to update;
vi.   Simplicity – services designed to be comprehensible to all citizens;
vii. Compliance – citizens wish to be assured that services meet the foregoing principles.
The feasibility study will examine the detail of how the Principles would work in practice and make recommendations for engineering them in to the design of the project.
The findings of the pilot project will be shared widely for the benefit of everyone with an interest in citizen data.

Congratulations, Dr Corneli

Friday 15 Aug 2014 | KMi News

Congrats to KMi’s latest PhD award – Dr Joe Corneli.

Joe’s thesis: "Peer produced peer learning : A mathematics case study" described a research project which created a technological intervention intended to transform a peer produced reference resource into a peer produced learning environment.

In his research, supervised by KMi’s Alexander Mikroyannidis and Peter Scott, he transformed PlanetMath.org, an early online community devoted to mathematics, into a mathematical practicum and a laboratory for learning science via a foundational theory at the nexus of peer production and peer learning. The theory was initially developed during a pilot study based on online field work at the Peer-2-Peer University. The key concept, to which he gave the name “paragogy”, has implications for designers, researchers, educators, and others whose work relies on peer learning and peer production.

Joe is now a researcher in the computing and creativity group at Goldsmiths College, University of London where he now works on modeling social aspects of creativity and developing and applying methods for evaluating creative progress.

Related Links:

Corneli @ Goldsmiths

The PlanetMath Environment

Joe’s home page

The thesis work

Tercentenary in Catalonia: a hundred experts discussing new models of education based on emerging digital trends

Thursday 14 Aug 2014 | KMi News

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the events of 11th of September 1714 in the history of Catalonia, which represents the people’s struggle for freedom. The FIET 2014 is one of these initiatives for celebrating the Tercentenary. Its aim is “to showcase the best Catalan practices in the fields of Education, Culture and Technology and discuss with world-renowned specialists with the intention to generate future environments in these areas”.

The FIET network organised by Dr. Mercè Gisbert Cervera, head of the Applied Research Group in Education and Technology at Universitat Rovira i Virgili comprised more than 100 international experts across the world, who were invited to discuss new models of education based on emerging digital trends in Catalonia. This international meeting, held at the Seminari Pontifici in Tarragona, was organised through eleven thematic groups:
1.     Education Policy
2.     New models of knowledge construction
3.     Key skills
4.     Learning Environments
5.     Teacher Training
6.     Science Technology and Innovation
7.     Technology, Education and Culture
8.     Smart cities
9.     Ethics and Technology
10. Social inclusion and cohesion
11. Social Networks and citizen participation

Larry Johnson ( New Media Consortium), Cristina Yáñez Aldecoa (the University of Andorra) and Alexandra Okada ( The Open University – UK) were invited as international experts to discuss Technology, Education and Culture, group seven coordinated by Ramon Palau Martin (Universitat Rovira i Virgili).

The key objectives for each group were to:

1. Create a framework document with strategic proposals for the next ten years from the dual perspective of Catalonia and the world.
2. Identify, based on the eleven themes, the eleven most relevant experiences national and international related to the application of technologies to education and culture.
3. Design a European cluster project for education and technology with participants from important cities in Europe including in Catalonia.

Six priorities were highlighted by group seven, which will be described in details through their framework document for the Tercentenary:

1. Research on open content, open data and open learning
2. Accessibility and connectivity
3. Informal and formal education
4. Digitalization of Culture to guarantee wide access
5. Policies to promote inclusion and more participation by all actors in the society
6. Policies to guarantee creators’ rights in the open world

Ten projects were selected as best practices

1. ”Galley One” Cleveland Museum of Art
2. Art Project of Google
3. Apps_for_good help young people make their future with new technology
4. Berkeele 1st university in offering learning of music online
5. CODERDOJO
6. Cultural Heritage Experiences – Socio-personal interactions and Storytelling
7. Key competences for collaborative open learning in the digital age
8. Learning through the Arts
9. Library for all
10. Robots & Museums at London’s Natural History Museum

Education and Technology for transformative learning: Cyberculture or Third Culture?

Thursday 14 Aug 2014 | KMi News

The International Forum on Education and Technology was held in Tarragona, Spain on 27 and 28 June. Over 1000 people across the world gathered at the Palau Firal i de Congressos to discuss the role of technology in Education for transformative learning. Several topics were covered during this event: teachers’ digital competence, educational policy for a network society and new learning scenarios in the 21st century.

Prof. Dr. Jabari Mahiri from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Valentí Puig from the Universitat de Barcelona, Ronda Zelezni-Green from m-Schools GSMA and Dr. Alexandra Okada from The Open University – UK were invited as keynotes to discuss transformative education through technology: Cyberculture or Third Culture?

Mahiri and Okada presented together some examples to introduce both concepts: Third Culture(Brockman,1995; Snow, 1959) and Cyberculture (Levy, Castells). Their examples highlighted how technology has been integrated into our daily lives changing the way we teach and learn in the digital age. New concepts have been emerging such as “learning culture”, which refers to colearners who develop and create new ways of learning with technologies throughout their lives (Hodkinson et al., 2005; Delni, 1998; Okada & Mahiri, 2014). A key issue for today’s education is to investigate how learners can create and disseminate knowledge as well as develop effectively their 21st century competences.

Okada also presented two European Projects: weSPOT (working with social, personal open technologies) and ENGAGE (Equipping the next generation for active engagment in Science). Both projects focus on promoting scientific literacy in formal and formal Education. Her research team aims to investigate innovative frameworks and best practices for collaborative inquiry based learning, particularly for participatory communities to promote scientific and digital literacies.

The Education & Technology Fair received thousands of teachers, young students and educational authorities interested in digital trends in education. This event open to the public showcased the latest technologies associated with education, including robotics, augmented reality, mobile and wearable technologies. During the event, Okada was invited to participate in the research group about wearable technologies for inquiry based learning.

ERA toolkit used on OU Environmental Science field courses

Monday 04 Aug 2014 | KMi News

KMI’s Enabling Remote Activity (ERA) project has been mobilised again recently to support the accessibility of Environmental Science field courses. The OU’s use of the portable communications toolkit enables mobility impaired students to participate fully in field courses. The flexibility of the kit means that for sites which some students are unable to reach, the students and their tutors can quickly select and deploy the tools they need to access the site remotely. The kit has been used previously to support Geology field courses (SXR339 and SXR369), but this year was the first time it was used on an Environmental Science course.

The ERA kit includes a set of battery-powered WiFi routers, which are used to create a temporary communications network at a fieldwork site. Within the OU’s field courses, web and telephone (VoIP) services running on a laptop computer facilitate remote access to difficult to reach field sites by nearby students. The toolkit supports the sharing of photographs (using a WiFi camera), video streams (using IP cameras and video encoders) and phone calls (using VoIP applications) on mobile devices.

As part of the second level ‘Practical Environmental Science’ course (OU code SXE288) the ERA kit was used this year on two three day residential courses, namely the ‘Hydrology and Meteorology’ course at Malham Tarn in April and the ‘Vegetation and Soils in the Field’ course at Preston Montford in July. In both courses students work in groups to apply their course knowledge and develop their field skills through an assessed project.

The feedback received from the course participants was very encouraging:

“The ERA technology was superb, without it, I would have been a spectator, instead, I was a contributor.” (Steven, OU student)

“The technology allowed Steven to see how different measurements and readings were taken in the field. I took many of the readings whilst Stephen used ERA to watch from a distance. Having watched the readings being taken, the results were, I believe, more meaningful to Stephen than just pure data recordings.” (Chris, Steven’s note-taking assistant)

“I thought it was very successful use of ERA for environmental science and liked that it was adaptable and available to be used when needed by the student.” (Dr Sarah Davies, tutor and course team member)

Related Links:

ERA project website

ERA example video clip from SXR369

Practical Environmental Science course SXE288

Field Studies Council residential centre at Malham Tarn

Field Studies Council residential centre at Preston Montford

The interactive webconference: Student Connections

Tuesday 29 Jul 2014 | KMi News

KMi hosted the first Student Connections conference this week. The online event from The Open University’s Faculty of Social Sciences took place between 30 June 2014 – 4 July 2014 and presented a series of highly interactive webcasts to Open University students from all the Faculty.

Hosting a week of live and "as live" events, from a multitude of live studio spaces created in the Knowledge Media Institute, the conference drew together staff and student presentations, keynotes, and the innovative Social Science ‘podmag’.

For Social Science researchers this was both an opportunity to showcase their world leading projects to their student body… but more, to do this ‘at scale’ in a highly interactive two way conversation; and ‘all at once’.

For KMi, this was a chance to explore large scale interactive webcasting. Whilst we have created webcast models for hundreds of live users, with highly interactive elements such as voting, quizzes, themed text chat etc since 2005; this was a chance to seriously text new ‘cloud’ video streaming technology, and a new toolkit for interactive web widgets at real, live scale.

The event was very successful… and a number of innovations from the experiement are now in scope!

Related Links:

The Connections Website

Tapping into your personal curiosity: Workshop at PLE 2014

Tuesday 22 Jul 2014 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis delivered a workshop last week at the PLE 2014 conference, which took place in Tallinn, Estonia. The Personal Learning Environments (PLE) conference is an annual event bringing together PLE researchers, educators and practitioners for a lively exchange of ideas, practices and visions.

The workshop was entitled "Tapping into your personal curiosity: Personal Learning Environments and Inquiry-Based Learning" and was associated with the weSPOT project. Participants were first introduced to the concepts of Inquiry-Based Learning and the weSPOT pedagogical model. They were then able to use the toolkit developed by the weSPOT project in order to carry out a research inquiry. More specifically, they used the weSPOT inquiry space, an online personal and social environment for performing scientific inquiries. Participants were asked to use this environment in order to build a mashup of inquiry components that would help them investigate their preferred research topic. They had the opportunity to try out the tools offered in this environment and perform their inquiry either individually or collaboratively in groups. Throughout the workshop, there was time for reflection and discussions on the weSPOT toolkit and Inquiry-Based Learning in general.

This is a follow-up event from the workshop Alexander delivered last April at the JTEL Summer School in Malta. A similar hands-on format was used in that workshop too, which was attended by postgraduate students from universities across Europe.

Related Links:

The weSPOT project

The weSPOT inquiry space

Valedictory Lecture

Friday 18 Jul 2014 | KMi News

After just under 19 years today is the very last day for Professor Simon Buckingham Shum in his KMi office. Arriving here at the very beginning of the Open University’s Knowledge Media Instute in 1995, Simon has risen from Research Fellow to a full Professor as well as serving as a KMi Associate Director (Technology).

His research over the years has been inspired by Doug Engelbart and his vision of augmenting human intellect through computers acting as a mediators. In that time he has created a tremendous legacy of highly impactful computing systems including: Compendium, D3E, JIME and Cohere.

His work has been deployed widely in diverse areas, ranging from arguments to refute racist literature, to tools for resolving general election debates and supporting NASA experts in communicating with Mars-based scientists in future space missions. His Compendium system also played a prominent role in the OU’s REF Computing submission last year.

His latest work has been focused on learning analytics – a strategically important area to the OU. His contributions to this area included: founding the Society for Learning Analytics Research, serving on the OU strategy group in the area, advising FutureLearn on MOOC analytics, and writing a policy document for UNESCO.

In the introduction to his Valedictory Lecture earlier this week Vice-Chancellor Martin Bean declared:

"Simon has played a leading role in shaping the three biggest leaps the OU has taken in the field of social learning: OpenLearn; SocialLearn; and Futurelearn," and

"The big challenge for all of us in education is how we can best prepare our students for this hyper-connected world. This is the challenge that Simon continues to grapple with."

Simon also contributed to KMi’s social life and soul mainly through darts where he became the OU darts champion and writing and performing raps. Several of the AKT project (a 7.5M pound 6-year EPSRC project) plenaries began or ended with one of Simon’s raps, and he also famously wrote a rap for an impromptu hen party held for Professor Carole Goble when she was a Keynote at one of our Semantic Web Summer Schools.

Simon is leaving us to take up the post of Director of the Connected Intelligence Centre at the University of Technology Sydney (co-incidentally our Vice Chancellors alma mater) and Anna de Liddo will now take over his research group pushing forward his work.

Simon’s research has always had a strong underlying social and inclusive agenda. The OU’s publicly declared mission is to be open to people, places, methods and ideas: promoting educational opportunity and social justice. This could have been written with Simon in mind. He will be sorely missed by us all.

Related Links:

Simon’s web page at KMi

Connected Intelligence Centre at the University of Technology Sydney

The Wedding Gift-Rap written for Carole Goble’s Hen party

OU Intranet story on Simon’s Valedictory Lecture – internal to OU only

Doug Engelbart

AKT Project page in KMi

KMi receives resources to provide CORE as a service

Friday 11 Jul 2014 | KMi News

KMi is to receive resources from Jisc to support 3 full time personnel to continue working on CORE and deliver it as a service. The Jisc decision to continue supporting CORE resulted from a few events. First, the Open Mirror feasibility study commissioned by Jisc last year and published in June 2014 recommended to sustain CORE. In parallel, Jisc asked KMi to create a Service Delivery Plan analysing the costs of sustaining CORE as a service. This Service Delivery Plan served as a basis for consequent negotiations between the OU and Jisc in London in May 2014 about the implication of each service delivery option. The result of this meeting was an agreement on exploring the possibility of delivering CORE as a joint OU and Jisc service starting from the second half of 2015. The meeting also created the basis for the specification of the work to be done from July 2014 to June 2015. This work is financially supported by Jisc and covers 3.2 full-time members of KMi staff.

Related Links:

Open Mirror Feasibility Study

Strong visibility of KMi’s work at Open Repositories 2014

Friday 11 Jul 2014 | KMi News

KMi work received high visibility at the 9th International Conference on Open Repositories (OR2014) in Helsinki, Finland especially due to the KMi’s CORE project being mentioned on numerous occasions in the talks of non-OU conference participants. OR 2014 is the main conference in the field of open science and open access repositories and attracted this year over 400 attendees. Additionally, a large number of participants attended virtually as sessions were also broadcasted online.

KMi’s Petr Knoth representing the CORE and FOSTER projects delivered 1 full paper presentation, 2 posters and was also invited to sit on one panel. However, the highlight of the conference from KMi’s perspective, was certainly the fact that CORE was discussed in presentations of non-KMi people, sometime even as a key enabling component.

The first day of the conference hosted the Open Access Button workshop. OA Button makes individual moments of injustice and frustration in accessing research outputs visible to the world. The workshop chaired by Penny Andrews of Sheffield University discussed the technical issues the implementation of OA Button faced and highlighted the use of CORE as an important component for discovering open access copies of research articles on the Internet.

The second day of the conference featured a presentation by Martin Klein of Los Alamos National Laboratory about the HyberActive project. HyberActive provides a pro-active service to archive web references from scholarly articles. A KMi visiting researcher, Dominika Koroncziova and Petr Knoth helped the team in Los Alamos to integrate HyberActive with CORE and set up a demo for OR 2014. During the presentation, Martin Klein showed how CORE sends notifications about new articles and the references extracted from full-texts to their archiving service and described how this simplifies efforts to research data, code and publications management and preservation.

In the afternoon, Petr Knoth gave a full-paper presentation titled "My repository is being aggregated: a blessing or a curse?" authored by Petr in collaboration with Lucas Anastasiou and Samuel Pearce. Petr explained how repositories and aggregators need to create a mutually beneficial ecosystem in which usage statistics are shared, while preserving the distributed and open nature of the overall architecture.

The next session was a panel organised by the Jisc Repositories Shared Services Project featuring presentations and discussion from a set of services and projects (RIOXX, V4OA projects, RJB, IRUS-UK, SHERPA Services and CORE), which are seen as critical for the UK research infrastructure. One representative from each of these projects was invited to sit on the panel featuring Jisc, the two Jisc centres of excellence EDINA and MIMAS, University of Nottingham and KMi, the Open University. This was a lively 75 minute session attracting a good number of questions from the audience.

The long day continued with a poster on the new FOSTER project presented by Eloy Rodriguez and Petr Knoth and a poster on the Jisc RSSP project mentioning CORE and presented by Jisc with the assistance of the service providers. A few posters, such as the London School of Economics poster also mentioned CORE. The last day of the conference has seen a presentation from Richard Jones of Cottage Labs demonstrating the outcomes of the Open Access Repository Registry project funded by Jisc in in which KMi participates. The presentation showed the exchange of data between the new registry and CORE.

Overall, this was a very busy, but rewarding week.

ENGAGE reaches 1200 teachers in a few weeks

Wednesday 09 Jul 2014 | KMi News

The European project ENGAGE “Equipping the Next Generation for Active Engagement in Science” engaged 1200 teachers who signed up and started to download the learning materials.
This project is part of the EU Science in society agenda to promote more Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI).

ENGAGE is designed to provide sustained professional development, through an online community built around the use of science-in-the-news, OER curriculum materials with learning analytics, MOOCs for just-in-time learning, and a brokering system for creating school-scientist partnerships.

The ENGAGE website, developed by KMi team (the technical and legacy lead Ale Okada, the webmaster Damian Dadswell and the graphical designer Harriett Cornish) was launched a few weeks ago in June 2014. An impressive number of teachers from the UK started to download the curriculum materials.

Building on best practice from previous projects, we intend to influence 12,000 teachers across Europe, and extend this to pre-service teachers and their trainers during 3 years ( 2014 -2016).
Teachers have already been writing positive comments:

“I downloaded this activity this morning and used it this afternoon!”

“Overall an enjoyable lesson and I will definitely use it again”.

“If you maintain the standard set in Upd8 you are destined to be a resounding success. Fantastic work -many thanks.”

Related Links:

engagingscience.eu

Congratulations, Professor Zdrahal

Monday 07 Jul 2014 | KMi News

Zdenek Zdrahal, who has been a stalwart of the Open University since 1991, and member of KMi since it was created a few years later has been awarded his chair!

Professor Zdrahal’s research applications have been of significant practical value in reaching out to our local community here in Milton Keynes and he has had a huge impact on heritage organizations worldwide. He has also had a longstanding and significant impact on teaching and learning at this University – in particular via his innovation technology work with the OU Library. He is one of the most valued University innovators in the new field of Learning Analytics to which he brings his substantial track record in Machine Learning technology.

Great news!

Strong KMi presence at ACM Web Science Conference

Wednesday 02 Jul 2014 | KMi News

KMi was well presented at the ACM 2014 Web Science Conference (WebSci) which was held last week at Indiana University, Bloomington, US. Acceptance rate at the conference was 20%, with 3 full papers from KMi.

Lara Piccolo presented a paper on Motivating Online Engagement and Debates on Energy Consumption, co-authored with Harith Alani and Anna De Lido from KMi, and Cecilia Baranauska from UNICAMP in Brazil.

Harith also presented a paper, written with Matthew Rowe from the University of Lancaster (previously in KMi), on Mining and Comparing Engagement Dynamics Across Multiple Social Media Platforms. Both Harith and Lara’s papers are from the EU DecarboNet project, co-ordinated by KMi.

George Gkotsis gave a presentation of a paper titled “It’s all in the Content: State of the art Best Answer Prediction based on Discretisation of Shallow Linguistic Features", co-authored with Karen Stepanyan, Carlos Pedrinaci, and John Domingue from KMi, and with Maria Liakata from the University of Warwick. George also gave a short, and a poster, presentation about his dataset visualisation submission entitled "PUBMED dataset visualisation" which was awarded with an honourable mention and $150.

Web Science studies information networks of people, communities, organisations, applications, and policies that shape and are shaped by the Web. Web Science is an interdisciplinary field, where computing, physical, and social sciences come together to complement each other in understanding how the Web affects our interactions and behaviours. ACM Web Science 2015 will be held in Oxford, UK.

KMi at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences

Saturday 28 Jun 2014 | KMi News

This week 2nd year PhD student Simon Knight‘s been attending the 2014 International Conference of the Learning Sciences, in Boulder Colorado.

In addition to co-chairing a workshop on learning analytics, and productive dialogue with the international community, Simon also presented a paper (slides, video) on a developing ‘epistemic network analysis‘ approach to learning analytics around epistemic cognition research in information seeking tasks. The paper was a direct result of an ongoing collaboration with the epistemic games group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who Simon visited last summer.

Bridging Learning Analytics and Learning Sciences – ICLS Workshop

Saturday 28 Jun 2014 | KMi News

On Monday this week 2nd year PhD student Simon Knight co-chaired a full day workshop at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) in Boulder, on Learning Analytics for Learning and Becoming in Practice. The workshop website (including all accepted papers) is available hosted by KMi here and provides further information regarding the themes of the day, as well as a static copy of collaborative notes taken during the course of the workshop.

The day brought together a set of experts in the fields of learning sciences and learning analytics, alongside early career researchers and practitioners, to discuss how developing analytic techniques might relate to learning theory around notions of ‘practice’ and ‘process’. The workshop provided a bridge between learning analytics and the learning sciences, and was the first learning analytics workshop at an ISLS conference. It’s hoped the conversations will continue, including in a special issue of the Journal of Learning Analytics.

Open, Social and Big – the 3 keys to education futures presented to E2BN

Friday 27 Jun 2014 | KMi News

Peter Scott received a warm welcome when he presented his keynote talk at the E2BN conference on 25 June. He set the ball rolling with the first talk of the day on transforming learning via open, social and big data.

E2BN hosts a two day conference and exhibition for school and Local Authority staff and all those interested in raising standards through the use of technology. This year’s theme was ‘Technology for a New Curriculum’. Every year the East of England Broadband Network aims to provide an intellectual challenge by inviting speakers with a unique forward-thinking outlook on learning. This year they invited our own Professor Peter Scott.

Working on ‘Live and social iBooks’, the theme of interactive learning texts and embedding social multimedia interactions into teaching materials is close to Peter’s heart. In addition, Prof. Scott drew delegates’ attention to the increased possibility for mobile learning outside the classroom, as learners are using new computing platforms and channels, and are accessing content wirelessly.

Open data

Prof. Scott described the breadth of materials available to today’s students in the form of Open Educational Resources (OER). He explained how these digital learning materials are now being framed by leading international institutions as Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC).

Social data

“Learners can now connect with peers and mentors in much more flexible ways,” Peter noted, explaining the potential for interaction offered by new learning formats. “Even conventional resources such as ‘the textbook’ are starting to offer new things. Electronic texts can now be highly interactive; moreover they can be both social and even ‘data driven’ themselves.”

Big data

Peter also highlighted the exciting prospect of using big data from the perspective of a teaching institution – “Learners’ activity in these new spaces is logged and available to inspection and integration. This can be used by big data services to predict trends, and make recommendations. Indeed, one of the most promising new areas of ‘learning analytics’ is not just the dashboard service provided to the institution which helps understand where students may fail, and to offer appropriate help; but to offer the learner a view of their ‘quantified self’.”

E2BN Conference
KMi runs MOOC Analytics Workshop for Future Learning Academic Network
Parliamentary Select Committee: Social Media data and real time analytics
OU Analyse – Big data used to analyse trends in learners

Learning Analytics keynote at World Conference on Educational Media

Friday 27 Jun 2014 | KMi News

I’ve just returned from EdMedia 2014 [#edmediaconf] where I was honoured to be invited to present as a keynote speaker. My thanks to the AACE organisers and delegates for the very warm welcome I received.

The critical stance of the talk seemed to resonate with delegates, who hear a lot about “Big Data” and analytics, but have reservations about the kinds of learning that such technologies may perpetuate. I sought to deconstruct analytics to clarify the ways in which an approach and how it is used embodies an educational worldview. Knowing this, what kinds of learners are needed for 21st century society, and what role can analytics play in advancing this mission?

Abstract: Education is about to experience a data tsunami from online trace data (VLEs; MOOCs; Quantified Self) integrated with conventional educational datasets. This requires new kinds of analytics to make sense of this new resource, which in turn asks us to reflect deeply on what kinds of learning we value. We can choose to know more than ever about learners and teachers, but like any modelling technology or accounting system, analytics do not passively describe sociotechnical reality: they begin to shape it. What realities do we want analytics to perpetuate, or bring into being? Can we talk about analytics in the same breath as the deepest values that a wholistic educational experience should nurture? Could analytics become an ally for those who want to shift assessment regimes towards valuing the qualities that many now regard as critical to thriving in the ‘age of complexity’?

Bio: Simon Buckingham Shum is Professor of Learning Informatics at the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, where he is also Associate Director (Technology), overseeing knowledge and technology transfer to the OU. He researches, teaches and consults on Learning Analytics, Collective Intelligence and Argument Visualization. He co-edited Visualizing Argumentation (Springer 2003) followed by Knowledge Cartography (2008, 2nd Edition 2014). He served as Program Co-Chair of the 2nd International Learning Analytics conference, chaired the LAK13 Discourse-Centric Learning Analytics workshop, and the LASI13 Dispositional Learning Analytics workshop. He is a co-founder of the Society for Learning Analytics Research, Compendium Institute and and Learning Emergence. In August 2014, he joins the University of Technology Sydney as director of the new Connected Intelligence Centre. WWW: simon.buckinghamshum.net

Parliamentary Select Committee: Social Media data and real time analytics

Tuesday 24 Jun 2014 | KMi News

KMi’s Dr Mathieu d’Aquin gave evidence on behalf of the OU to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee at an oral evidence session on Monday 23 June. The session formed part of the Committee’s inquiry into Social media data and real time analytics launched earlier this year.

Dr d’Aquin was joined in front of the select committee today by a number of expert witnesses providing oral evidence to follow up and clarify their written submissions:

Professor Derek McAuley, Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute,
Professor David De Roure, Director, Economic and Social Research Council
Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Web Science Trust
Professor Liesbet van Zoonen, Loughborough University,
Professor David Robertson, UK Computing Research Committee,
Emma Carr, Big Brother Watch

The OU has a long track record of research expertise in this area and KMi demonstrated this in a written submission to the inquiry, made in March by the Government and External Affairs (GEA) team. The OU received an invitation to give oral evidence based on that response. Today’s session, held at Westminster (in the Thatcher Room), focused on how the relationship between the Government and public needs to develop in the digital age.

Dr d’Aquin’s evidence emphasised the need for government policy to support and extend research value in this field, and not just be driven by an understandable, but unhelpful, fear of the power of real time analytics. Employees need to see the data that employers have on them. "Even in our early research," said Dr d’Aquin "we have found that employees are actually quite reassured. Knowing that data is collected, it is incredibly valuable to be able to see it." Policymakers need to understand this and ensure that there are mechanisms in place to support this, and guidelines to enforce it. "Transparent trustability is critical here. It is very important to give back the data to the citizen that is collected about them," he concluded.

Related Links:

The Select Committee on Parliament TV

Oral Evidence to this Committee

The Select Committee home page

Towards a European Area of Skills and Qualifications

Monday 23 Jun 2014 | KMi News

European learners and workers should be able to have their skills and qualifications understood and recognised, within and across national borders, by employers and by educational institutions. The tools that support this aim should be coherent, simple, and easy to use.

The EASQ conference in Brussels on 17th June 2014 took as a starting point the results of the public consultation and the Eurobarometer survey on “A European Area of Skills and Qualifications”. There was a hot debate about the existing European tools for the transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications; are these fit for purpose, and what is the scope to make them simpler and easier to understand by learners, workers and employers.

KMi’s Professor Peter Scott shared the stage with EU figures such as the Head of Unit, Skills and Qualifications Strategies; Multilingualism policies, Directorate General for Education and Culture, European Commission, Ms Ana Carla Pereira.

The core of the discussion was in the context of the new Eurobarometer Survey noting the critical link between learning and employment. EU business needs learners that fit to the new requirements of work, and EU learners have a right to demand that learning is fit for the purpose of a new world of work.

Related Links:

The Event Programme

Check out the Eurobarometer report and EASQ documents

EUCLID Officially Declared Excellent!

Monday 23 Jun 2014 | KMi News

The EUCLID project finished last week with its final review and was given an ‘Excellent’ ranking (the highest) by our reviewers and our EU Project Officer. EUCLID was a two year Coordination and Support Action tasked with producing learning materials for professionals who wish to learn about Linked Data.

Over the lifetime of the project we produced a rich mixture of high quality materials including slides, webinars and eBooks available in a variety of formats including HTML, ePub and for Kindle and iPads. All learning resources have been published with a liberal open licence promoting take up.

As can be imagined, all of the reviewers comments were positive with the comprehensiveness of the eBooks, the use of dissemination channels and our exploitation strategies were highly commended.

From an OU perspective follow ups from EUCLID include the LiveStream work that is now being conducted with large numbers of science and social science students over the summer and the FORGE project which we coordinate. FORGE will apply the EUCLID results to turn large-scale European Internet experimental facilities into a world-class learning resource.

All in all it has been a very enjoyable two years and I would echo the final words of the review given by our EU Project Officer: “It was a great pleasure for me to work with you all and I learnt a lot.”

Related Links:

EUCLID Project website

FORGE Project website

Watch the FORGE iBook teaser video

Tuesday 17 Jun 2014 | KMi News

The teaser video of the FORGE iBook gives you a taste of the learning materials and interactive elements included in the iBook developed by the FORGE project. The FORGE iBook features a number of networking courses produced by FORGE that use FIRE facilities for introducing basic networking concepts to the reader/learner. The iBook is available to download here for the iPad and Mac OS X 10.9 (size: 350MB).

Related Links:

The FORGE project

Professor Enrico Motta takes MK:Smart thinking to the Westminster eForum

Monday 16 Jun 2014 | KMi News

Prof. Enrico Motta, delivered a keynote talk at the Westminster eForum this week, giving a research perspective on the UK smart city market.

The Westminster eForum is a platform for policymakers in Parliament, Whitehall and regulatory agencies to engage in a dialogue with key stakeholders on public policy relating to technology. Participants include academics, technology businesses, domestic customers, interest groups and the voluntary sector, as well as press and commentators.

Recent research commissioned by the UK Government suggests that the UK can gain a 10% share of the Smart Cities market, estimated to be worth $400bn by 2020. Hence, there has never been a better time to consider investment in smart initiatives. This Westminster e-Forum seminar entitled ‘Smart cities: innovation, infrastructure and the opportunity for the UK’ put the spotlight on UK initiatives, such as MK:Smart. It highlighted the challenges in utilising information technology to improve the coordination of infrastructure and services in UK homes and urban areas.

Delegates considered the opportunities arising from the rapid growth of networked technology and data sources in areas such as utility supply, transport and remote healthcare. Challenges including investment, coordination and technology standards were highlighted, as well as the "wider social and environmental implications of ‘smart’ solutions to overcome urban challenges through improved mobility, efficiencies and productivity in UK cities."

Enrico’s presentation focused on the innovation elements of the ‘UK smart city market’ and in particular he emphasised the importance of projects such as MK:Smart, which progress the smart city agenda by taking an integrated approach to innovation in Smart Cities, spanning different sectors and including both top-down technology development, as well as bottom-up citizen and business engagement activities, and educational ones. Enrico joined Léan Doody, Smart Cities Lead at Arup; Colette Maloney, Head of Unit, Smart Cities and Sustainability Unit, European Commission; and Richard Swinford, Partner, Head of Telecoms and Media, Arthur D Little, in confronting questions such as, ‘What developments in open data and open standards are needed to support UK innovation and enterprise to make a real difference to improving the coordination of urban areas?’ and ‘What are the next steps needed to generate jobs and growth through helping to solve the major logistical challenges facing UK cities?’ The panel was chaired by Oliver Colvile MP, Acting Chair and Secretary, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Excellence in the Built Environment.

Also attending the seminar was Iain Stewart MP, who has been a visible supporter of MK:Smart, even calling the project to the attention of David Cameron in January this year (Read more).

First Prize for Rexplore at ESWC Semantic Publishing Challenge

Wednesday 11 Jun 2014 | KMi News

The groundbreaking Rexplore system for analysing scholarly data was awarded first prize, as Best Semantic Publishing Application, at the “Semantic Publishing Challenge”, which was held in the context of the 11th Extended Semantic Web Conference. Rexplore was chosen from a number of innovative Semantic Web applications by a jury comprising both researchers and commercial publishers. The award was given on the basis of a number of criteria, which included potential impact, originality, technological advance, and quality of the demonstration. In particular the demonstration was so successful that it was only allowed to finish well over two hours after the expected end time.
Rexplore leverages novel solutions in large-scale data mining, semantic technologies and visual analytics, to provide an innovative environment for exploring and making sense of scholarly data.

Related Links:

Rexplore

ESWC 2014

DfE consults KMi on Educational Big Data/Analytics

Friday 06 Jun 2014 | KMi News

The Dept. for Education Educational Technology Action Group (ETAG), was set up in February 2014 by three Ministers: Michael Gove, Matthew Hancock and David Willetts. In response to the online consultation, Simon Knight and I have contributed to the ETAG2a cluster focused on: Students with sight and control of their own complex learning "big" data.

Read our contribution on key principles which should shape the analytics landscape, and track the #etag2a twitter stream…

We meet at the Dept. for Education next week with the expert working group with representation from schools, higher education, business and government, where we will discuss the issues raised in our submission, and share examples of different kinds of learning analytics and what is currently possible.

KMi’s analytics research, conducted in collaboration with OU business units and other researchers, is at the forefront of computational techniques for making sense of the rich datasets that learners now create as digital traces. For examples see:

Predictive analytics on student success
Discourse analytics on the quality of academic writing, online textchat, and collective intelligence
Dispositional analytics on learners’ habits of mind
Community health analytics on the dynamics of online groups
Open data/educational resource analytics using linked data
Epistemic cognition analytics through collaborative search
How analytics shape education, through epistemology, pedagogy and assessment regimes

A report will be compiled over the summer, which will make a number of recommendations for ministers to consider.

KMi at ESWC 2014!

Wednesday 04 Jun 2014 | KMi News

A significant number of KMiers attended the 11th edition of the European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2014, http://2014.eswc-conferences.org/), which was celebrated one more year in Anissaras, Crete. The European Semantic Web Conference is held annually and is one of the most relevant events in the Semantic Web area.

KMi’s presence was one of the largest in the conference, with nine delegates: Professor John Domingue, Dr. Harith Alani, Dr. Mathieu d’Aquin, Dr. Miriam Fernandez, Dr. Carlos Pedrinaci and PhD students Francesco Osborne, Hassan Saif, Ilaria Tiddi and Paul Warren. The KMi team was strongly involved in the conference. KMi co-organised one full-day tutorial (“Social Web: where are the semantics”; with the participation of Miriam Fernandez) and one full-day workshop (“Semantic Sentiment Analysis Workshop”; with the participation of Harith Alani). A total of 6 KMi papers were presented at the conference, five in the research track and one at the semantic sentiment analysis workshop. The list of papers includes:

“Linked USDL: a Vocabulary for Web-scale Service Trading”, by Carlos Pedrinaci et. al. (http://2014.eswc-conferences.org/sites/default/files/papers/paper_33.pdf)

“SentiCircles for Contextual and Conceptual Semantic Sentiment analysis of Twitter” by Hassan Saif et. al. (http://2014.eswc-conferences.org/sites/default/files/papers/paper_93.pdf)

“The usability of Description Logics: Understanding the cognitive difficulties presented by Description Logics” by Paul Warren et al. (http://2014.eswc-conferences.org/sites/default/files/papers/paper_124.pdf)

“Dedalo: looking for Clusters Explanations in a Labyrinth of Linked Data” by Ilaria Tiddi et. al. (http://2014.eswc-conferences.org/sites/default/files/papers/paper_127.pdf)

“Identifying diachronic topic-based research communities by clustering shared research trajectories” by Francesco Osborne et. al. (http://2014.eswc-conferences.org/sites/default/files/papers/paper_154.pdf)

“Adapting Sentiment Lexicons using Contextual Semantics for Sentiment Analysis of Twitter” by Hassan Saif et. al.

The KMi team was also strongly involved in the conference organisation with John Domingue as president of STI, and Mathieu d’Aquin as co-chair of the PhD Symposium. KMi was shortlisted for multiple awards at the conference including: best research paper award, best student paper award and best 7-year paper award! Francesco Osborne and Enrico Motta won the best semantic publishing application, Hassan Saif, Miriam Fernandez and Harith Alani were awarded for the best workshop paper at the semantic sentiment analysis workshop and Miriam Fernandez and Carlos Pedrinaci were awarded for their outstanding effort as PC members!

KMiers did not only demonstrate their scientific talent at this event, they also showed their social and dancing skills at the gala dinner that started with an spectacular fire show!

Related Links:

ESWC 2014

Reinventing University for a Wholistic Education

Wednesday 04 Jun 2014 | KMi News

"As universities adapt for the 21st century, what could be done now, like never before, to fully educate future workers, citizens and fulfilled human beings?"

This is the very challenging question which Randy Bass is exploring in a 6-part series of video roundtables (each with a 10min summary) to Reinvent the University for the Whole Person. Wholistic learning analytics is a frontier research challenge in my view, so I was delighted to be invited to join one of the roundtables last night, considering the next step in digital/physical learning environments to help build the qualities that graduates need.

We had a fascinating conversation, building on the previous ones. Thanks to Randy, Reinventors.net (who do a great job facilitating such conversations), and my fellow Reinventors.

In more detail, this goal of the series is to reframe the conversation about the future of higher education…

The Roundtables

Each roundtable takes on a different aspect of the challenge. The roundtables build on each other with an eye of driving towards our desired outcomes.

Topics and sub-questions to be explored include:

The Whole Opportunity: What is the bigger picture opportunity ahead for educating the whole person as universities get transformed in the 21st century?
Next Skill Sets: What will be required for young and old to thrive in the coming digital, global world of many challenges? What is the role of an integrative education in transferring those skills?
Next Physical & Virtual Environments: What are the design principles for future learning environments that strike the optimal balance between the virtual and local?
New Metrics: How will we measure the impact of education, capturing the full range of outcomes we value? What are the “analytics” of an integrative education?
Principles Driving Policy: What are the opportunities for shaping public policy for integrative education in a world that also needs more access, lower costs and more preparation for the workplace? How do we ensure that the focus is not elitist?
Strategies for Organizational Change: What are the key mechanisms for change inside universities that will accelerate reinvention?

The Goals

The entire series is designed to move our collective thinking towards some specific goals, including:

Reframe the discussion to include a compelling vision of educating the whole person in the 21st century, and why this is critical to shaping a better future.
Highlight key strategies for moving the current system forward – from new metrics and organizational change strategies, to ending false debates between online and offline education.
Empower change-makers in the field – from administrators and faculty, to the broader community of parents and alumni – with new ideas to accelerate the changes we want to see in the future.

VPH Share Year 3 Review

Friday 30 May 2014 | KMi News

VPH Share had a very successful third-year review last week in Brussels. VPH Share is focused on providing a cloud environment enabling clinical researchers to develop simulation and decision support workflows to allow raw medical data to be refined into meaningful diagnostic and therapeutic information.

Highlights of the review included three demonstrations by external clinical users, showing how the VPH Share "infostructure" is enabling very powerful new developments in the simulation of aneurisms, vascular stenting and spinal care, with the real possibility of direct clinical applications.

KMi’s contribution to the project is in the area of semantic services. By supporting semantic annotation of VPH Share services using the SWEET and iServe technologies, clinical researchers are enabled to discover and create new workflows relevant to their data, and datasets already published on the VPH Share platform.

The reviewers were very impressed with what has been achieved with the project so far, and were excited by the potential value of the cloud infrastructure for clinical research beyond the end of the project.

Year 4 will focus on evaluation of the platform, and sustainability.

Learning Analytics and Educational Networked Improvement Communities

Thursday 29 May 2014 | KMi News

Prof. Tony Bryk (President, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) is a leading thinker on the improvement of schooling systems. He spent last week at University of Bristol, where I am a visiting fellow, running a hands-on workshop and giving a public lecture. Two full days gave us the opportunity to explore in some depth the intersection of our research programmes.

Bryk has thought deeply about the concept of Networked Improvement Communities as a collective intelligence approach to building knowledge, a concept first proposed by personal and collaborative computing pioneer Doug Engelbart, whose work has been an inspiration for me.

Following Bryk’s events, and a workshop I ran on Educational-NICs and technology, I’ve now posted my reflections on the intersection of NICs with Learning Analytics.

Future of ICT in Educator-NICs from Simon Buckingham Shum

KMi’s Duygu selected as a Research Spotlight Competition Finalist

Thursday 29 May 2014 | KMi News

On Thursday 22 May 2014, BCS (British Computing Society) London office held the 10th Hopper Colloquium. UCL (University College London) presented the Hopper colloquium this year; which was sponsored by IBM and BCS. It was a 1 day event that celebrated women in computing with women speakers talked about their research in computer science and related fields; to give an insight into careers in the industry and provide networking opportunities for the researchers in computing.

Unlike previous years’ poster competitions, this year, Hopper Colloquium held a Research Spotlight Competition for post-graduate students (from MScs to Post-Docs). KMi’s Duygu sent an abstract about her research 2 months ago. Organisers reported that the standard of submissions was extremely high and they received over 35 applications. Duygu has been selected as a finalist like other 11 postgraduates around the UK. She presented her research in 4 minutes during the colloquium and received a cash prize from IBM for being selected as a finalist.

weSPOT in Brazil!

Thursday 29 May 2014 | KMi News

Dante Alighieri is one of the best schools in Sao Paulo Brazil, built more than a hundred years ago by Italian immigrants. Currently it has more than 4,200 students, 115 classrooms and 5 buildings. Its aims are to connect Brazilian and Italian culture, as well as to promote ethical and educational values through innovative pedagogical approaches, high quality teaching and new technologies.

Science teachers have been using Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) applied to Middle and Secondary school for eight years. All students from 11 to 16 years of age are guided to create their IBL projects for developing their scientific reasoning, as part of their formal curriculum.Students who are very interested in science can also participate in extracurricular activities entitled "Young Scientists Programme", in order to develop more complex projects in partnership with researchers and science centres.

Over the last five years, more than 100 inquiry projects developed by Dante Alighieri’s students were awarded in several exhibitions and international fairs. These included Intel ISEF, Febrace and other events in Europe and USA. Students’ comments and outcomes show that IBL approach has been changing students’ lives.

Sandra Maria Rudella Tonidandel, Science Coordinator, Miriam Brito Guimaraes, Science teacher and Valdenice Minatel, Educational Technology coordinator will be collaborating with the weSPOT Project by investigating the use of weSPOT environment with Dante Alighieri’s students. The first pilot will include around 30 students from two classrooms. Sandra Tonidandel and Miriam Guimaraes are very interested in weSPOT for promoting more collaboration between participants. What’s move it will help investigate how weSPOT can facilitate students and teachers organise, visualise and access their inquiry projects. Valdenice Minatel is focussed on the uses of weSPOT and mobile interfaces.

During the meeting at Dante Alighieri School in the second week of May, Alexandra Okada, Sandra Tonidandel and Miriam Guimaraes discussed weSPOT features and how students and teachers can include weSpot in their inquiry project. Although the school has already been using Moodle, mobile interfaces and creating Open Educational Resources during their Inquiry projects, they start to visualise the potential benefits of weSPOT. “Participants will be more aware of the inquiry workflow and its phases. This will be very useful for teachers’ training as well” (mentioned Guimaraes). After running the first pilot with 60 students, the Dante Alighieri team would like to implement an inquiry project at scale with several students to obtain more data and develop a collaborative research on the uses of a social open and mobile collaborative inquiry environment for developing scientific literacy.

Related Links:

Dante Alighieri School website

Dante Alighieri’s Young Scientists – Facebook

13th PCST 2014 in Brazil: Inquiry Based Learning and Science communication through weSPOT

Wednesday 28 May 2014 | KMi News

The 13th International Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PSCT 2014), held in Salvador – Brazil, is one of the most important events in Science Communication. Ale Okada, Sonia Pinto and Silvar Ribeiro presented a case study about weSPOT for promoting scientific literacy through collaborative inquiry.

The PCST 2014 conference aims to raise more inclusive strategies, improve citizenship through public engagement and to discuss new models and practices for communication and participation. Okada, Pinto and Ribeiro introduced collaborative open research, with the aim of addressing these three issues by creating a framework for applying “co-inquiry” – collaborative open inquiry to scaffold citizens’ scientific skills through digital technologies.

The first pilot, which focuses on collaborative research on biodiversity, was organised by The Open University (OU) through the European project “weSPOT” for inquiry based learning, as well as the Universidade do Estado da Bahia (UNEB), coordinator of the “Telecentros.BR” training programme for Digital Inclusion.

weSPOT is a working environment with social, personal and open technologies for inquiry based learning (IBL) in formal, non-formal and informal contexts.
The Telecentros.BR training programme (2013-2014) is a non-credit online course supported by the Brazil Government. The participants are over 2,500 young educators in diverse areas with low access to digital technology. The role of these young educators is to promote better use of ICT and support the Telecentro.BR’s projects, created by the local communities who do have limited access to the internet with the exception of the Telecentro.BR’s buildings.

Public Communication of Science and Technology aims to include particularly low income people who have no access to education and to science materials; people who live in remote areas and have no access to science spaces and science goods; immigrants who have difficulty in understanding the language and the cultural context; disabled people, etc.

“Scientific Literacy through Co-Inquiry” would like to bring diverse participants together from local communities, schools and universities- including learners, educators and families to develop a collaborative investigation through weSPOT.

Related Links:

PSCT 2014 Conference

PSCT 2014 Abstract

weSPOT at NSTA Conference 2014 – 30,000 attendees

Wednesday 28 May 2014 | KMi News

The NSTA conference is one of the most important events in Science Education in the EUA, which offers the latest in science content, teaching strategy, and research to enhance and expand the professional growth of science educators. This event attracts over 30,000 attendees annually.

Ale Okada and Tony Sherborne from Sheffield Hallam University run a workshop together entitled Authentic Enquiry: Raise Motivation and Results with Real Science.
Our aim was to discuss with teachers how to turn traditional topics into scientific adventures that inspire students, instil scientific thinking, and improve test scores. This was based on a highly successful UK middle school curriculum Science UPd8 project sponsored by the Association for Science Education in the UK.

During this workshop science teachers were also introduced to two European Projects in Enquiry based Learning:
TEMI – Teaching Enquiry with Mysteries Incorporated
website: http://www.teachingmysteries.eu/
weSPOT – Working Environment with Social and Personal Open Tools for Enquiry based learning
website: http://portal.ou.nl/web/wespot

Five key features of WeSPOT were presented :
1. Social networking
2. Enquiry workflow
3. Mobile data collection
4. Learning Analytics
5. Knowledge Maps

NSTA 2014 was held in Boston on the first week of April. Workshops were organised across four strands:

Science and Literacy: A Symbiotic Relationship
Teaching Elementary Science with Confidence
Leading from the Classroom
Engineering and Science: Technological Partners

There were an impressive number of science educators who participated in numerous hands-on workshops and presentations including the Boston Museum of Science, which provided free admittance to conference attendees.

NSTA is a great opportunity for science teachers to be inspired whether it is by speakers for promoting innovative learning in their classroom, or though obtaining new professional learning resources, new strategies and technologies from countless workshops, special programs and sessions. This impressive science event lets you gain an in-depth look into particular areas of interest and science discipline.

Related Links:

NSTA

MK:Smart helping to deliver the Internet of Things in Milton Keynes

Friday 23 May 2014 | KMi News

MK:Smart partners BT, Milton Keynes Council and the OU are working in collaboration with Neul, the Connected Digital Economy Catapult and the Future Cities Catapult to build a city-wide, open access demonstration network for Machine to Machine (M2M) communications and the Internet of Things (IoT), based on the Weightless™ communications standard.

The MK Data Hub will provide the computing power and innovation needed to deliver new service improvements for MK citizens. In a world first city-wide network trial combining sensor technologies with low power data transfer, MK:Smart partners will bring practical skills and experimental thinking to help explore the benefits of the network.

“Milton Keynes is already known as a pioneer in the use of technology to make our city more efficient, this activity further demonstrates our commitment to a city-wide level of access.”, said Geoff Snelson, Director of Strategy at Milton Keynes Council.

The collaboration will deploy a series of low power sensors that connect physical objects to the internet using a low power network service based on the Weightless (Trademark) communications standard. This technology does not rely on expensive mobile communications or wifi networks and the low power sensors can be powered for years on simple AA batteries.

“We see this exciting project as a means of establishing an open innovation environment to support the creation of Machine to Machine (M2M) and IoT applications across a whole city.” said Alan Ward, Head of Corporate ICT Practice at BT.

The project will focus on two practical demonstrations. In one, the available capacity of commercial recycling bins in the city will be automatically measured and communicated to the council’s waste collection team. This will ensure that they schedule collection according to the volume of waste in the bins. Current collection scheduling, based on a regular planned route, leads to many bins being collected when they are far from full. Intelligent collection scheduling will lead to efficient use of council resources and reduce the need to expand the waste collection fleet.

In another demonstration the project team will deploy sensors in car parking spaces. The aim is to explore the reality of a parking app that uses real time data to inform motorists of parking availability, with the possibility of pre-booking and payment.

The project has already attracted interest from international media and places Milton Keynes firmly at the forefront of IoT application in the UK.

Computer Weekly
The Guardian
Business Weekly
Electronics Weekly

Engage in the Future City debate @ MK Gallery on 21 May

Wednesday 21 May 2014 | KMi News

On Thursday 21 May Geoff Snelson, a member of the MK:Smart Project Executive Board, and Director of Strategy at Milton Keynes Council, will be speaking at MK Gallery. Geoff will be discussing how MK prepares for future growth, evidencing MK:Smart as a key initiative in supporting the growth of Milton Keynes.

‘Priming the local economy’ is the third set of talks in the ‘Future City Debate’ series, promoted by the Fred Roche Foundation.

The evening will address how we prepare for growth in the future, in a diverse and prosperous economy that embraces enterprise and forward thinking ideas. One question that will be raised is – Is the key to economic growth a state of the art data acquisition and management infrastructure?

The focus of Geoff’s talk is about Milton Keynes being ready and prepared for economic growth, and the changes that might be necessary to ensure we have a sound economic base.

Geoff is following on from other MK:Smart partners who have addressed similar issues at recent events in this series. John Miles of Cambridge University considered the issues of transport growth and Prof Gerd Kortuem of The Open University engaged the audience in what the future of Milton Keynes looks like.

The Fred Roche Foundation celebrates the life of Fred Roche (1931-1992), who led the team in the 1970s who built the new city of Milton Keynes. The foundation endeavours to keep his spirit of creative exploration, innovation and vision alive. It is hosting talks at MK Gallery to stimulate creative discussion and debate around subjects that are vital to the growth and vitality of Milton Keynes.

MK:Smart, the £16M smart city, big data project, is happy to support this series of events and will provide a number of guest speakers in the domain of Future Cities.

‘Priming the local economy’, 7pm, 21 May 2014: MK Gallery, 900 Midsummer Blvd, Milton Keynes, MK9 3QA

Book your free ticket here.

People Powered Change: MK:Smart Citizen Lab

Thursday 15 May 2014 | KMi News

Are you interested in shaping the future of transport, energy and water use in Milton Keynes?

Hear stimulating talks from our guest speakers about some innovative community initiatives, and get involved in the debate for change in MK.

MK:Smart Citizen Lab is part of the MK:Smart project, a smart city initiative led by the Open University.

The People Powered Change workshop in Central Milton Keynes is just one in a series of events that give you the chance to share your ideas on how to address local infrastructure issues.

Date: Wednesday 21 May
Time: 10am – 2pm (Lunch provided)
Venue: Margaret Powell Suite, Midsummer House, Midsummer Boulevard, Central Milton Keynes

Schedule:

10.00 – 10.30   Refreshments
10.30 – 12.00   Talks from guest speakers
12.00 – 13.00   Lunch, networking and warm up for next session
13.00 – 14.00   Citizen Lab (citizen forum on Smart City ideas)

Spaces are going fast, so book now to avoid disappointment.

MK:Smart partner, Community Action MK will be hosting the event in Central Milton Keynes. Listen to talks about real community initiatives that are happening right now, and then share your thoughts and ideas over lunch.

Speakers include:

Ged Devin, Cooperatives UK – on community shares
Cat Hobbs, We Own It – on the role of public ownership of services
James Alcock, The Plunkett Foundation – on community ownership of local shops, pubs, libraries, renewable energy schemes and more
Katherine Horsham, Here To Isington – on co-production and developing volunteering
Jeremy Fennell, Locality – on the latest successes in asset-based community development

For more information on the series of workshops and how to get involved in the MK:Smart Citizen Lab contact: lizzie@communityactionmk.org

MKSmart.org

KMi @ ESRC Code Acts in Education seminar

Wednesday 14 May 2014 | KMi News

Last Friday I gave an invited talk at the ESRC Code Acts in Education seminar series, University of Edinburgh. I focused on how the different dimensions to how Learning Analytics "act" in education: analytics are assessment tools, embodying educational worldviews.

More details and recording of my talk on my blog.

How do Learning Analytics “act” in Education? from Simon Buckingham Shum

KMi make ARGH! millionaires in Malta

Tuesday 06 May 2014 | KMi News

At the 2014 Joint Technology Enhanced Learning Summer School (JTELSS) in Malta KMi collaborated with the TELL-Me project partner VTT to design and deliver this year’s JTELSS Million Dollar Challenge, requiring students to work with the ARGH! augmented reality platform.

The Million Dollar Challenge is a KMi workshop designed to support doctoral students in the understanding of the commercial potential of TEL research and to give them a framework for assessing market readiness and devising an elevator pitch.

Students were introduced to the key elements of customer and competitor analysis and the concept of market disruption as a platform for assessing a technical use case of the ARGH! platform. ARGH! uses custom code on the iOS platform that allows image recognition of markers placed on objects to deliver additional information to the user about the object, in app, without having to navigate to a web page. ARGH! is already being trialled with Augusta Westland to improve machine and process training in helicopter maintenance.

The four JTELSS teams this year each designed their own use of the ARGH! platform in a TEL scenario and received individual coaching on the use of the platform as well as the commercial considerations needed to test the idea. The scenarios explored were: the development of behavioural training models for individuals with Autistic Spectrum disorders based on face recognition of human emotion; the augmentation of medical equipment to aid use in non frequent use cases and the link of machines to medical records for analysis of the effectiveness of medical intervention; the marking of books to provide leisure readers and students with additional information; the provision of training videos for equipment that a user could interact with by overlying their actual physical interaction with a the machine, over the virtual.

The winning team (behavioural training in human emotion recognition) of Triinu Jesmin, Neven Drljevic and Mia Carapina were delighted to receive the coveted JTELSS Million Dollar Challenge Trophy.

ARgh! goes autistic from Fridolin Wild on Vimeo.

Happy 45th Birthday, Open University

Tuesday 29 Apr 2014 | KMi News

KMi celebrated The Open University’s 45th ‘Charter Day’ today celebrating the historic signing of The Open University Charter with the launch of the new OU Pipeline, a website dedicated to the delivery of Knowledge Media technologies into the OU.

Showing off KMi pipeline technologies at Charter Day 2014, we presented a range of new work in three broad themes: the future of scholarly knowledge; a future of data; and the future of place.

Our ‘Future Place’ theme is significantly wide-reaching to have had its own stand at Charter Day, where it showed the new work of MK:Smart via a future vision of Milton Keynes, the home of the main OU campus.

Similarly, on the KMi stand we presented some ‘Place’ themed technology, such as your individual library of texts via interactive eTextBooks; and your own laboratory via ‘webcasting live and interactive’.

The ‘Future Scholar’ theme showcased two projects:

CORE – which is already ‘plugged in’ to the OU’s Open Research Online service (ORO), and represents a vision of the future of open knowledge exchange, as it reads, integrates and shares the world’s open texts;

Rexplore – which maps the changing shape of scholarly disciplines via research people and publications.

The ‘Future Data’ theme showcased three projects:

OUAnalyse – which is creating a dashboard to help us predict and support student success via behavioural data;

OUSocial – which reminds us that ’emotion’ is a key part of any analysis, and indicates how we might mine social spaces for learning-related emotion;

DiscOU – which presents a range of Apps that leverage Linked Data to discover and connect OU resources to the world.

All in all, some exciting KMi innovations to celebrate 45 years of Open University innovation!

Related Links:

The KMi Pipeline – OU sign in required, sorry!

Open Learning Analytics come a step closer

Friday 11 Apr 2014 | KMi News

Key players in the field have combined forces to add momentum to the creation of open source learning analytics.

I recently returned from the Open Learning Analytics (OLA) Summit at which SoLAR and Apereo Foundation committed to collaboration around OLA will enable educational institutions to create open or hybrid for fee/free analytics infrastructures. Analytics capacity will not therefore be locked into vendor solutions (e.g. with the change of a VLE) and analytics innovations should diffuse more rapidly and effectively.

WWW Gangnam style!

Thursday 10 Apr 2014 | KMi News

KMi-ers Harith Alani, Carlos Pedrinaci and Alexander Mikroyannidis are in Seoul for the 23rd World Wide Web conference. This year, the WWW conference is hosted in the prestigious COEX hub in Korea’s Gangnam district. So far, it has featured a panel of renowned internet experts, including Tim Berners-Lee, discussing the challenges and opportunities of the previous 25 years and the next 25 years of the internet.

On Monday, Alexander Mikroyannidis chaired the tutorial: "Online Learning and Linked Data – Lessons Learned and Best Practices", which he co-organised with Stefan Dietze from the L3S Research Center in Germany, and John Domingue. Following the latest developments in online learning and Linked Data, the scope of this tutorial was two-fold. First, ways in which Linked Data principles and technologies can be used to support online learning and create innovative educational services were explained, based on the development of existing Linked Data applications for online learning, and particularly on the data catalogue, use cases and applications considered by the LinkedUp project. Secondly, new online learning methods were taught for supporting the teaching of Linked Data. Additionally, the lessons learned and the best practices derived from designing and delivering a Linked Data curriculum by the EUCLID project were discussed.

The session was well attended and featured invited talks from Marin Dimitrov (Ontotext, UK) and Besnik Fetahu (L3S Research Center, Germany). All the presentations are available in the tutorial’s web page.

The conference continues today and tomorrow. Stay tuned for more updates from the KMi delegation!

Related Links:

Online Learning and Linked Data – Lessons Learned and Best Practices

The 23rd World Wide Web conference

The EUCLID project

The LinkedUp project

Discourse-Centric Learning Analytics Workshop, LAK14 Indianapolis

Wednesday 09 Apr 2014 | KMi News

KMi and IET combined forces to run the 2nd International Workshop on Discourse-Centric Analytics (DCLA14), as part of the LAK14 international learning analytics conference. Following the successful DCLA13 workshop, DCLA has now become a recognised class of analytics, at the intersection of several different disciplines, represented by the participants.

Co-authoring with MIT’s Mark Klein, Anna De Liddo and I presented a discussion paper bridging between the worlds of formal educational discourse analytics and deliberation analytics from real world collective intelligence/social innovation platforms, the focus of our current EU Catalyst Project.

KMi @ Big Data in Education, NSF Workshop

Wednesday 09 Apr 2014 | KMi News

In Washington DC, George Mason University convened a workshop on Big Data in Education, sponsored by the National Science Foundation,the Academy of Finland, and the Finnish Embassy. It brought together an eclectic group from education, computing and several who shared their experiences of how massive data is transforming their fields.

The challenge laid down as as follows:

How might we, from scratch, design digital platforms to model multiple data streams from multiple sources in a generalized ecosystem of learning to make predictions about learning based on changes to instruction?

We envision MOORs as digital terrains traversed by learners across formal and informal education (e.g., schooling, museums, the internet), and across the lifespan. For example, we will have experts on "experience API" (adlnet.gov) on tracking learning across multiple digital platforms.

The architecture could be extended to cover the use of data from performance assessments where the data originates from sensor nets worn by, and surrounding, the learner. We also want to explore data from biometric sources (e.g., "quantified self" data).

A few of us were invited to share our work — my slides…

Learning Analytics: quantifying deeper learning dispositions? from Simon Buckingham Shum

KMi’s Duygu Simsek wins the LAK’14 Best Demo Award

Wednesday 09 Apr 2014 | KMi News

The 4th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference held in Indianapolis, IN, USA 2 weeks ago. The conference theme this year was intersection of learning analytics research, theory and practice.

The Poster & Demo Session of the conference took place on March 26th, 2014, and KMi’s Duygu was one of the demo presenters with “Visual Analytics of Academic Writing” paper. Conference participants voted for the demo&poster they liked during the session. It is announced that 129 votes had been cast in total and KMi’s Duygu Simsek is the winner of best demo award.

1 min. Introductory Video of the Demo:

National Women’s Month at KMi

Monday 07 Apr 2014 | KMi News

As National Women’s month comes to a close we’re reflecting on a couple of our successful women at KMi.

Among other projects, both women are involved in engaging and empowering the public through their research. While Ale inspires students with science and helps to provide young people with scientific literacy, Anna helps to inform citizens about policy decisions and opens the eyes of voters with illuminating data and analysis of political debates.

Ale Okada is a Research Associate at the Knowledge Media Institute at The Open University and consultant to the Association of Science Education UK. Her research interest focuses on knowledge and social media tools to foster scientific and digital literacy – future citizens embracing the potential of science and technology.

Currently, she is developing a national research project with the Brazilian University UNEB to promote digital citizenship. She contributed to the Massive Open Event promoted by Telefonica foundation in Spain about Education of the 21st Century last year, in which she was invited as keynote in the finale event for more than 700 educators. She also worked as a curriculum developer and teacher in computer supported learning and science projects for schools for more than 15 years where she developed a school network which is now collaborating with KMi through our weSPOT and Engage projects. She has also been leading the CoLearn open research network on collaborative open learning for the last 10 years.

Anna De Liddo is a Research Associate at the Knowledge Media Institute at The Open University. Her research focuses on the socio-technical factors influencing the design and uptake of Online Deliberation and Collective Intelligence (CI) infrastructures for social awareness and citizen engagement in policy and decision-making. She has a particular interest in knowledge construction through discourse, and the role of technology in scaffolding dialogue and argumentation in contested domains.

At present, Anna is leading The Open University’s work in the European Research Project CATALYST http://catalyst-fp7.eu, which aims to develop collective applied intelligence and analytics for social innovation; and the EPSRC’s EDV project http://edv-project.net/, which aims to develop augmented video replays of the 2015 UK Election Televised debate, in order to improve citizen engagement in policy making.

OUAnalyse at the LAK14 Machine Learning and Learning Analytics workshop

Tuesday 01 Apr 2014 | KMi News

The first international workshop on Machine Learning and Learning Analytics took place last Tuesday 25th March, as part of LAK14. The goal of the workshop was to discuss what benefits machine learning techniques can bring to the field of learning analytics. It was intended as both an introduction to the field for those wishing to start applying machine learning within their own institution, as well as an opportunity for those already applying machine learning in different institutional contexts to discuss important issues.

The workshop was very well attended, with over 50 participants ranging from relative newcomers to experts in the field of machine learning. The day was structured to include introductory talks in important topics of the workshop given by conference co-organisers. This included a talk by Annika Wolff with the theme of understanding student learning behaviour through building predictive models. There were 5 paper presentaitons, 2 of which were given by KMI’s Jakub Kuzilek and Martin Hlosta, focusing on the work of the OUAnalyse project in applying predictive modelling to identifying ‘at risk’ students. Several breakout sessions during the day covered recurring themes of the presentations.

Important issues discussed throughout the day-long workshop included the importance of data within predictive models, how click-stream data such as obtained from a virtual learning environment could best be captured and used for prediction and how to evaluate the effectiveness of models when interventions are made with the goal of changing an outcome predicted by a model. The workshop was co-organised by KMi’s Annika Wolff and Zdenek Zdrahal, along with George Siemens, Carolyn Rose and Dragan Gasevic.

KMi asked to feedback on the new HEFCE policy, which requires UK research outputs to be Open Access

Tuesday 01 Apr 2014 | KMi News

A new policy stating that research outputs submitted to post-2014 REF should be Open Access has been announced on Monday, March 31st accompanied with a circular letter to all UK Vice-Chancellors and Principals (see the link below). The policy requires all journal and conference publications with a UK HEI author to be deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance for publication. Publications not compliant with this requirement, including those that are made Open Access only retrospectively, will not be eligible for submission in the next REF exercise. The policy is a fantastic news for all those who support unrestricted access to knowledge for all. It will enable millions of people who have been consistently denied access to research outputs, such as high school students, small and medium enterprises, government and the general public, to get access to the results of research funded by the taxpayer.

The policy has been the result of a rigorous consultation process. Input has been also requested from KMi’s Petr Knoth and Zdenek Zdrahal. Some of our previous recommendations, particularly those about unrestricted machine access, have been considered by HEFCE as they have been interested in the possibility of using the CORE system, developed in KMi, for monitoring the policy compliance. The last request for feedback has been sent to Petr Knoth and Zdenek Zdrahal a week before the policy announcement together with an early version of the policy.

While the policy constitutes certainly a dramatic and positive change, there are still some aspects we hope will be tweaked at a later stage. Many of them relate to the ability to re-use and text-mine research publications at a global scale. The link to our full response is available at the bottom of this page.

Related Links:

KMi’s response to the HEFCE policy

The HEFCE Open Access policy document

Data-driven approach to visualise EPSRCs research landscape

Monday 31 Mar 2014 | KMi News

KMi professor Stefan Rueger was invited to an EPSRC network-of-networks meeting on 27 March 2014 in his role as coordinator of the Multimedia Knowledge Management research network to help map out the research challenges within EPSRC’s network portfolio.

One interesting aspect of this workshop was that it did not involve the conventional jotting down of challenges on post-it notes followed by a manual collaborative clustering on a large wall space. Instead, each network submitted beforehand three challenges in form of a title and 50-word abstract, which were projected automatically onto a self-organised hexagon map of keywords that came out of an automated algorithm (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) from existing abstracts of the Grants on the Web on EPSRC’s website. These topic maps were created prior to the meeting with tools from http://www.researchperspectives.org. According to EPSRC staff, they provide a different, alternative overview of the current EPSRC Grant portfolio but – as was stressed repeatedly – by no means the only one for EPSRC.

The network-of-networks meeting started off with working groups informed by this automated, data-driven pre-clustering of earlier identified research challenges. The thus "semantically related" colleagues then reasoned about their areas in the challenge-map, identifying common and overarching topics such as, for example, data science and engineering, which is something that KMi has a particular stake in.

Network coordinators independently placed unique stickers onto the hexagonal keyword map to indicate areas of interests within their networks thus creating an immediate visualisation of coverage. As a side effect, this also identified areas in the remit of EPSRC that were not covered by networks. Expressions of interest from different networks in the same areas were taken as promising leads for possible collaboration between research networks, which was then used to structure the remaining networking time.

Even though the data-driven approach to structure the networking workshop was by no means perfect, it seemed to swiftly generate reasonable groupings of interest and promising leads from as little as 50-word abstracts of the challenges put forward by network coordinators. The "ratified" results of this meeting will be published in two weeks time under http://www.researchperspectives.org.

The robots are coming

Friday 28 Mar 2014 | KMi News

Studies show that industries such as manufacturing and production are undergoing significant transformation – as low and medium skilled jobs are increasingly ‘computerised’ and robots become more and more present on the shop floor.
KMi is developing together with project partner VTT an augmented reality learning app that helps blue collar workers up-skill on-the-job. The first prototype is now ready for testing (see Wild et al., 2014, deliverable d3.3 of the TELLME consortium), a tight development schedule will result in a second version in the summer.

Related Links:

TELL-ME

The financial sustainability of CORE sought as part of a global package of key Open Access services

Thursday 27 Mar 2014 | KMi News

A study commissioned by the Knowledge Exchange (see the link below), a Danish Agency for Culture supported by a a number of international funders, worked to identify Open Access services across the world that are key to the future of scholarly communication. The aim was to analyse the financial challenges these services face and create a shared strategy that would guarantee their sustainability. The services discussed in the study are used by millions of academics on a daily basis and are already an essential part of the research ecosystem. They include arXiv.org, EPrints, the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The CORE system developed in KMi is among these service.

When the study was published, the Knowledge Exchange funders organised a workshop in Utrecht, The Netherlands inviting a representative for each of the services. The KMi’s Petr Knoth attended the meeting representing CORE.

The meeting showed that the key services forming the Open Access ecosystem (Neil Jacob’s of Jisc presented the overview of them – see photo) are often in very different situations. Some of them, such as the BASE system, receive a significant financial contribution from their own institution in the spirit of supporting Open Access, while other institutions see these services rather as an opportunity to generate profit to improve their own budget. These institutions do not consider their share of responsibility for the future of scholarly communication or they do not embrace the ideas of openness of research outputs and education for all. Consequently, some of these services, such as DOAJ, already left the academic environment as they can be more efficiently provided through a not-for-profit company.

While there was a whole range of issues discussed, the most critical included:

– The continuous need of funding: It is very difficult or even impossible for many of these services to charge the end-user a fee as this goes directly against their mission.

– The institutional greed: Universities are often not willing to lower the overheads for these services. Libraries are typically not willing to contribute even a small percentage (in the range of 1%) of their commercial services and articles subscription budgets (Elsevier, EBSCO, SciVal, etc) to Open Access services.

– Supporting a global service at the local level: Universities and libraries are typically not willing to financially contribute to a service which benefits the whole world, not just them.

One of the outcomes of the meeting was that a package of these Open Access critical services should be created and certain funders that distribute money to universities and libraries, such as HEFCE, should mandate a financial contribution to the sustainability of Open Access services. This strategy is now being explored by the Knowledge Exchange.

Related Links:

Sustainability of Open Access Services Report Phase 1 and 2: Scoping the challenge and consulting the stakeholders

Environmental and Corporate Sustainability Award for MK Council

Monday 24 Mar 2014 | KMi News

MK:Smart was on Milton Keynes Council’s winning team at the inaugural Milton Keynes Business Achievement Awards held on 20 March at stadiummk. KMi’s Jane Whild joined MK Council’s Geoff Snelson and Sarah Gonsalves to collect the Environmental and Corporate Sustainability Award from the host, BBC Breakfast presenter, Bill Turnbull. The Open University’s Pro Vice Chancellor, Prof. Tim Blackman and Project Director, Prof. Enrico Motta were also at the event, as well as Prof. David Barrett and Dr Paul Sant from the University of Bedfordshire.

The award, sponsored by Cranfield University, was for an organisation in the Milton Keynes area who could demonstrate they had looked beyond the legislative requirements to improve their green credentials through innovation and moral modernisation.

Milton Keynes has a history of innovation and leadership in environmental design and practice, and the Council has been a leader by example in the field, with the Low Carbon Living Strategy and Action Plan in 2010, and a number of initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions locally, helping to tackle global climate change. MK:Smart is one of a number of successful initiatives that have resulted from Milton Keynes Council’s Future Cities programme.

The council’s bid entry was a consortium with a number of local and national partners, including academic institutions, the voluntary and community sector, and commercial organisations.

KMi at MK Business Achievement Awards

Monday 24 Mar 2014 | KMi News

MK:Smart was on Milton Keynes Council’s winning team at the inaugural Milton Keynes Business Achievement Awards held on 20 March at stadiummk. KMi’s Jane Whild joined MK Council’s Geoff Snelson and Sarah Gonsalves to collect the Environmental and Corporate Sustainability Award from the host, BBC Breakfast presenter, Bill Turnbull. The Open University’s Pro Vice Chancellor, Prof. Tim Blackman and Project Director, Prof. Enrico Motta were also at the event, as well as Prof. David Barrett and Dr Paul Sant from the University of Bedfordshire.

The award, sponsored by Cranfield University, was for an organisation in the Milton Keynes area who could demonstrate they had looked beyond the legislative requirements to improve their green credentials through innovation and moral modernisation.

Milton Keynes has a history of innovation and leadership in environmental design and practice, and the Council has been a leader by example in the field, with the Low Carbon Living Strategy and Action Plan in 2010, and a number of initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions locally, helping to tackle global climate change. MK:Smart is one of a number of successful initiatives that have resulted from Milton Keynes Council’s Future Cities programme.

The council’s bid entry was a consortium with a number of local and national partners, including academic institutions, the voluntary and community sector, and commercial organisations.

Forge wins Best Poster at the Athens Future Internet Assembly

Saturday 22 Mar 2014 | KMi News

A good week in the office. Of course it helps if your ‘office’ for a week is a short walk from the Parthenon and you are contributing to the buzz surrounding the Future Internet Assembly (FIA): over 750 attendees incorporating the leaders of over 150 European projects worth more than half a billion Euros. The event was opened by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, endorsing the latest research developments within the next generation Internet based upon Cloud technologies and the movement of networks from being a hardware based infrastructure to software founded on multiple layers layers of virtualisation.

Pre-FIA workshops covered, Cloud, data services and Smart Cities. John Domingue chaired one of these: “Cross-breeding social networks and networked media in the Future Internet”. This workshop was based upon the observation that users today primarily access video content through social networking sites. The talks explored the synergy between social media analytics and networked media delivery and its impact on user experience leading to a roadmap on how to exploit synergies between these two technologies.

Within FIA proper, John Domingue chaired the session “Beyond MOOCs: The Future of Learning on the Future Internet” which was well attended. Speakers in this session outlined a number of new and emerging learning paradigms based on innovative uses of the Internet and also how large-scale infrastructures could support the new requirements generated. One of the speakers
Natalia Arredondo from the University of Newcastle, described a new project funded through a one million dollar TED award, teaching disadvantaged children in India through “Cloud Schools”. This team’s early work apparently inspired the Danny Boyle film “Slumdog Millionaire”. Other speakers covered the OU’s FutureLearn (given by IET’s Rebecca Ferguson), Cisco’s Networking Academy which trains over 1 million network engineers per year (given by Andrew Smith of the Department of Communication and Systems), industrial training from a large corporation (ATOS) and SME perspective and how the large ultrafast network infrastructures in the US (GENI) and Europe (GRNET) currently support teaching and learning.

The personal highlight of the week though was FORGE, which is coordinated by KMi, claiming first place for the FIA Poster awards. Competition for this award is very stiff as over 150 projects are eligible to enter. The FORGE project will connect the large European Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) facilities to learning technologies. Specifically, the project will enable students to setup and run large scale internet experiments from within eBooks. Due credit to the design of the poster should go to Harriett Cornish who had to generate the final version under usual KMi conditions: significant time pressure and several conflicting constraints. The whole of the FORGE consortium are extremely grateful to Harriett for her contribution.

All-in-all it was a very successful week for KMi at FIA …. and this was not the only event in Athens this week where we were present. More on this to follow shortly….

Related Links:

Athens Future Internet Assembly Website

Cross-breeding social networks and networked media in the Future Internet Session Website

Beyond MOOCs: The Future of Learning on the Future Internet Session

A short interview with John Domingue from the FIA Athens website

The FORGE project website which contains a first draft demo iBook

Blog post covering the Beyond MOOCs session

KMi goes to Saint Petersburg to discuss the future of Open Data in Education

Thursday 20 Mar 2014 | KMi News

What can the open and linked data movements bring to education?

This was the question explored at the Open Data in Education Seminar held in St Petersburg, Russia, earlier last week. The event, co-organised by Dmitry Mouromtsev from University ITMO and KMi’s Mathieu d’Aquin (representing the LinkedUp project and the LinkedUniversities.org portal), included contributions from John Domingue on the Euclid and FORGE projects, from ex-KMIer Stefan Dietze on the LinkedUp project, as well as from several initiatives in Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg), the US (VIVO), the UK (Open Knowledge Foundation Open Education Working Group) and Germany (SlideWiki and Springer).

The goal of the seminar was not only to stenghten the connections between these different initiatives going beyond our usual focus on Europe, but also to discuss and identify the main challenges the area is going to face in the future and how collaborations between these initiatives can help overcoming these challenges. A particular emphasis was put in the discussion, unsurprisingly, on the interaction between the technology aspects, sometimes perceived as too complex and sophisticated, and the user aspects, with real problems not always being properly identified and addressed. One strong point made during the seminar in relation to this is the way in which different contexts lead to different needs and challenges, and how our technologies tend to focus too much on the easy cases, while they could have more impact in places where the value of open data is less obvious and where it can better compensate a lack of transparency, educational infrastructure and technological resources.

Related Links:

The Open Data in Education seminar.

KMi in the top ORO charts

Thursday 06 Mar 2014 | KMi News

KMi is once again in the top charts of the Open Research Online (ORO), the Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs. A book chapter by Ale Okada, Alexander Mikroyannidis, Izabel Meister and Suzanne Little is in the top 10 most downloaded publications for February 2014.

The chapter is entitled "Colearning" – Collaborative Open Learning through OER and Social Media. It introduces the concept of colearning as well as discussing how open learning networks can produce, share and reuse OER collaboratively through social media. The aim of this investigation is to identify new forms of collaboration, as well as strategies that can be used to make the production and adaptation processes of OER more explicit for anyone in a social network to contribute. This open content is an adapted version of a conference paper for OCW conference 2012, which was created by the same authors. The chapter is available in English and Portuguese.

This is part of the book "Open Educational Resources and Social Networks" edited by Ale Okada. The book highlights different ways of reusing, recreating, remixing and redistributing OER. Its purpose is to illustrate how the collaborative production of research-based OER can contribute to enriching learning and teaching experiences in formal, non-formal and informal contexts. The book is open and available both in print and online.

Related Links:

Colearning – Collaborative Open Learning through OER and Social Media

Open Educational Resources and Social Networks

LinkedUp Y1 rated ‘excellent’

Tuesday 04 Mar 2014 | KMi News

The LinkedUp project first-year outcomes were met with outstanding acclaim from the European Commission review that’s just in.

LinkedUp is an EU FP7 support action that promotes the adoption, spread and exploitation of Linked Open Data for the benefit of organisations and institutions in the educational domain, and then some. A key partner in the LinkedUp consortium, the KMi has the lead on providing and maintaining the Linked Education Cloud, a data hub that serves as a catalogue of, and access point to, 35+ Linked Data providers in the educational domain, the OU itself being one. In addition, with developer challenges being a key community activation action in the project, the KMi also provides technical support to educational application developers with an interest in Linked Data.

The year one review event took place in Luxembourg in January 2014. With an overall rating stating "Excellent progress" for this year, the EC has highlighted KMi-provided features such as the catalog browser and automated information extraction functionalities.

Since the review, the Linked Education Cloud has evolved to include further data endpoints and features such as pattern detection in data URIs. With that spirit, the LinkedUp consortium proceeds to lead the project to a fitting conclusion in late 2014.

Related Links:

LinkedUp project home

KMi’s Simon Knight wins Computing and Philosophy Award

Tuesday 04 Mar 2014 | KMi News

Congratulations to PhD student Simon Knight, who has just won the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP)/Carnegie Mellon, Brian Michael Goldberg Memorial Award for graduate research in the areas of computing and philosophy.

Simon is particularly interested in the role of social epistemology in understanding information seeking, and collaborative knowledge construction platforms such as Wikipedia. His paper at the International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge explored the relationships between learning analytics as forms of assessment, and epistemology, and was shortlisted for the ‘Best Paper’ award. It has now been written up for publication in the Journal of Learning Analytics as “Epistemology, assessment, pedagogy: where learning meets analytics in the middle space”.

Related Links:

Simon’s blog: Finding Knowledge

Active Engagement in Science is on!

Monday 03 Mar 2014 | KMi News

An engaging kick-off meeting of the ENGAGE project took place in KMi, OU – UK on February 24-27th. Funded by the European Commission, 14 partner institutions will collaborate throughout the next 3 years for “Equipping the Next Generation for Active Engagement in Science”.

This project is part of the EU Science in society agenda to promote more Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI). ENGAGE is designed to provide sustained professional development, through a online community built around the use of science-in-the-news OER curriculum materials, MOOCs for just-in-time learning, and a brokering system for creating school-scientist partnerships.

This was a kick off meeting with a difference –in 3 days we simulated the whole project process in miniature. ENGAGE is about motivation, so we walked our own talk by having sessions, which were based on engaging tasks, not didactic presentations, real dilemmas not abstract debates:

The science company Oxitec, showed everyone their technology for fighting dengue fever through genetically modified mosquitoes.
In a version of ‘The Apprentice’, the participants produced a storyboard of the video to sell ENGAGE.
And our science teacher guests helps us transform a news story into a full developed curriculum materials in 12 languages, within 3 hours. As a result, the partners emerged with a clear sense of vision, and came up with ways to overcome the challenges of spreading reform across Europe.

ENGAGE is about equipping the next generation to participate in scientific issues to change how science is taught. Traditionally students gain an image of science as a body of content, whereas RRI deals with uncertain areas of knowledge, where values and argument matter as much as facts. This shift is hugely challenging. High stakes education systems marginalise teaching about the nature of science. The greater challenge is to help teachers develop the beliefs, knowledge and classroom practice for RRI teaching.

ENGAGE aims to adopt a more inquiry-based methodology, which gives students opportunity for self-expression and responsibility for coming to informed decisions. Its approach synthesises contemporary models of professional learning and curriculum development. Going beyond training events, its three-stage path will propel teachers in their own inquiry to become expert with RRI:

1. Adopt, which achieves take-up on a massive scale. We use a proven approach to provide an easy entry into inquiry-based teaching. It combines science-in-the-news contexts with strategies from informal learning to get students talking. An online community of practice supports teacher reflection, while online courses and workshops add coaching and feedback.
2. Adapt, they learn an expert’s toolkit of examples, explanations, anecdotes and activities to help students learn effectively.
3. Transform, open-ended Projects put teachers and students into partnership with practising scientists, to learn about RRI directly.

KMi, represented by Dr. Alexandra Okada and Dr. Anna DeLiddo, will be responsible for MOOC, learning analytics, dissemination and legacy plans.

Our partners bring extensive track records in teacher development and curriculum design. Building on best practice from previous projects, we intend to influence 12,000 science teachers across Europe, and extend this to pre-service teachers and their trainers. The Project Steering Board includes the Framework Lead Yael Schwartz (WEIZMANN-IS), the RRI & Informal Learning Lead Matteo Merzagora (TRACES-FR), the CPD Programme Lead Kathy Kikis-Papadakis(FORTH-GR), the Technical and Legacy Lead Alexandra Okada (OU-UK), the Project Manager Pat Morton(SHEFFIELD-UK) and the overall Project Coordinator Tony Sherborne(SHEFFIELD-UK).

CORE exhibits at the Learn About Fair

Thursday 27 Feb 2014 | KMi News

CORE participated in the annual Learn About Fair at the OU, that took place on 26 February 2014.

The CORE team had the chance to present CORE vision to a wide range of visitors including PhD students, associate lecturers, developers and other academic staff. During the fair CORE had the opportunity to demonstrate CORE applications, including the CORE portal search and the mobile application, showcase the core plugin, explain other aspects of the service, such as the CORE API and the repository analytics.

Several tutors expressed their interest in using CORE as a research search engine, while a few developers explored the opportunities to make use of CORE API on top of their applications.

OU Analyse at the Learn About Fair

Thursday 27 Feb 2014 | KMi News

OU Analyse participated at the Learn About Fair, which focused on educational technologies used for learning and teaching and relevant research. The fair took place at The Open University on the 26 February.

The project team demonstrated new machine-learning based methods for identifying early on students at risk of failing. A list of ‘at risk’ students is communicated weekly to the module and SS teams to help them consider what support would be appropriate. The results can also be accessed through the OU Analyse dashboard , which allows you to explore the predictions at whole module level, as well as letting you focus on the individual students.

The project attracted a lot of attention and the team was approached by a number of module staff, student support team members, associate lecturers, module designers and other people participating in the educational activities. Representatives of several modules have expressed their interest in being included in the project and receiving regularly updated predictions.

OU Analyse builds on previous experience from the Jisc funded Retain in 2010-2011 and the joint OU-Microsoft Research Cambridge project in 2012-2013.

Computational Creativity and Image Aesthetics Research

Monday 24 Feb 2014 | KMi News

KMi professor Stefan Rueger was invited to the First Annual Contact forum on Computational Creativity, 21-23 Feb 2014, to give a talk on his perspective on this area. Computational Creativity studies how to get software to behave in such a way that a human would consider the output to be a creative work. This encompasses computers writing poems, inventing jokes, using analogy, producing artwork, generating games, understanding language and much more. The Prosecco network, a coordinated support action to promote the scientific exploration of computational creativity, invited 22 researchers from Europe and the Americas in disciplines ranging from Computing to the Arts to a monastery-like environment in San Lorenzo de El Escorial near Madrid to discuss over a long weekend their practice, ideas and aspirations in this newly established and growing field.

The group of researchers did not spend much time debating how to define computational creativity. Instead participants showed their own work, eg, award-winning computer-generated art, and exchanged techniques and approaches to get software to make decisions in the creation process rather than the programmer putting all in place. Creativity did not stop at the outputs from software: one participant gave his presentation partially in a lipogram, without using words that contained an e.

One of the main paradigms favoured at this meeting was a create-assess-select&change cycle known in similar form in evolutionary algorithms. Stefan offered machine learning algorithms to assess the aesthetics of photographs, something his MSc students at Cranfield University have been working on in recent years. According to Simon Colton, a Professor of Computational Creativity at Goldsmiths, University of London, these techniques are crucial for affording software the ability to make informed decisions in its own right while pursuing creation of art. Although this weekend event cut his skiing holidays in the alps short, Stefan maintained that the event has been worth every minute spent: ”You can go skiing many weeks in the year, but it is hard to find a similar level of intellectual and creative buzz in a single place.”

Related Links:

Prosecco Network

Int’l conference on computational creativity ICCC 2014

OU earns gold and bronze at Stride IoT Hackathon

Monday 17 Feb 2014 | KMi News

Two teams of OU researchers, from KMi and MCT, took part in the Stride hackathon last week, and came back with first and third prize.

The Stride (Smart Transport Internet of Things Data Ecosystem) project combines the expertise of BT, Ctrl-Shift, Dartt, AIMES, and the University of Cambridge to provide a critical mass of transport data, including historical and real-time data collected from sensors. Stride ran a development event on 12 February, which was hosted in Leeds by the telecommunication specialists aql. The goal was to develop working prototype applications that could demonstrate the potential of Stride’s large-scale transport data hub. Each team comprised 1-3 developers and only had 7 hours to complete the task, with prizes being awarded to the top three teams.

A team comprising KMi members Mathieu d’Aquin and Ilaria Tiddi and MCT researcher Stefan Foell was awarded first prize for their Pred-cident Web application, a predictor-backed heatmap of the likelihood of road accidents at a given point in time in the UK. Another OU team, comprising KMi-ers Alessandro Adamou, Enrico Daga and Keerthi Thomas earned third prize with their Detour application a mashup of Linked Data and live bus route Web Services which recommends public transport trips to points of interest and turns a dull bus ride into a sightseeing trip.

This competitive hackathon showcased how a few hours of development can deliver insightful and consumer-level analyses of today’s Big Data, a theme which is also very much at the core of the MK:Smart project.

Credit goes to aql for hosting the event, the Stride consortium for organising it and especially BT for on-site technical support.

Related Links:

Leeds Transport Hackathon

Stride announces hackathon winner

MK:Smart

COMPOSEing Things in London

Thursday 13 Feb 2014 | KMi News

Last week KMi hosted a plenary meeting of the COMPOSE project in London. COMPOSE is a three year, € 7.4 M collaborative research project funded by the EU to devise an integrated platform for better supporting the development of smart applications and services for the Internet of Things.

COMPOSE will achieve this through the provisioning of an open and scalable marketplace infrastructure, in which smart objects and services may be registered, annotated, discovered, and integrated in a standardised way to simplify the creation of innovative applications. The project will release both an integrated stack of open source software as well as it will provide an open platform in the cloud, enabling end-users and developers to easily share and reuse existing sensors, data, and services without requiring the installation of complex heavy-weight platforms.

The project, which is starting the second year, will now move onto deploying and evaluating the technology developed in three use cases. One use case is devoted to supporting the development of Smart Shopping Spaces, another one focusses on Smart Cities using Barcelona (Spain) as the case study, and finally the third one tackles Smart Territories using Trentino (Italy) for our study.

A highlight of the meeting was the invited talk by Dave Conway-Jones from IBM Hursley. Dave presented NodeRED, one of the most popular open source solutions for creating IoT applications with a graphical interface. COMPOSE will join forces with NodeRED, which is already widely adopted by IoT developers, and will enhance it with the project’s large-scale data communication and processing infrastructure, as well as with smart developers support. Core to this infrastructure will be KMi led software for semantic discovery—iServe—and an intelligent composition engine for mashing up sensors and services.

The consortium of COMPOSE includes large companies like IBM (coordinator) and Abertis; emerging SMEs in the IoT arena such as U-Hopper, and Evrythng; renown research centres and universities such as Fraunhofer and Barcelona’s Supercomputing Centre; and even the World Wide Web Consortium to promote and support standardisation activities. OU’s participation in this project consists of our very own Carlos Pedrinaci, recently appointed as Scientific Director for the project, and Luca Panziera.

Related Links:

COMPOSE Web page

NodeRED

iServe

COLLECTIVE AWARENESS PLAFTORMS FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION: Catalyst and DecarboNET join forces to the first CAPS Concentration Meeting in Brussels!

Tuesday 11 Feb 2014 | KMi News

KMi’s Anna De Liddo and Miriam Fernandez present Catalyst and DecarboNet to the EC in Brussels, in occasion of the first meeting of CAPS projects.
CAPS is the ICT10 topic Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation, that was part of the FP7 programme in the last call and that will be followed on in the Horizon 2020 Call2 that will open in June 2014.

The meeting started with very interesting presentations from Fabrizio Sestinini and Nicole Dewandre and then followed with the presentation of the 12 CAPS projects between which two see KMi as a key player!

A common denominator for the CAPS community

A strong enthusiasm and passion for citizen engagement in several facets of society is the common denominator for the CAPS community. Ranging from better informed deliberation, collaborative decision making, grassroots movements, new currencies, sustainability, behavioural change and social inclusion, the CAPS community brings together researchers, industry and community networks to build a new engine for sustainability and ethics in the digital world.

It was so exciting to see so many people that want to change the word all in one room! 🙂

If you want to have a look at the details check the CAPS meeting Storify put together by Sigma‘s Marta Arniani.

Related Links:

Catalyst Project Website

DecarboNet Project Website

CAPS Meeting Storify

CATALYSTs interactive workshop at the Open University

Tuesday 11 Feb 2014 | KMi News

On January 28-30th KMi hosted the second CATALYST consortium meeting.
Catalyst aims to develop collective intelligence tools and services for online communities to support social innovation processes. Specifically, the project goal is to improve online deliberation processes with powerful analytics and visualizations.

Catalyst is now entering his first semester and it already produced new understanding of the main problems facing common social innovation platforms. A list of pain points has been presented together with communities’ needs and priorities that will be used to inform the next face of technology design (see deliverable).

Moreover the first rationale for the design of new analytics for social innovation has been presented. These analytics will have the main objective to detect and diagnose online deliberation processes and mediate users attention toward “good” debate actions (see deliverable).

Finally an interactive workshop was organised to brainstorm on possible visualizations to represent Social Innovation analytics. The 18 participants to the meeting were asked to select between 36 questions cards (representing a specific information need) and then pick the visualization that would better answer to that need. Participants picked from a pool of 50 visualizations cards and then told the story of how they imagine the visualization interaction would work.

Related Links:

Catalyst Project Website

Catalyst Project Deliverables

KMi runs MOOC Analytics Workshop for Future Learning Academic Network

Monday 10 Feb 2014 | KMi News

Last week I ran the first MOOC Analytics workshop for the Future Learning Academic Network (FLAN), the research network around the OU’s FutureLearn MOOC platform. Participants from universities across the UK, plus remote participants from New Zealand and Australia, joined a very stimulating event, hosted at the state of the art Digital Humanities Hub, European Research Institute at Birmingham University.

MOOCs are an exciting platform for educational research, providing 24/7 large scale data collection of authentic learning activity. Universities running MOOCs need to develop the capacity to make sense of this data, but all universities with online learning platforms will need to get to grips with this increasingly.

Universities of Leeds and Reading described how they are analysing thei MOOC data, and FutureLearn partners, some of whose courses have yet to go live, were introduced by David Major (FutureLearn Learning Technologist) and OU researchers (KMi student Thomas Ullmann and myself) to the data that they will receive from their MOOCs, how they can rapidly process that in order to import it into open source analytics tools, and ways of framing their research questions in terms of FutureLearn data and nalytics tools. FLAN leads, Profs. Mike Sharples and Eileen Scanlon, chaired the closing session where partners discussed how FLAN could drive forward research and innovation.

The Future Learning Academic Network has a collaboration space where partners are working together on analytics of common interest.

MK:Smart – on track for supporting the future of Milton Keynes

Wednesday 05 Feb 2014 | KMi News

The inaugural plenary meeting of the MK:Smart project was hosted at The Open University on the 22 January. All partners were involved in a project update that outlined the progress since the grant award. The design of the data hub is nearing completion and the initial installation is on target. The demonstrator work packages in Energy, Water and Transport continue to develop their propositions and work is already underway in developing the citizen engagement toolkit.

MK:Smart continues to attract attention in the wider landscape and the project management team were pleased to report that they have been approached by several organisations who are keen to be involved and learn from the project activity.

The series of quarterly plenary meetings will continue to report on project progress and highlight the growing synergies between the activity streams, as well as the areas of collaboration with the wider Milton Keynes Future City Programme, in which Milton Keynes Council has a significant stakeholder interest.

Related Links:

mksmart.org

MKSmartProject’s Storify

Minister of State introduced to MK:Smart

Wednesday 29 Jan 2014 | KMi News

Greg Clark was appointed Minister of State (Cities and Constitution) in October 2013. As part of a visit to The Open University he spent some time with MK:Smart Project Director, Professor Enrico Motta who, supported by Milton Keynes Council Director of Strategy, Geoff Snelson and University of Bedfordshire’s Emeritus Professor, David Barrett, was delighted to outline the vision of the MK:Smart project and its position as a cornerstone of the wider Milton Keynes future city agenda.

The team were able to discuss the thought leadership that MK:Smart brings to the smart city landscape and how the city wide activity has led to Milton Keynes being represented on the government Smart City Forum.

Related Links:

MKSmartProject’s Storify

mksmart.org

Two new interactive iBooks produced by KMi

Friday 17 Jan 2014 | KMi News

The Open University has published two new interactive iBooks produced by KMi. The iBooks are available to download for free from Apple’s iBook Store. They showcase the latest research outputs of the European projects EUCLID and ROLE, offering interactive learning materials for Linked Data and Self Regulated Learning respectively. In more detail, the topics covered by the two iBooks are the following: Using Linked Data Effectively This book aims at facilitating professional training for data practitioners that want to use Linked Data in their daily work. Each chapter of this book is targeting a different crucial task related to Linked Data. Readers have the opportunity to study in depth various aspects of the usage of Linked Data, watch webinar movies and screencasts, as well as test their knowledge via quizzes and exercises. Self Regulated Learning This book provides an introduction to the new learning technologies that empower self-regulated learning and personal learning environments. A selection of learning tools that will help readers build their personal learning environment and become self-regulated learners are also demonstrated. Readers have an opportunity to try these tools through a set of interactive learning activities included in this book.

Related Links:

Download the Using Linked Data Effectively iBook

Download the Self Regulated Learning iBook

A robust finale to ROBUST

Thursday 16 Jan 2014 | KMi News

ROBUST glided through its third and final year review in Luxembourg on December 12. The reviewers highlighted the numerous and successful outcomes of this project with more than 100 publications including top conferences and journals, several best-paper awards, concrete developments towards the commercial exploitation of the produced technologies (led by the industrial partners; IBM, SAP, Polecat and Software Mind) and the creation of a book to disseminate the research, its results, and lessons learnt during the project.

This project was a pioneer in several social web research areas, to understand and manage the social and economic objectives and needs of users, providers and hosts of business online communities. The project produced a suite of systems and prototypes, such as community risk assessment dashboards, behaviour analysis services and monitors, and fish tank visualisations of Twitter discussions.

KMi was a core analytical partner in ROBUST, and produced a series of components to analyse different aspects of online communities, including the behaviour of users, their needs, their value, the sentiment they express and the topics they discuss. Multiple KMiers and ex-KMiers were behind the ideas, research and development of these components including: Sofia Angeletou, Matthew Rowe, Yulan He, Hassan Saif, Gregoire Burel, Smitashree Choudhury, Keerthi Thomas, Miriam Fernandez and Harith Alani. Great efforts were also made by the IT and admin teams of KMi for the successful running and management of this project.

Thanks to all KMiers that were involved! The project was indeed ‘just great’, and shall be missed. Some of the ROBUST work in KMi directly led to a new round of projects; and so the legacy continues.

Related Links:

http://www.robust-project.eu/

MK:SMART mentioned at despatch box

Thursday 16 Jan 2014 | KMi News

During Prime Minister’s Questions on 15th January, Prime Minister David Cameron congratulated the Open University on the MK:SMART initiative and Milton Keynes for its representation on the Smart Cities Forum.

MK:SMART is a £16m multi partner project led by Professor Enrico Motta of KMi which is a critical part in a range of initiatives that combine to secure growth in Milton Keynes. Through the building of the MK Data Hub to curate key data sourced from service providers, users and citizens, MK:SMART will build novel demonstrators in energy, water and transport management using KMi linked and semantic data technologies, as well as engaging citizens and business in a programme of innovation.

The following question was put by Iain Stewart, the MP for Milton Keynes South:
“Investing in research and innovation is essential for our economic future. Does the Prime Minister agree that the Open university’s smart city research project to improve infrastructure is just one example of how Milton Keynes is leading the way in securing our long-term economic plans?"

To which the Prime minister responded: “I have visited the Open university at Milton Keynes. It is an extremely impressive organisation that is also leading a very important export drive for our universities. I congratulate Milton Keynes on its representation on the smart cities forum and on what the Open University is doing…”

Related Links:

MK:SMART

CORE becomes the official UK Open Access Aggregator after winning a Jisc-commissioned tender

Wednesday 18 Dec 2013 | KMi News

In June 2013, Jisc invited in a closed tender selected teams to bid for the UK National Open Access aggregator. The wide set of requirements included high coverage of UK institutional repositories, the ability to harvest and process data from different repository systems and the availability of a single harmonized API to data stored across UK repositories. The key factors for judging the proposed bids were availability and maturity of existing solutions, satisfying the technical criteria of the tender and the timescale and cost required to meet additional tender criteria.

The CORE team, based at KMi, elaborated the proposal based on the existing CORE solutions. The key components had been already implemented and were available from the CORE system. Most of the required services had been in principle included in the currently running DiggiCORE project. Their adoption to meet the tender specification were relatively straightforward. The KMi bid for the UK Open Access Aggregator has been submitted before the 2nd July deadline.
In July, Jisc announced that the KMi solution won the tender and CORE will be the UK national Open Access aggregator. KMi has been then asked to prepare and negotiate a concrete project plan with Jisc that on top of the tender asks CORE to network with a number of key stakeholders, in particular, Google Scholar and OpenAIRE. In December 12th, Jisc issued the Grant Letter for UK Aggregation, though the project has started already in October. UK Aggregation is part of the Jisc Repositories Shared Services project.

As the UK Open Access aggregator of institutional repositories, CORE provides new opportunities for services built on top of the aggregated content. Apart from supporting text-mining, developers and discoverability of content, CORE also offers opportunities for analysis and monitoring. For example, HEFCE announced that research papers must be immediately after their publication available trough an institutional repository in order to be eligible for post-2014 REF submission. If there is an agreed embargo period for open access availability, the rule takes it into account. CORE as the UK Open Access aggregator can provide all necessary information needed to confirm the compliance of publications with REF rules. The CORE team has developed a pilot application that allows the user to monitor the REF compliance. Petr Knoth and Zdenek Zdrahal were invited to the Workshop on repositories held in the HEFCE office in London on November 22th, which was chaired by Dr Steven Hill, Head of Policy at HEFCE. Petr & Zdenek presented the CORE Compliance Analytics application to the other participants of the workshop. The application can support a range of stakeholders, including researchers, repository managers and HEFCE, in monitoring compliance with respect to the HEFCE Open Access post-2014 REF policy.

At present, CORE content consists of 18M+ records with 1.8+ full text, machine readable documents from 612 institutional repositories worldwide. This includes all compliant UK institutional repositories. CORE services are used by OU’s ORO and a number of other institutions, including the European Library and UNESCO. In November 2013, CORE content was accessed by 150k+ unique visitors.

Related Links:

CORE

Prof Beth Plale on the work at Hathi Trust Research Center, Big data, Aggregations and Text Mining

Wednesday 18 Dec 2013 | KMi News

On December 12th, Prof. Beth Plale, co-director and chair of the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) and Indiana University visited KMi.
HTRC is a collaborative research center launched jointly by Indiana University and the University of Illinois, along with the HathiTrust Digital Library, to help meet the technical challenges of dealing with massive amounts of digital text that researchers face by developing cutting-edge software tools and cyberinfrastructure to enable advanced computational access to the growing digital record of human knowledge.
During her short visit to OU, Prof. Plale gave presentation to the KMi staff and the guests from the OU Library and other OU departments about the organization and the current research activities of HTRC.

Before and after her presentation, she discussed the challenges of document aggregation and text mining with Petr Knoth and Zdenek Zdrahal of KMi. Prof. Plale leads the US team in the joint proposal DiscoveryCORE submitted to the third Digging into Data Call. The partners in the DiscoveryCORE bid are Open University – KMi (UK), HTRC, University of Indiana and University of Illinois (US) and the European Library (NL).

Related Links:

Hathi Trust Research Center

CORE hosted the national UKCoRR meeting

Wednesday 18 Dec 2013 | KMi News

On December 3rd 2013, the members’ meeting of The United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR), which is recognised as the main network of professionals supporting the uptake of Open Access in the UK, was hosted by the Knowledge Media Institute. The meeting was visited by about 50 delegates from a wide range of organisations including universities, libraries, not-for-profits (EuroCRIS) and funders (Jisc, HEFCE, EPSRC). The event has been also virtually visited by many, thanks to the meeting being streamed online.

The meeting was opened by Prof Peter Scott, who explained that the mission of Open University to deliver more open education and research is well-aligned with the goal of UKCoRR. Peter also discussed the role of KMi within the OU and a number of achievements of KMi in the Open Access to educational resources area.

The rest of the meeting was moderated by the UKCoRR Chair, Yvonne Budden of the University of Warwick. In the morning session Yvonne Budden, informed the participants about important UKCoRR activities.

In the following presentation Ben Johnson of HEFCE explained the position of HEFCE to Open Access, which currently seems like a game changer. HEFCE requires all research outputs to be submitted to post-2014 REF to be made Open Access in order to be eligible.

Five “Lightning talks” then introduced important challenges of Open Access publishing. In the afternoon session Petr Knoth of KMi presented the current state of development of the CORE system, which aggregates OA content from repositories. Zdenek Zdrahal (KMi) then showed how CORE could be used for monitoring OA compliance for post-2014 REF and Loucas Anastasiou (KMi) discussed the issues in OAI-PMH harvesting and how can we overcome them. Chris Biggs (OU Library) demonstrated innovative repository benchmarking in Open Research Online (ORO). In the last presentation, Nicky Whitsed, Director of Library Services, OU summarised the important issues of open access publishing and institutional repositories.

Related Links:

The United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories UKCoRR

CORE

KMi @ 1st MOOC Research Conference

Tuesday 17 Dec 2013 | KMi News

I recently joined several hundred researchers and practitioners in Arlington, TX, for the inaugural research conference on MOOCs. I joined an invitational pre-conference workshop, and spoke at a conference panel on "Certifying MOOCs", highlighting the role that learning analytics may play in assessing deeper learning at scale.

The MOOC Research Initiative (MRI), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks to move from the hype around MOOCs with solid research. As the MRI website says:

"The dramatic increase in online education, particularly Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), presents researchers, academics, administrators, learners, and policy makers with a range of questions as to the effectiveness of this format of teaching and learning. To date, the impact of MOOCs has been largely disseminated through press releases and university reports. The peer-reviewed research on MOOCs has been minimal. The proliferation of MOOCs in higher education requires a concerted and urgent research agenda. The MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) will begin to address this research gap by evaluating MOOCs and how they impact teaching, learning, and education in general."

The list of projects funded under this programme is a great first start in placing MOOC design and evaluation on more solid ground, and includes the OU’s Martin Weller & Katy Jordan.

There were some inspiring keynotes and a fantastic closing panel, all replayable here. Several speakers throughout reminded delegates that MOOCs were originally conceived as a way for open learning to challenge conventional pedagogies, something that many do not realise, as mainstream universities have caught up with online learning, and appropriated MOOCs within a more conventional content delivery paradigm. While some people are upset by this development, in my view this is simply part of the natural process of media evolution, in which a new medium takes shape through intiially replicating existing media and practices, before it finds native forms. Remember, cinema started by pointing a camera at a theatre stage…

We should therefore be grateful for the oxygen of publicity that MOOC mania is currently giving to online learning as a serious modality, and to the deep questions now being asked around the value that institutions add to raw content and peer interaction.

In this spirit, my slides from the Certifying MOOCs panel sought to question exactly what kinds of learning we are trying to certify in MOOCs, the problem of authentic assessment, and the potential roles of learning analytics.

Certifying the Hard Stuff (and the role of learning analytics) from Simon Buckingham Shum

I’ve blogged a longer version of this report, plus an important strand on the role of theory in analytics.

Special Issue: Cloud Education Environments

Monday 16 Dec 2013 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis is the guest editor of the special issue on Cloud Education Environments published by the Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS). Together with Rocael Hernandez Rizzardini, Hans-Christian Schmitz, Carlos Delgado Kloos and Lee Chao, they have compiled a selection of publications, showcasing theoretical frameworks and practical applications in the emerging topic of education on the cloud.

Cloud Learning Environments consider the cloud as a large autonomous system not owned by any educational organisation. In this system, the users of cloud-based services are academics or learners, who share the same privileges, including control, choice, and sharing of content on these services. This approach has the potential to enable and facilitate both formal and informal learning for the learner. It also promotes the openness, sharing and reusability of learning resources on the web.

The publications of this special issue present several rich use cases for different contexts of the use of cloud-based services for educational scenarios, varying from a range of students, countries (including, Europe, Guatemala and some other Latin American countries), pedagogical approaches, types of tools and environments (e.g. cloud education environments, personal learning environments, traditional LMS), as well as evaluation perspectives (e.g. usability, emotions, acceptance).

Related Links:

The special issue on the JUCS web site

Listening Experience Database launches

Friday 13 Dec 2013 | KMi News

The Listening Experience Database (LED), a crowd-sourced collection of documented evidence of listening to music, went public this week.

LED is a collaboration between the Open Univerity and the Royal College of Music aimed at producing the world’s first database that captures the impact of music on the lives of people. Though the LED site has been online and publicly accessible since mid 2013, it is now welcoming external members to contribute any listening experiences in their possession. The initial dataset is comprised of over 200 entries. You are invited to discover what music influenced the style and works of Benjamin Britten; which figures in British literature of the 18th and 19th Century ever witnessed a live performance of Handel’s "Messiah"; how many were enraptured by a tune during their travels to Rome, and more. As the database opens to crowd-sourcing, it now opens to records from any cultural context, source material, musical genre or historical period since the 13th Century, so long as it is documented and in English, either originally or in translation.

The entire implementation of the database is being led by the KMi Linked Data team, from the back-end to the Web user interface. The LED data storage facility is entirely based on Linked Data, meaning that we reuse content from authoritative external sources right from the start of a record creation phase, and make user-generated data quickly available for other users to benefit from and reuse in their future records. Every phase of database population, from drafting to review and approval, is natively implemented using Semantic Web technologies and standards.

By opening to the crowd-sourcing community, we are now entering the public beta phase of this implementation, which the LED team continues to improve upon and tweak to fit emerging user requirements.

Related Links:

Listening Experience Database

@listenexp

SMART meets FUTURE in Glasgow

Friday 13 Dec 2013 | KMi News

Professor Enrico Motta, Project Director of MK:SMART led a delegation of project partners to an informal exchange of ideas with the Glasgow Future Cities Initiative this week. After some interesting updates on the progress, opportunities and challenges faced by the Glasgow initiative and an introduction to the scope of the MK:SMART project, the conversation centred on city wide integration and approach to control systems – how to ensure that we go beyond piecemeal solutions and make integration a cornerstone of the systemic approach to smart city development.

futurecity.glasgow.gov.uk have already launched an open data portal and have run successful hackathons. With Strathclyde University’s plans for a Technology and Innovation Centre already well established, the Glasgow partners are on target to deliver to their key themes of traffic, safety and data.

The MK:SMART team were eager to discuss synergies between the initiatives and look to strengthen the ties between the two projects in the new year.

The MK:SMART team accompanying Professor Motta were Geoff Snelson, Director of Strategy, MKCC; Gary Bruce, Principal Researcher, BT; Professor Gerd Kortuem, Faculty of Mathematics, Computing & Technology, the Open University; Alan Fletcher, Business Development Manager, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University; Professor David Barrett, Executive Dean, University of Bedfordshire

Milton Keynes celebrates the start of something SMART

Tuesday 10 Dec 2013 | KMi News

KMi’s Professor Enrico Motta is the Project Director of MK:SMART, a 3 year, £16m HEFCE-funded project that will from Jan 2014 develop innovative ways of supporting the significant forecast growth in Milton Keynes.

Central to the Open University-led project is the creation of a state-of-the-art ‘MK Data Hub’ which will curate vast amounts of data from specially deployed energy, transport and water sensors, satellite sources, social and economic datasets, and crowd sourced data from social media or specialised apps.

The challenges of supporting growth without outstripping the capacity of the infrastructure, whilst meeting challenging carbon reduction targets, are very real. MK:SMART will provide key demonstrations of how we can meet these challenges with business and citizens alike.

A recent gathering of project partners and associated supporters at Stadium MK provided the opportunity to celebrate the work done to date in building a project consortium and creating a successful bid. It also served as the perfect opportunity to include in the conversation members of MK Council, local business leaders and representatives of SME collectives, all of whom will have a part to play in the 3 year project.

Lord Haskins, the Open University’s Pro-Chancellor, was on hand to say a few words wishing every success to the project on behalf of the Vice Chancellor. He was joined by Professor Tim Blackman, OU PVC Research Scholarship and Quality; Professor Enrico Motta, OU Professor of Knowledge Technologies; Bill Rammell, Vice Chancellor, University of Bedfordshire; David Hill, Chief Executive, Milton Keynes Council; and Pete Winkelman, Chairman, MK Dons, all of whom took the opportunity to thank all involved for the effort to date and to recognize the challenges and opportunities that this project brings to Milton Keynes.

Related Links:

MK:SMART Website

Simon Knight joins Wikimedia UK Board

Monday 09 Dec 2013 | KMi News

KMi PhD student Simon Knight was recently appointed to the Wikimed ia UK (WMUK) board of trustees as a replacement trustee to serve until the next AGM. WMUK is the UK chapter of Wikimedia which organises Wikimedia activities (including Wikipedia editathons for example) in the UK. He recently attended his first board meeting in Edinburgh where he took on the board liaison to the education committee role and became trustee on the grants committee. He’s particularly looking forward to working with the community around education and technology issues, and the development of impact metrics.

While in Edinburgh, Simon also visited the Extended Knowledge project based in the School of Philosophy. Researchers on that project are particularly interested in the epistemic implications of technologies, including in education, including questions such as "under what circumstances am I properly said to "know" the contents of my smart phone?".

He also visited Sian Bayne and Jeremy Knox in Education, to talk about Code Acts – the impact of code, often unseen, on how we act, and of how we act on code itself. They’re particularly interested in developing these ideas in the context of MOOCs and learning analytics; a definite shared interest with both me and the Extended Knowledge group! Further seminars and meetings should arise from both these sets of connections.

Best Paper, Keynote and the OER Social networks launch

Monday 09 Dec 2013 | KMi News

…. The best paper award of the III LUSO Brazilian Conference on Distance Education and eLearning goes to …

Alexandra Okada, Antonio Serra, Silvar Ribeiro and Sonia Pinto, authors of “ Key Competences for co-learning and co-inquiry in the Digital Age”

This paper presents an exploratory investigation in development with preliminary results on "Key Competences for XXI Century Education in the Digital Age." The method applied was cyber-ethnography with asynchronous observation (forum and wiki) and synchronous discussions (webconference) for analysing skills and competences developed during the process of co-inquiry and co-learning in two online environments. This study involves researchers from the UK, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. They initiated their interactions in the portal Encuentro.Educared of the "International Meeting on Education 2012-2013", organized by the company Telefónica and also in the inquiry environment weSPOT (Working Environment with Social Personal and Open Technologies) funded by the European Commission. As a result of this study, it was observed that the portal led to the development of more explicit digital literacies, possibly because it was a simpler interface and familiar (forum). And in the inquiry environment, participants familiar with digital technologies had more opportunities to develop other skills related to Critical-Creative Thinking and Socio-Scientific Reasoning.

During this event, Ale Okada and COLEARN – open research network launched the 2nd edition of the book Open Educational resources and Social Networks with Carlos Teatine the Director of Distance Education of Brazil Government.

Ale Okada was the keynote who presented "Key competences in open, personal and massive environments" describing case studies about OER, PLE and MOOC.

And the winners are

Friday 29 Nov 2013 | KMi News

Ilaria Tiddi, Fridolin Wild and Dasha were announced the top KMi contributors to the internal Energy Awareness initiative which was done under the auspice of DecarboNet project, in collaboration with the Evidence Hub.

The winners were the top contributors of knowledge and ideas about energy consumption and behaviour change, which they debated and shared via the ISAVE Evidence Hub. These contributions were the fuel that illuminated the Energy Tree which brightened our KMi public space for weeks.

Ilaria Tiddi not only won the individual competition amongst her group, but also beat the KMi’s record by creating almost 200 new entries with ideas, arguments, votes, issues and facts. One of her ideas was to “Unplug the power charger when your battery is full and leave it until it’s empty, then charge it again. It should even make your battery live longer”.

Fridolin Wild received the second place award in the individual competition amongst his group. He brought many practical and simple ideas that could make a difference to the lab’s energy consumption. His most supported idea was related to the calibration of brightness of PC and laptop monitors. “50% of brightness is more ergonomic and reduces the energy consumption”.

Dasha deserved to be awarded for her exceptional and spontaneous engagement with the Energy Awareness initiative in KMi. She went far to understand some aspects of energy usage and brought into discussions not only topics related to daily consumption in KMi, but also the amount of energy spent to produce new products.

Congratulations again to the proud winners, and stay tuned for more exciting initiatives and experiments in the new year.

KMi goes Down Under .. to attend the 12th International Semantic Web Conference

Thursday 28 Nov 2013 | KMi News

The end of October witnessed a small flood of KMi researchers, who travelled to the world down under to attend the 12th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2013), which was held in Sydney, Australia, Oct 21st-25th. The International Semantic Web Conference is held annually, and is regarded as the flagship event in the semantic web area. ISWC 2013 was no exception and attracted more than 400 people from 40 different countries.

KMi’s presence was one of the largest in the conference, with six delegates: Prof Enrico Motta, Dr Harith Alani, Dr. Mathieu d’Aquin and Dr. Miriam Fernandez, and PhD students Francesco Osborne and Ilaria Tiddi. Former KMiers, such as Liliana Cabral, Andriy Nikolov and Bassem Makni, were also present.

In particular, Harith Alani was the ISWC 2013 programme co-chair of ISWC, ensuring a high-quality research programme for the conference.

Enrico Motta and Francesco Osborne presented their paper "Exploring Scholarly Data with Rexplore" (co-authored with Paul Mulholland) in the highly competitive Research Track (21% acceptance rate). Mathieu D’Aquin and Keerthi Thomas contributed to the Workshop "Society, Privacy and the Semantic Web – Policy and Technology" with the paper "Semantic Web Technologies for Social Translucence and Privacy Mirrors on the Web". Ilaria Tiddi took part in the Doctoral Consortium with the paper "Explaining data patterns using background knowledge from Linked Data".

Other KMi contributions were at the Poster and Demo Session and included "OU Social: Reaching Students in Social Media" by Miriam Fernandez, Harith Alani and Stuart Brown; "Modeling and Reasoning Upon Facebook Privacy Settings by Mathieu D’Aquin and Keerthi Thomas; and "Explaining Clusters with Inductive Logic Programming and Linked Data" by Ilaria Tiddi, Mathieu D’Aquin and Enrico Motta.

KMiers did not only demonstrate their scientific talent at this event, they also showed their social and dancing skills at the gala dinner held during a cruise in Sydney Harbour, where conference delegates were entertained by a dozen musicians and singers from the research community, who performed as part of the first Semantic Web Jam session!

In summary, despite the expedition conditions (30 hours for a one way trip), the 20C temperature difference between the inside and outside of the main Conference Hall, and the various external temptations, such as cute Koalas and the bars on Bondi Beach, ISWC 2013 turned out to be yet another successful event for both KMi and the wider Semantic Web community.

Multimedia Information Retrieval world tour ends on a high note

Wednesday 27 Nov 2013 | KMi News

Today’s tutorial on Multimedia Information Retrieval at Search Solutions 2013 held at BCS’s headquarters in London was the last in a series of tutorials by KMi professor Stefan Rueger. He started the series at the end of 2009 based on the first stages of his text book with the same title that was finally published in 2010. ”I always wanted to write up a useful book on research basics and trends in multimedia search,” Stefan explained, "This is how the venture started." Four years on, and his tutorial has been given at eleven occasions in eight countries, in three continents: ESSIR 2009, Padua, Italy; ACM/IEEE JCDL 2010, Brisbane, Australia; ECDL 2010, Glasgow, UK; RuSSIR 2010, Voronezh, Russia; AIAR 2010, Puebla, Mexico; RuSSIR/EDBT 2011, St Petersburg, Russia; ESSIR 2011, Koblenz, Germany; a lecture series spanning two months in 2012 at NII, Tokyo, Japan; IRFC 2013, Limassol, Cyprus; IEEE SMC 2013, Manchester, 2013; and BCS Search Solutions 2013, London, UK.

In general, these tutorials have been aimed at postgraduate and practitioner level to give an overview of the research area to a specialist audience. As such, participation numbers varied from a single-digit number to 145 at a single event.

At its very core, multimedia information retrieval is the process of searching for and finding multimedia documents. The corresponding research field is concerned with building the best possible multimedia search engines to support digital libraries and resource discovery missions. The intriguing bit here is that the query itself can be a multimedia excerpt: For example, a picture of a building could be used to obtain a database entry about this very building, effectively linking the real world to the electronic world. This tutorial series went further by examining the full matrix of a variety of query modes versus document types. The tutorials discussed the underlying techniques and common approaches to facilitate multimedia search engines: metadata driven retrieval; piggyback text retrieval where automated processes create text surrogates for multimedia; automated image annotation; and content-based retrieval. The latter was studied in great depth looking at features and distances, and how to effectively combine them for efficient retrieval. In that way, participants could develop an understanding of where multimedia search engines could take them, considering their possibilities and limitations. Recognising that resource discovery missions for multimedia material is not a technological indexing problem alone, the tutorials also looked at interactive ways of engaging with repositories through browsing and relevance feedback, roping in geographical context, and the intelligence of the user.

Summarising, the tutorials emphasised state-of-the-art research in the area of multimedia information retrieval, which gave an indication of the research and development trends and, thereby, a glimpse of the future world.

Related Links:

Stefan Rueger: Multimedia information retrieval. Lecture notes in the series Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services

A high profile Massive Open Event on 21st Century Education

Thursday 21 Nov 2013 | KMi News

The 7th International Conference on Education (from April 2012 – November 2013) organised by Fundación Telefónica, is the 1st Massive Open Event on 21st Century Education. It brings together symposiums in many countries as well as a virtual network environment (Encuentro.Educared.org) for large scale discussion.

Ale Okada was a keynote at the finale event on the 12-13th November in Madrid with an audience of more than 700. Okada presented “Key competences for co-learning and co-inquiry in the digital age” describing a case study about Telefonica’s Conference Portal (Encuentro.Educared.org) and weSPOT – working environment with social, personal and open technologies for inquiry based learning (wespot.kmi.open.ac.uk). She also facilitated the closing webconference about "Key Competences for co-learning in open massive environments and Augment Reality in Education, yesterday, 20th of November.

More than 50.000 people registered in the Telefonica ‘s portal, including teachers, parents, head teachers, students, and educators. 5.000 active participants from South and Central America and Spain interacted in discussion forums, chats, web conferences and social groups. The Conference was organised around nine themes: 1. Society and work; 2. Technologies and Environments; 3. Digital Age; 4. Teach and learning; 5. The role of educators; 6. Changes and Leadership; 7. Family; 8. Formal, Informal and Non-Formal Learning, 9. Vision and Trends. More than 80 on-site events were organised over a two year period for approximately 700 attendees per meeting including policy makers, journalists and other Institutions. The events attracted 300 international experts, renowned scholars and education specialists worldwide such as John Moravec, Judi Harris, Richard Gerver, George Siemens, Alejandro Piscitelli, Roger Schank, Alberto J.Cañas, David Albury, Ferran Ruiz, César Coll, Daniel Contreras,Stephen Downes, Juan Domingo Farnós, Fernando Savater, …

Related Links:

Portal Encuentro Educared

Booklet Competencias-Clave para co-aprendizaje y co-investigacion

co-inquiry and AR – videoclip 2min

Summary of the Conference – videoclip 7 min

CARRE kick-off

Tuesday 19 Nov 2013 | KMi News

The CARRE project (Personalized patient empowerment and shared decision support for CARdioREnal disease and comorbidities) kicked off last week. The CARRE consortium consists of 6 partners experienced in health and associated technologies, semantics, data visualisation and decision support. The meeting was hosted by the Democritus University of Thrace in Alexandroupolis in Greece. KMi was represented by John Domingue and Allan Third.

CARRE will address the management of comorbidities (multiple co-occurring medical conditions) by using Semantic Web Services and personal Internet-aware sensors to track the progression and interactions of comorbid conditions – specifically, cardiac and renal diseases, which are known for having significant clinical interactions. Sources of medical and other knowledge will be semantically linked with sensor outputs to provide clinical information personalised to the individual patient. Both patients and clinicians will be able to visualise, understand and interact with this linked knowledge via a dedicated decision support system.

The ultimate goal is to provide the means for patients with comorbidities to take an active role in care processes, including self-care and shared decision-making, and also to support medical professionals in understanding and treating comorbidities via an integrative approach.

Related Links:

CARRE Project site

CARRE on Twitter

CARRE on Facebook

US/EU Future Internet Workshop in Leuven

Monday 18 Nov 2013 | KMi News

The middle of October saw key invited experts from the US and Europe gather in Leuven to discuss the issues and design principles associated with the next generation global communications infrastructure. The meeting was hosted by the EU’s Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) Unit and was composed of EU Commission representatives, researchers leading strategic EU projects and US researchers involved in the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) initiative.

The workshop covered areas associated with the overall Future Internet architecture and APIs as well as resource description frameworks and the relationship between the next Internet and education. KMi’s involvement included an overview of semantics and Linked data for the resource description session and an outline of the research objectives associated with our new FORGE project, which KMi is leading and which will transform FIRE into a learning resource.

Two follow up actions which have emerged from the workshop which KMi are heavily involved are:

· A new US/EU working group focussing on creating a global ontology for describing Internet resources, and
· A successful application to co-ordinate a session at the next Future Internet Assembly which will take place in Athens in March, 2014. This session will be lead by John Domingue and is entitled: Beyond MOOCs: the Future of Learning on the Future Internet.

Related Links:

FIRE Home page

GENI Home Page

FORGE Project home page

UNESCO – the World Science Day for Peace and Development

Monday 18 Nov 2013 | KMi News

Established by UNESCO in 2001, World Science Day for Peace and Development is celebrated worldwide on 10 November each year. The Day is an occasion to recall UNESCO’s mandate and commitment to science. This annual event was instigated as follow-up to the World Conference on Science, organized jointly by UNESCO and the International Council on Science in Budapest (Hungary) in 1999.

The Day offers an opportunity to reaffirm each year our commitment to attaining the goals proclaimed in one of the twin documents adopted by the World Conference on Science: the Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge and to follow up the recommendations contained in the Conference’s Science Agenda: Framework for Action.

Ale Okada was invited to participate in the World Conference on Science 2013. She presented two European projects whose aim is to foster scientific cooperation between scientists, researchers, educators, learners and citizens through co-inquiry based learning.

The WeSPOT project (Working environments with social, personal and open technologies for inquiry based learning) started in October 2012, and is being led by Dr Ale Okada and Dr Alexander Mikroyannidis. It aims at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for collaborative science learning and teaching in combination with today’s curricula and teaching practices. WeSPOT will support the meaningful contextualization of scientific concepts by relating them to personal curiosity, experiences, and reasoning.
The ENGAGE project (Equipping the Next Generation for Active Engagement in Science) is starting in January 2014, led by Dr. Ale Okada. Its aim is to help teachers develop the beliefs, knowledge and classroom practice for RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation) teaching. This requires adopting a more co-inquiry based methodology, which gives students opportunity for self-expression and responsibility for coming to informed decisions thorugh collaborative and open scientific research projects.

Both KMi Projects ( weSPOT and ENGAGE) highlight the rationale behind celebrating World Science Day each year, which is rooted in the need for a new social contract for science, one which acknowledges the importance of the role science, educators and scientists play in creating sustainable societies and which ensures that citizens (including all learners) are kept informed of developments in science and empowered to participate in science. Our case studies in the UK, Brazil, Portugal and Spain aim to build bridges between science and society through co-learning and co-inquiry by engaging intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, scientific research institutions, professional associations, the media, science educators and schools (teachers and students).

Related Links:

econference programme

Historia de la UNESCO

DecarboNet is on!

Friday 15 Nov 2013 | KMi News

On October 8-10th, KMi hosted the kick off meeting of the new DecarboNet project, which is a three year, €2M project funded by the EU to study behaviour change towards energy consumption.

The premise of the project is that the lack of collective awareness negatively impacts perceived personal efficacy, which hampers efforts to address societal problems. DecarboNet is a multidisciplinary effort to tackle this problem by identifying determinants of collective awareness, translating awareness into behavioural change, and providing novel methods to analyse and visualise the underlying processes.

During the kick off, several issues and works were brainstormed and planned, including the research and development of (i) generic tools to co-create knowledge with on-the-fly recommendations of related content from multiple sources; (ii) a cross-platform social media application to provide eco-feedback and engage citizens in games with a purpose; and (iii) methods to measure and predict behavioural change, and to capture collective awareness in a quantitative framework based on diffusion models and resonance patterns in public discourse.

DecarboNet is funded under the FP7 ICT call for Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation – CAPS. CAPS are ICT systems to leverage the crowds and the emerging "network effect" by combining distributed knowledge creation, with data from online social media and from real environments ("Internet of Things") in order to increase engagement and awareness of problems and possible solutions that require collective efforts and novel forms of social innovation.

The consortium of DecarboNet includes partners from the UK, Austria, The Netherlands, and Switzerland, and will run until October 2016. Dr Harith Alani from KMi is the Project Co-ordinator of DecarboNet, and its Scientific Director is Prof Arno Scharl from Modul University in Vienna.

Related Links:

DecarboNet project

Lights Energy tree Action!

Friday 15 Nov 2013 | KMi News

How can we raise awareness and engagement in energy consumption? How can we support people to learn about their consumption levels and patterns? What strategies help to change energy consumption behaviour? And in what contexts are they mostly efficient?

These questions were the focus of two ISave workshops which were held in KMi on November 5th and 8th. These workshops were co-organised by Lara Piccolo; a visiting researcher from the Institute of Computing at UNICAMP in Brazil, and Dr Anna De Liddo; a research associate in KMi.

The two workshops attracted 24 participants from KMi, to actively discuss and debate ideas for how to preserve energy around the lab. All these ideas and opinions were posted by the participants to the ISave Evidence Hub (isave.evidence-hub.net) which enables users to vote, challenge, and support ideas and debates.

The highlight of the event is the Energy Tree, with branches that lights up when engagement increases in the Evidence Hub, in the forms of new issues, ideas, votes and arguments created by the participants. The Tree reached full illumination when 450 new contributions were contributed during one of the workshop.

Beyond bringing light to the topic of energy saving, these workshops aimed to evaluate the impact of the energy tree as a physical and visual motivational element for engagement.

The campaign is still on-going, and over a dozen people in KMi are now equipped with smart energy monitoring devices (provided by Green Energy Options via the DecarboNet project), to help them to closely monitor their energy consumption in the home or office, and to share their reflections and experiences.

This work is a collaboration between DecarboNet and the Evidence Hub projects. DecarboNet is a three year, €2M, project funded by the EU to study behaviour change towards energy consumption, involving seven partners across Europe under the co-ordination of Dr Harith Alani in KMi. The Evidence Hub, led by Prof Simon Buckingham-Shum, is a collective intelligence tool that uses a suit of visualisations and maps to capture and log ideas, questions, opinions, debates, and actors.

Related Links:

DecarboNet project

Evidence Hub

EPSRC project launch: Visualizing the 2015 Prime Ministerial TV Debates

Thursday 14 Nov 2013 | KMi News

During the 2010 UK general election, the first ever televised Prime Ministerial debates took place. KMi pilot research demonstrated the potential of mapping the debates as visual diagrams. In 2015 the next election is expected, providing the opportunity to investigate how knowledge media can deliver completely new ways to replay the debates and engage with the arguments at stake.

Funded by the EPSRC, this joint 3 year project has just kicked off jointly with University of Leeds (led by Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication at the Institute of Communications Studies) will investigate the best approach to presenting complex arguments to citizens with a view to generating better informed public debate about political issues. The project team bring a unique combination of Information Science, Political Communication and Design (Leeds) with Computer-Supported Argumentation Visualization (KMi: Anna De Liddo and myself).

Leeds research showed that there was a significant public appetite for this means of learning about the candidates and their policies, but that many viewers were left feeling uncertain about the meaning of and relationship between the competing arguments they had witnessed.

Based on KMi’s real time mapping of the debates, and drawing inspiration from other projects that experimented with augmented TV replays, the project will develop a web application offering user interface visualizations of the debate replays, novel analytics on the argumentation, making the argument analysis available as open data for others to render or mash up in new ways. Extensive focus groups and user evaluations prior to, during and after the election will advance our understanding of how to make complex societal debates more accessible.

Watch this space for news in the coming months…

A successful first review for weSPOT

Tuesday 12 Nov 2013 | KMi News

The weSPOT project had last week its first annual review in Luxembourg. Alexander Mikroyannidis represented the KMi team, which consists of him, Alexandra Okada and Peter Scott. The review was succesful, with the first year project outcomes being accepted by the Commission.

The project focuses on inquiry-based learning with a theoretically sound and technology supported personal inquiry approach. In inquiry based-learning learners take the role of an explorer and scientist and are motivated by their personal curiosity, guided by self-reflection, and develop knowledge personal and collaborative sense-making and reasoning.

The KMi team leads the work on the development of the weSPOT inquiry space, a personal and social inquiry based-learning environment. A widget-based architecture enables the personalisation of the inquiry environment, allowing teachers and students to build their inquiries out of mash-ups of inquiry components. Students can connect with their peers and form groups in order to build, share and execute inquiries collaboratively.

The weSPOT inquiry space has been developed by re-using and extending the open-source social networking framework Elgg. The weSPOT inquiry space is the hub that connects the various weSPOT components (i.e. Analytics, Recommender, Mobile Coordinator and Mobile Data Collector) and implements the 6-phase weSPOT inquiry based-learning model.

Year 2 will see the weSPOT toolkit being piloted and evaluated within a variety of learning domains in schools across Europe.

Related Links:

The weSPOT project

CATALYST Project’s kick off meeting in Nice!

Tuesday 12 Nov 2013 | KMi News

On October 22 The Catalyst project kicked off!
CATALYST is a FP7 project that will run form October 2013 to September 2015.

Aim of the project is developing "Collective Applied InTelligence
and AnaLYtics for Social InnovaTion".

The project will address the problem of public deliberation in complex socio-technical debates.
Public deliberation is often poorly supported by social media platfroms that have not being designed to ground complex socio-technical debates: it is hardly possible for citizens and community managers to quickly grasp the state of a public debate, know where they might best contribute to advance understanding, and effectively identify and pursue socially innovative ideas.

Within a Collective Intelligence (CI) Spectrum ranging from Sensing to Collective Action, CATALYST focuses on Contested CI (Sensemaking and Ideation) and aims to develop and test online deliberation tools for human-assisted harvesting and structuring of vast amount of social media data, in order to facilitate collective ideation, creativity and citizen engagement in collective decision-making processes.

In addition to this CATALYST will develop advanced analytics to measure the quality of the collective intelligence dynamics and feed it back to the community to make the collaborative process significantly more effective – avoid balkanization and groupthink, help identify irrational bias, controversial or immature topics, and facilitate conversation diversity.

CATALYST will deliver an ecosystem of CI tools and services that will augment existing social media platforms with Web-based Annotation tools; Recommenders to help users prioritise attention; Online creativity triggers; Interactive Visualizations, and Social Network and Deliberation Analytics.

The CATALYST’s consortium involves world-class researchers, such as The Open University and MIT centre for collective intelligence, and testbed partners, leaders in running international social innovation online networks, providing access to very large communities of citizens concerned with social and environmental practices (Ashoka, Imagination for People, Wikitalia), sustainable lifestyle (CSCP) and more participatory democratic processes (Purpose, Euclid Network).

Related Links:

CAPS programme

Catalyst fact-sheets

‘Designing for change’ hits the first 100.000

Monday 11 Nov 2013 | KMi News

The 2008 article of KMi’s Fridolin Wild about personal learning environments has reached the first 100,000 hits on the European Commission portal ‘Open Education Europe’.
The article not only phrases critique about the – then – status quo of instructional design theories, but also proposes a fundamentally new approach of mash-up personal learning environments.
Congratulations!

Related Links:

Designing for Change

Society of the Query: Talk on Search in Assessment

Friday 08 Nov 2013 | KMi News

Second year PhD student Simon Knight is currently at the 2nd Society of the Query conference in Amsterdam at which he will give an invited talk on the epistemic implications of search engines in education. The conference is organised by the Institute of Network Cultures and builds on their wider work which takes social science, humanities, and arts perspectives on digital networks such as search tools. Simon’s talk discusses the need to consider assessment, search tools, and user capabilities in tandem noting that some assessment systems (e.g. Denmark) permit the use of the internet in exams, and there are developing technical approaches (e.g. Diversity Aware Search techniques) to addressing concerns around confirmation bias in search. A video of the talk will be linked from the conference website shortly and a reader chapter based on the talk should be available in early 2014.

Related Links:

Society of the Query Conference

Data for a Creative Economy Meeting with the South Korean Prime Minister

Thursday 07 Nov 2013 | KMi News

Data in various guises is a big topic right now. Specifically, Open, Linked and Big Data are seen as drivers for economic growth, platforms for research and enablers social good (for example facilitating transparency in government). Generally, data technologies are seen as a key technology by many of the world’s top economies.

Aligned with the above the Korean Prime Minister, Park Geun-hye, has placed creativity at the heart of her government’s strategy for ensuring continued economic growth for her country. Within this strategy the Creative Economy Forum was established as a Korean/UK Governmental meeting to discuss how Korea and the UK could collaborate over three related topics:

· Developing a Data-Based Creative Economy,
· Collaborative Research in Future Innovative Technologies, and
· The Development of Digital Cultural Content

Besides myself the Data-Base Creative Economy session had, from Korea: the CEO of Saltlux (a semantics, search and big data company); the head of the Korean Open Knowledge Foundation, the CEO of Kweather (a national Korean weather service); and Professors and Senior Researchers from Seoul National University School of Law; the National Information Society Agency; and Chungang University. From the UK the cohort included senior researchers from Imperial College and the Open Data Institute.

This was followed by a plenary session with the main talks coming from the Korean President and David Willets, the UK Minister of State for Universities and Science. In her talk Park Geun-hye outlined how the world, in her view, was moving on from Adam Smith’s 18th century notion of a country’s wealth being based upon production and productivity (which was revolutionary at the time) to one based on creativity. She gave an analogy of a chef choosing to no longer simply trying to produce more and more food but continually developing new recipes (for innovation and growth).

David Willets talked about the similarities between Korea and the UK, the strength of UK research and the eight key technologies for furthering UK economic growth: Big Data, Space, Robotics and autonomous systems, Synthetic biology, Regenerative medicine, Agri-science, Advanced materials and Energy. In January this year David Willets announced £500 million of funding for these areas including £189 million for Big Data.

Overall it was a fascinating day and I expect future collaboration opportunities to arise. Our session moderator the CEO of Saltlux has already participated in one of our EU project (SUPER). A first step here will most likely be a Memorandum of Understanding between the Open Data Institute and the Korean National Information Society Agency.

Korea is, by the way, placed 15th globally in terms of GDP by the United Nations is also place 4th in terms of Internet connectivity speed.

Related Links:

David Willet’s announcement of &pound500 million for 8 key technologies

Complexity and Pedagogy: Shanghai invitational workshop

Sunday 27 Oct 2013 | KMi News

I have just spent an extraordinary week in Shanghai in an intensive workshop designed by complex systems people, for complex systems people, to reimagine educational systems (research and practice) as complex adaptive systems. I was feeding into future scenarios a complex systems perspective on current developments in learning analytics and collective intelligence technologies.

The event was hosted graciously by East China Normal University (Institute of Schooling Reform & Development), a Key Research Institute in the University of National Educational Ministry. ECNU’s ground-breaking work is led by Prof. Ye Lan (CCTV interview), who is shaping national policy on reforming the school system to create more creative students with the qualities needed to thrive in the 21st century ‘age of complexity’. Shanghai schools leapt to fame when they topped the last PISA league tables, and part of this workshop was to examine our assumptions about what ‘good’ looks like, and how to assess educational quality for our complex times.

The workshop was expertly facilitated by Incept Labs (Sydney), who specialise in the applications of complexity science to wicked problems. The event was originally conceived by Ruth Deakin Crick (Univ. Bristol) and Chris Goldspink (Incept Labs), with whom I co-founded the Learning Emergence network, and recently ran the Dispositional Learning Analytics workshop at LASI13, Stanford. We partnered with Prof. Li Jiacheng at ECNU as it became clear that our visions and values for systemic learning systems design are closely aligned. With further backing from University of Auckland, participants were invited from New Zealand, Australia, China and UK.

We expect a rich strand of collaborations to flow from this exciting meeting, so watch this space.

See below for more details of Prof. Ye’s influential work.

Professor Ye Lan was born in Shanghai in December 1941. She is currently Tenure Professor and a doctoral supervisor at East China Normal University (ECNU). Professor Ye is also Director of the Contemporary Chinese Basic Education Development and Innovation Base under the overall “985 Project” of ECNU; Director of the New Basic Education Research Centre; Honorary Director of the Institute of Schooling Reform and Development (ISRD), ECNU, which is a key research base of the Ministry of Education in China; and Counselor of the People’s Government of Shanghai Province. She is concurrently appointed as a member of the National Educational Science Planning Leading Group. Prof. Ye has formerly served as Convener of the Education Appraisal Panel of the 4th and 5th Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council; Vice Chairman of The Chinese Society of Education; Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council of Social Services; Head of Education Department, Dean of the Faculty of Educational Science, founding Director of ISRD, and Vice-President at ECNU. Prof. Ye is an eminent scholar in the following key research areas: theories of education study, theories of education research methods, contemporary basic education of China, teacher education reform etc. Her major publications include Jiao yu gai lun (Principles of Education), Jiaoyu yanjiu fanfalun chutan (An Exploration of Education Research Methods) and Xin ji chu jiao yu lun (On New Basic Education). She has also edited and written a number of research series, and has published over 90 research articles. She has been responsible for various state key studies, and received many national academic awards.

FORGE has kicked-off!

Thursday 24 Oct 2013 | KMi News

Last week saw the kick-off meeting of the FORGE project (Forging Online Education through FIRE). FORGE is a 3-year FP7 project led by KMi. The consortium consists of 7 partners highly experienced in eLearning and FIRE (Future Internet Research & Experimentation). The meeting was hosted by the University of Patras in Greece. John Domingue, Alexander Mikroyannidis and Aneta Tumilowicz represented KMi.

FORGE will develop methodologies and best practices for offering world-class FIRE facilities to learners and educators, related both to communications and IT, but also to other disciplines including social sciences. Within the FORGE project we will:

Study and develop new processes and approaches to online learning based on the integration of FIRE facilities and eLearning technologies.
Inject into the higher education learning sphere the FIRE portfolio of facilities and tools.
Introduce the learning community to the concepts of Experimentally Driven Research.
Increase the overall accessibility and usability of FIRE facilities through the layering of how-to-use resources over the FIRE platforms.

From a learning technology perspective, FORGE will build upon new trends in online education. Firstly, in online educational platforms such as iTunes U, as well as in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) we see the large-scale take-up and use of rich media content. These include video in a variety of formats including webcasts and podcasts and eBooks, which can contain multimedia and interactive segments. eBooks provide a new level of interactivity since specific learning text, images and video can be closely integrated to interactive exercises. FORGE will enable students to setup and run FIRE experiments from within rich related learning content embedded as widgets inside interactive eBooks.

Related Links:

FIRE

FIRE in Education

Learning Analytics at INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics, Galway

Tuesday 15 Oct 2013 | KMi News

Last week in Galway, I introduced the recently created Irish INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics to analytics developments as they are playing out in the education sector…

Thanks Stefan Decker and everyone else for an enjoyable visit and stimulating conversations 🙂

Data and analytics are transforming how organisations work in all sectors. While there are clearly ethical issues around big data and privacy, there may also be an argument that educational institutions have a moral obligation to use all the information they have to maximize the learner’s progress. So, assuming education can’t (arguably shouldn’t) resist this revolution, the question is how to harness this new capability intelligently. Learning Analytics is an exploding research field and startup market: do leaders know what to ask when the vendors roll up with dazzling dashboards? In this talk I’ll provide an overview of developments, and consider some of the key questions we should be asking. Like any modelling technology and accounting system, analytics are not neutral, and do not passively describe sociotechnical reality: they begin to shape it. Moreover, they start with the things that are easiest to count, which doesn’t necessarily equate to the things we value in learning. Given the crisis in education at many levels, what realities do we want analytics to perpetuate, or bring into being?

Designing Systemic Analytics at the Open University

Saturday 12 Oct 2013 | KMi News

The OU’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor Learning & Teaching, Prof. Belinda Tynan, gave a joint webinar today with KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum (Prof. Learning Informatics) on Designing Systemic Analytics at the Open University.

This formed part of the online open course Strategy & Policy for Systemic Learning Analytics, organised by the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). Thanks to the Australian Office for Learning and Technology for sponsoring this, and to George Siemens for convening.

Replay (launches Blackboard Collaborate)

Designing Systemic Learning Analytics at the Open University from Simon Buckingham Shum

Abstract: The OU has been analysing student data and feeding this back to faculties since its doors opened 40 years ago. However, the emergence of learning analytics technologies open new possibilities for engaging in more effective sensemaking of richer learner data, and more timely interventions. We will introduce the framework we are developing to orchestrate the rollout of a systemic organisational analytics infrastructure (both human and technical), and discuss some of the issues that arise. We will also describe how strategic research efforts will key into this design, should they prove effective.

Keynote at the IEEE International Conference on eBusiness Engineering ICEBE

Wednesday 02 Oct 2013 | KMi News

The middle of September saw Coventry host the 10th ICEBE Conference which focuses on eBusiness. Specifically, the event covers how new IT areas, for example, the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing will impact how business is conducted.

In his Keynote John Domingue talked about the work carried out in KMi on Linked Services. Specifically covering the results of the SOA4All project and the application of the work in eHealth, within the VPH-SHARE project, concerned with enabling the sharing of human body processes, NoTube, focused on the future of Internet TV and Linked USDL a joint venture with SAP on supporting the trading of services on the Web.

The other Keynote at the conference was Keith Jeffery the former Director IT and International Strategy and Director International Relations of the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Related Links:

SOA4All Project website

VPH-SHARE Project website

NoTube Project website

Linked USDL website

Social and Big Data Computing Keynote

Monday 23 Sep 2013 | KMi News

Opening Keynote of the International Knowledge Management in Organizations Conference was KMi Director, Professor Peter Scott. This event, which was the 8th in the series was held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan on 9th -13th September, 2013. This year the conference used as its theme: Social and Big Data Computing for Knowledge Management.

Professor Scott spoke on the theme of ‘Transforming learning via social and big data computing’

"Social and big data computing presage massive changes for Higher Education. Today’s students navigate an online world with a great deal of free and high quality learning material available as Open Educational Resources (OER). These are also now being framed by leading international institutions as Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC). In addition, learners’ activity in these new spaces is logged and available to inspection and integration. This can be used by big data services to predict trends, and make recommendations. Indeed, one of the most promising new areas of ‘learning analytics’ is not just the dashboard service provided to the institution which helps understand where students may fail, and to offer appropriate help; but to offer the learner a view of their ‘quantified self’. To compound the challenge offered by this new ‘data view’ of learning, it is also now moving out of classroom-like spaces into a much more pervasive and mobile context. New computing platforms and channels are starting to offer an interesting set of new affordances to learners via wireless phones and tablets. Learners can now connect with peers and mentors in much more flexible ways, and even conventional resources such as ‘the textbook’ are starting to offer new things. Electronic texts can now be highly interactive; moreover they can be both social and even ‘data driven’ themselves. The Open University in the UK has taken a strong view of OER, providing many ‘purpose designed for the remote learner’ resources as creative commons – actively facilitating their sharing, redesign and reuse. The impact of this position has been significant – with 10 million unique visitors in the last two years to our OpenLearn OER website (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk); through to impact in very new distribution channels – with over 64 Million downloads via iTunes U since 2008 (http://itunes.open.edu). We have also taken a strong position on the MOOC, creating a new company launched in September 2013, FutureLearn (http://futurelearn.com). We are also at the leading edge of innovative use of the new learning affordances with an app providing access to all our student resources ‘OU Anywhere’; and a set of highly interactive new format texts, exploring how our students could reach out of the book back into our University services, and out to each other. This talk will provide a snapshot of this work at the OU, and seek to provide a roadmap for where it is taking us".

Related Links:

KMO 2013 Tawan

CompendiumDS wins Scottish eAssessment Award for Best Product

Monday 16 Sep 2013 | KMi News

Our job in KMi is to prototype the future of the learning society, typically from external research grants which are only awarded to investigate a ground-breaking challenge. We then engage the OU with these inventions when they are ready for adoption, so it’s always a pleasure when those technologies then help OU courses win awards.

The Compendium software tool was our research vehicle to investigate the new literacies associated with reading and writing networks of ideas and arguments, as a complement to conventional prose documents. So we were delighted when in 2010 Peter Lloyd, leading the OU course team planning Design Thinking: creativity for the 21st century saw the potential, as a new way to engage design students in their assignments. The team has just picked up another award, this time the Scottish eAssessment Product award, for their version of the tool, CompendiumDS (Design Studies). Read all about it in their briefing [pdf] and U101’s Derek Jones blog. The team is also documenting their experiences with the tool over several years, in a paper for the Journal of Learning Design.

This is just one way that Compendium has impacted the OU. The Learning Design group in our sister Institute of Educational Technology has customized it for visual modelling of learning design patterns, with their version called CompendiumLD.

Compendium was funded by a series of research grants by the UK Research Councils, eScience Programme, and the Hewlett Foundation, in collaboration with research partners at Verizon, NASA, CogNexus Institute and many other practitioners who were trialling the tool in authentic contexts. Compendium brings advanced hypertext functionality to the masses, and it has become the tool of choice for thousands of people — see what our community says on the Compendium Instiitute, the global community hub that we host in KMi. It serves as one of the Computer Science & Informatics Impact Cases for the forthcoming UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Third ESWC Summer School a Great Success

Wednesday 11 Sep 2013 | KMi News

Last week saw the third ESWC Summer School take place in the south of Crete in the beautiful village of Kalamaki. This event is tightly coupled with the ESWC Conference Series and as with the conference runs under the auspices of STI International the network organization focused in the area of semantics. As such the School aims to facilitate the creation of a new cohort of ESWC: Master’s, Ph.D. students and junior researchers who will in time become the next leaders of the ESWC conference and of the Semantic Web and Linked Data research areas in general.

One innovation in this year’s event was to base the technical tutorials on high quality Open Educational Resources (OERs) which have been created within the EU-funded EUCLID project. Within EUCLID we have created an eBook on Linked Data which is available in a variety of formats including for iPads, Kindles as well as in plain HTML. Using these materials all attendees where able to get a basic grounding in Linked Data before arrival.

The school was lucky to have a great set of Keynotes including: Prof. Stefan Decker of DERI in Galway, Ireland, Prof. Steffen Staab from the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany, Dr. Kieron O’Hara from the University of Southampton, Prof. Vassilis Christophides from the University of Crete and Marko Grobelnik from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia.

From a lab point of view the School Administrator was Aneta Tumilowicz (who everyone thought did an absolutely fantastic job) and John Domingue was a School Director. One of the tutors Barry Norton is an ex-member of KMi now working as a development manager within a Linked Data project for the British Museum.

The immediate feedback from the students on the school was very positive and we are confident that we will soon be receiving testimonials as strong as we did for last year’s event. For example, last year we received the following from one Ph.D. student from Ghent:

“Looking back after two years, I can say that the ESWC summer school has been the most influential event in my research career so far. You get to know many people at once, giving your network a serious boost: you’ll never walk alone at any Semantic Web conference. For me, it has also been the start of two rewarding friendships and research collaborations. We all gladly look back at our time in Greece.”

The school was supported by a number of European projects in addition to EUCLID, including the network of excellence for Linked Data PlanetData, PRELIDA (which focuses on Linked Data preservation) as well as support from VideoLectures.net on recording the event.

We will now continue to run the event at the same location and time for the foreseeable future.

Related Links:

Third ESWC Summer School website

The EUCLID Project Website

Knowledge Cartography: The top 10 of the most downloaded books of the Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series.

Tuesday 03 Sep 2013 | KMi News

The book Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. edited by Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. and Sherborne, T. was launched on 4th of November 2008 – 400 pages, with all the maps and images in colour!

It is a great pleasure to announce that the 2nd edition of this book will be published in 2014 by Springer .

Since its online publication, there has been a total of 6642 chapter downloads on SpringerLink online platform.

Over the last year(s) the download figures have been as follows:
2012: 1015 Downloads
2011: 1559 Downloads
2010: 1520 Downloads

This book was considered one of the top most downloaded eBooks in the relevant Springer eBook Collection in 2012.

Contact: Alexandra Okada

Related Links:

Knowledge Cartography Content

Knowledge Cartography SPRINGER

Learning Analytics keynote to EAIR, Rotterdam

Monday 02 Sep 2013 | KMi News

I’ve just returned from the European AIR (Association for Institutional Research) Forum. EAIR is the primary forum for research into the dynamics of the higher education sector and its management, and they invited me to share what’s going on in learning analytics.

My keynote introduced the data explosion around ‘customer’ interaction and profiling which has transformed so many other sectors, and which is about to hit higher education.

My slides are below, which include many background links [PDF version], with further reflections in my blog.

Learning Analytics (or: The Data Tsunami Hits Higher Education)

Keynote at Challenges 2013 International Conference on ICT in Education

Monday 12 Aug 2013 | KMi News

Learning anytime anywhere was the key theme of the VIII International Conference on ICT in Education – Challenges 2013, which was held in July 2013 in Portugal.

Organised by the ICT in Education Competence Centre of the University of Minho Institute of Education, the conference covered a plural range issues, structured in three main topics:

Emerging environments
Digital and curriculum
Digital evaluation

The topic “Emerging environments” included the more recent technological innovations, searching for lines of future development in the dimensions related to education and training.

Ale Okada, invited as a keynote, presented the project WESPOT “Working Environment with social personal and open technologies for inquiry based learning”, whose features , strongly anchored in digital and networked technology, highlighted very well the key theme of this conference.

More than 400 attendees from higher and basic education came to engage in a programme. All keynotes were also live-streamed increasing therefore the open access to the conference. Okada, however, mentioned that increasing access to conference talks through live webcast was not new for Challenges. Seven years ago, during the initial editions of Challenges, Okada presented Open Learning Technologies of the OpenLearn Project through webinar using FM which was widely accessed. “Challenges” was the first international event which allowed online presentation of a conference paper . This significant and innovative opportunity opened up several other online talks in various events that doubled or tripled the number of viewers, by extending our reach geographically as well as temporally through the video web conferencing application FM.

During Challenges 2013, Okada also launched her book “Open Educational Resources and Social Networks” edited by the OU KMI, published by UEMA University in Brazil . The free print copies were distributed in the conference and received by the Chancellor (Rector) of the Open University in Portugal and the Educational Projects Director of the Education and Science Ministry as well as the Diretor of EUN (European Schoolnet).

Related Links:

Open Educational Resources and Social Networks Book

Russian State Owned News Agency Reports on STI ‘East meets West’ Russian Summit

Friday 02 Aug 2013 | KMi News

The middle of July saw STI International hold it’s bi-annual Strategic Semantic Summit an event which allows senior Semantic Web researchers to meet and discuss the future of semantic technology in the medium to long-term. This year’s event was held in Suzdal – a beautiful Russian town dating back to the 11th century and part of the famous Golden Ring north-east of Moscow.

The event focused on establishing new networks connecting Linked Data research within western Europe, Russia and Korea. The main representatives for Europe included the Summit Co-Chairs, John Domingue and Soren Auer from the University of Bonn and Franhofer, and also Dieter Fensel from the University of Innsbuck and Georg Gottlob from the University of Oxford. In addition to introducing the whole Summit John Domingue chaired a discussion on the concepts and state-of-the-art delivery methods for a Data Science Curriculum, building on the session he chaired at this year’s European Data Forum. Georg Gottlob talked about DIADEM a large project which targets web scale information extraction.

From Russia the representatives included Daniel Hladky of W3C Russia, Victor Klintsov from Avicomp and Dmitry Mouromtsev from the National University of St. Petersburg. Dmitry will Chair this year’s Russian Conference on Knowledge Engineering and the Semantic Web to be held in St. Petersburg. The main theme presented by the Russian contingent was on the growth of Open Data in Russia and the strong desire from President Putin to install Russian Universities into the top 100 as measured by global league tables. On the technical side they are currently developing an RDF store which can run on an Android device which was demoed during a dedicated session.

From Korea we had Ho-Chin Choi and Key-Sun Choi both from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s (KAIST) which is currently ranked in the top 50 universities globally. Ho-Chin is a Professor in the biomedical informatics centre at KAIST. His talked focused on the use of semantics and AI in creating personalized context-aware health avatars to run on smart phones. Key-Sun heads the Semantic Web Research Center at KAIST and was the Programme Chair for ISWC 2006 when it was held in Korea. His talk covered the emerging topic of AI combined with Big Data.

The event was covered by the Russian state-owned newsagency RIA Novosti. This news agency is one of the largest news agencies in Russia, is headquartered in Moscow and operates about 80 bureaus internationally. A pre-event workshop was also covered by Russian TV.

Related Links:

Article on the STI Strategic Summit in RIA Novosti

Summit Home page

Dispositional Learning Analytics workshop

Wednesday 31 Jul 2013 | KMi News

Dispositions towards learning, especially when stretched and challenged by novel problems, are now being recognised as key to the design of 21st century learning. This forces us to consider how these may be cultivated and assessed, making Dispositional Learning Analytics a critical emerging field. I’ve just put up the videos from our recent Stanford University workshop which brought together some of the leading people for the first time…

KMi’s Evidence Hub powering School Systems Learning network

Friday 19 Jul 2013 | KMi News

At KMi we’ve been developing a new kind of website, based on years of research into the human and technical factors underpinning computer-supported argumentation, rationale capture and collective intelligence. An Evidence Hub is a structured site designed to harness what is known collectively, from a small team to a global network.

The goal is to connect the different kinds of knowledge and needs that researchers, practitioners, policymakers and enterprise bring to a field, by building an evidence base to inform action and future enquiry. We have a number of prototype Hubs in the early stages of development, all linked from the Evidence Hub hub (!).

The launch of Evidence Hub for Systems Learning & Leadership has just been reported by the Graduate School of Education at University of Bristol, based on a ground-breaking collaboration investigating how one can effect systemic transformation in schools. Led by Ruth Deakin Crick (Reader in Systems Learning & Leadership at Bristol), Rebecca Clark (Executive Principal & Regional Academies Director at Oasis Academies) and myself, on Monday we held an extraordinarily exciting event documenting the prototyping progress to date, with the principal and teachers sharing how this approach is transforming how they approach professional learning.

Hosted on LearningEmergence.net, the global network formed by Bristol GSE and OU KMi to advance a research-informed global programme, you can learn more and replay the videos of talks that demonstrate how this is unfolding…

The complex systems approach being developed by LearningEmergence.net is described in more detail on the site, and most recently, in the Dispositional Learning Analytics workshop we just ran at Stanford University as part of the global, week-long Learning Analytics Summer Institute.

Personal Learning Environments for Inquiry-Based Learning

Friday 19 Jul 2013 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis presented KMi’s latest work on Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) for Inquiry-Based Learning last week at the PLE conference in Berlin. The event was well attended and was broadcasted live. The PLE conference is an annual international scientific conference delivering a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences and research around the development and implementation of PLEs, including the design of environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise.

The work presented by Alexander is being conducted in the context of the weSPOT project. weSPOT is a new project supported by the European Commission, aiming at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today’s curricula and teaching practices. weSPOT lowers the threshold for linking everyday life with science teaching in schools by technology. The weSPOT team in KMi consists of Alexander Mikroyannidis, Alexandra Okada and Peter Scott.

Related Links:

Alexander’s presentation

The PLE conference

The weSPOT project

CORE among the top 10 search engines for research that go beyond Google

Thursday 11 Jul 2013 | KMi News

Using search engines effectively is now a key skill for researchers, but could more be done to equip young researchers with the tools they need? Here, Dr Neil Jacobs and Rachel Bruce from JISC’s digital infrastructure team shared their top ten resources for researchers from across the web. CORE was placed among the top 10 search engines that go beyond Google.

Related Links:

The top ten search engines for researchers that go beyond Google

Get the free e-Book: Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning

Tuesday 25 Jun 2013 | KMi News

Jumping straight into the top-ten ‘computing and internet’ free resources on Apple’s book store comes KMi’s e-Book for iPads on ‘Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning’. Produced by Peter Scott, Paul Lefrere, and Fridolin Wild this free book highlights the most recent breakthroughs in research on learning with technology, from the background of two networks of excellence, eight integrated projects, and a support action funded in in the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development of the European Union.

The book highlights the key outcomes of these research projects in twelve chapters, aiming to explore how to support active engagement in learning with the help of technology. This resource is rich with media to ease access and foster quick uptake amongst learners, instructors, and decision-makers in schools, universities, and workplaces.

The projects discussed range widely over the Technology Enhanced Learning area from: environments for responsive open learning, work-based reflection, work-based social creativity, serious games and many more.

Related Links:

Download the eBook from iTunes

Learning by doing, fusion reactor, smoke sauna

Tuesday 25 Jun 2013 | KMi News

What connects all three above? Right, a project meeting of the TELL-ME project last week in Tampere, Finland.

TELL-ME brings learning technology to manufacturing environments. In a nutshell, the overall top-level idea of TELL-ME is to support ‘learning by doing’, a super hot combination of augmented reality technology and learning from shared experience. This new generation of tactile, kinesthethic learning requires rethinking models and methodologies, such as currently prepared in TELL-ME with a strong contribution from KMi.

The meeting in Tampere brought together all technical partners of the project to facilitate the integration for the first prototype due in a couple of months.

So what has this to do with fusion reactors and sauna?

TELL-ME partner VTT hosted the first day of the meeting in a traditional Finish smoke sauna — and we finished a day full of hot topics with an even hotter 136 degrees in the sauna, before jumping into the ice cold water of lake to cool down and chill out.

Moreover, our partners at VTT incidentially are involved in the development of the global fusion reactor project ITER – and the second day of the meeting culminated in a flying visit to the lab, in which they currently help develop a giant ash tray (and robots to empty it) for the 150 Mio degree hot plasma burning process at its core.

Related Links:

TELL-ME project

Euclid Officially Rated Excellent

Monday 24 Jun 2013 | KMi News

“I have been reviewing European projects for over ten years and this is the first time I give an ‘Excellent’ rating… Congratulations! I am impressed! I also think that you are very good educators as well as researchers.”
“Congratulations first!”
“The project is well developed and has made excellent progress.”
Were the first comments from our external Euclid reviewers and our EU Project Officer at our review in Luxembourg at the end of last week.

Euclid is a 2-year project which began in May 2012 and aims to create open learning resources to support the training of professionals in the area of Linked Data. Over the first year the consortium has created a wealth of materials including: a Webinar series which now attracts over 100 live attendees per session, screencasts and high quality eBooks available as HTML, in iBook format for Apple iPads and ePub formats for other tablets including Amazon’s Kindle.

The project was highly commended for its innovative delivery of practical hands-on sessions whereby students can interact with the latest Linked Data software supporting the latest W3C recommendations. There was also very high praise for our use of Social Media – one reviewer recommended that we write an eBook on “Branding your eLearning” as we had now accumulated special expertise on how to engage with an eLearning community.

In addition to involving John Domingue, Alex Mikroyannidis, Paul Mulholland, Jacek Kopecky and Ning Li from KMi and Richard Power from Computing, Euclid also employs a three ex-KMiers who now work for other organisations. Specifically, Maria Maleshkova, now employed at KIT, Barry Norton, currently at Ontotext and Andriy Nikolov, now at Fluid Ops. Other partners in Euclid include STI Research, based in Vienna and the University of Southampton, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Sheffield and the Universidad Simon Bolivar as associate partners/contributors.

First three chapters of our eBook will very shortly be published in the Apple Book Store as part of the OU’s research series.

Related Links:

Euclid Project Website

Digital Agenda Assembly 2013

Friday 21 Jun 2013 | KMi News

KMi Director, Professor Peter Scott joined he EU Digital Agenda Assembly 2013 this week in Dublin Castle, Dublin, Ireland. The event is a meeting of EU policy makers and stakeholders aiming to review plans for the Digital Agenda for Europe – to assess the progress and challenges in implementation of the plan and seek ways to improve its delivery.

The main challenge this year was to understand the digital lifecycle with an emphasis on digital skills, entrepreneurship and growth. The event workshops focused on ICT skills and jobs, public services for the citizen, research & innovation and technology enablers, trust & security, entrepreneurship and the digital single market.

With 73% of EU households subscribing to (some form of) broadband; and 70% "use the internet regularly" the story sounds promising; but still, 22% of EU citizens have "never used the internet", and only 51% of citizens say they would cliam "medium to high internet skills"… this leaves 49% feeling they have "low to NO skills"! Indeed, one headline is that we are expecting up to 900,000 "unfilled IT vacancies in Europe by the year 2015! So major topics at this event were improving digital literacy and a "grand coalition for digital jobs" and how policy can help us map the route to a "digital single market" for Europe.

With a very active digital contribution, both via webcast, twitter and other channels – this was a very active and interactive event. And with ‘hands on" participation from the Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny; Irish Minister of Comms, Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte, EU Vice President Neelie Kroes, and Open University Chancellor (and Irish Digital Champion), David Puttnam, the event was both stimulating and challenging.

The Open University participation was to ensure that the voice of open learning was heard in all of the policy and business debate, especially in the first day workshop on ‘digital skills for jobs and learning’.

Related Links:

Digital Agenda Assembly 2013

The DA-13 Twitter Feed

Neelie Kroes DA13 Blog Entry

Video of the Second Day Plenary Kick Off

Keynote at the Dagstuhl Seminar on Interoperation in Complex Information Ecosystems

Wednesday 19 Jun 2013 | KMi News

Today saw the end of the Dagstuhl Seminar on Interoperation in Complex Information Ecosystems. These seminars are prestigious events held at the Dagstuhl Castle in Germany which have to be booked two years in advance. The events last between three days to one week and cover new or emerging topics in Computer Science. Generally, the organisers will bring together the most prominent scientists in a number of fields so that they can discuss common problems and see how a combination of theories and techniques can lead to new insights in computing.

The above seminar tackled the problem of how complex ecosystems of information systems incorporating large amounts of data, a multitude of stakeholders, and a plethora of data sources and systems can be interoperate and be integrated. The attendees were composed of many of the world’s leading researchers in the area of the Semantic Web, databases, machine learning and RESTful services.

With the overall goal of creating a scientific roadmap for interoperation in complex ecosystems the Seminar was structured into four Keynotes, short position talks and eight breakout sessions. The four Keynotes comprised: Felix Naumann from the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Germany, on The Quality of Web Data, Sheila McIlraith from the University of Toronto in Canada on A Purposeful View of Data; Kai-Uwe Sattler from the Technical University of Ilmenau in Germany, on What’s wrong with Linked Data? And John Domingue of KMi, on Beyond SPARQL: Linked Data, Software, Services and Applications.

Following the event roadmap for the area is currently being synthesized by the organisers: Rudi Studer of KIT in Germany, Craig Knoblock of the University of Southern California and Kai-Uwe Sattler. Watch this space for more updates!

Related Links:

Dagstuhl Seminar home page

Slides from John Domingue’s Keynote at the Seminar

The SOA4All project page which support the work mentioned in John’s Keynote

Learning Analytics Summer Institute – Stanford and Global Online

Monday 10 Jun 2013 | KMi News

In July 1-5, the world’s leading Learning Analytics people gather at Stanford University, connected to a global network, for a field-defining week. I’ve been on the planning team for a year — here’s how to join in…

Learning Analytics as both a research topic and emerging marketplace has recently garnered the attention of faculty, educational researchers and administrators, policy makers, data scientists and learning technology entrepreneurs. Unprecedented quantity of, and access to, learner-generated data has opened up new opportunities, for instance, for researchers to better understand how learners learn, for educators to assess the impact of teaching activities and interventions, and for learners to receive personalized, real-time, automated support for their learning advancements.

A critical window of opportunity is opening as we stand on the threshold of what may be a new discipline with disruptive potential for educational research and practice. Bringing the right mix of people together for an intensive ‘summer camp’ could serve as an intellectual and social springboard to accelerate the maturation of the discipline — as was the case for other young disciplines, such as cognitive neuroscience.

The Learning Analytics Summer Institute at Stanford (LASI-Stanford) is a strategic five-day event, July 1-5, 2013, co-organized by SoLAR and Stanford University. The International Educational Data Mining Society is also assisting with event organization. In parallel, a global network of LASI-Locals will run their own institutes. The objective is that participants will leave better equipped to actively engage in advancing the LA field through their teaching and research activities. Specifically, LASI has two goals:

Build the field of Learning Analytics through cross disciplinary interactions, identification of research and teaching needs, advancement of LA methods, and connecting isolated researchers.

Develop the skills and knowledge of doctoral students and academics, equipping them to engage actively in LA research and teaching.

The OU is heavily engaged with LASI-Stanford and LASI-Locals. I am on the planning group for LASI-Stanford, am coordinating the LASI-Locals network, and four OU staff are contributing to this massively over-subscribed week, including KMi’s Simon Knight, IET’s Rebecca Ferguson and Doug Clow, and MCT’s Tony Hirst. I am chairing the Dispositional Analytics workshop.

YOU can tune into Stanford webcasts, and join in the discussions, via the LASI-Local page.

Watch KMi news for an update on how this historic week unfolds around the globe…

Related Links:

Learning Analytics Summer Institute

Wikimedia UK Conference – Mediawiki for OER and Learning Analytics

Sunday 09 Jun 2013 | KMi News

PhD student Simon Knight was in Lincoln this weekend talking about Mediawiki for OER and Learning Analtics and the 2013 Wikimedia UK conference and AGM. In addition to the AGM function, the conference is a chance to catch up with what Wikimedia UK are helping organise with the Wikimedia community in the UK including their work with Galleries Libraries Archives and Museums (GLAM), educational outreach, media from cultural group and instituitions, and open access resources – much of which is of relevance to us in KMi.

Simon’s talk was on the potential of mediawiki for OER and data around their use (paradata), alongside learning analytics, and the scope for developing personalised learning pathways through OER from such data.

The slides are below, in addition to a blog with more extended thoughts on the WMUK conference.

Mediawiki for oer and learning analytics – understanding learning resources and learners from sjgknight

Related Links:

Conference Website

Simon’s blog on WMUK Conference

ESWC 2013

Wednesday 05 Jun 2013 | KMi News

The ESWC 2013 conference, themed on "Semantics and Big Data", took place on May 26-30 in Montpellier, France, with important contributions from KMi. Professor Enrico Motta was invited as a keynote speaker and he opened the conference with a reflection of what being semantic really means. He presented Rexplore as an example of a KMi application that exploits semantics to better link and retrieve information about academic experts, topics, areas and publications. Additionally, Enrico was invited as part of the big data panel, where he highlighted the role of big data done by lots of small data journalists or citizens.

Professor John Domingue presence as chair of the steering committee and president of the STI international, was key to ensure the successful organisation and running of the event.

Other KMi-ers and Ex-KMi-ers were also present at the event. Vanesa Lopez and Miriam Fernandez co-organised the poster and demo session, where a high number of posters and applications generated really lively and interesting discussions. Mattew Rowe and Claudia Wagner presented two out of three papers in the social web and web science session were they highlighted the use of semantics to better understand the topical specificity of online communities as well as the wisdom of the social media audience.

The social event showed the influence of the Spanish culture in south France with a beautiful flamenco performance.

Related Links:

ESWC 2013

Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning

Tuesday 04 Jun 2013 | KMi News

… that was co-organised by KMi was as a huge success! Taking place in sunny Limassol on Cyprus, this 9th summer school attracted almost 80 participants, with lectures given by a line up of the creme de la creme of European TEL research.

KMi opened this intense week of PhD training with a keynote on the Grand Challenges in Technology-Enhanced Learning, offered a tutorial on how to do Learning Analytics in R on cRunch, provided an entrepreneurship training, and recruited guest editors for a young researcher special issue in the International Journal of Technology-Enhanced Learning.

"I’m glad the European Association for Technology Enhanced Learning will make researchers return in September for the annual conference – Cyprus provides a stimulating environment for an intense week of expert knowledge exchange", says Fridolin Wild of KMi, treasurer of EA-TEL and financial chair of the summer school.

Related Links:

JTEL summer school ’13

The Shakespeare Review

Wednesday 29 May 2013 | KMi News

KMi’s John Domingue joined a team of experts in February 2013 to contribute to an independent review of public sector information, The Shakespeare Review, which has now been published, was led by Stephan Shakespeare, Chair of the Data Strategy Board – a body set up by BIS. The Review makes nine recommendations to government around the growth opportunities of, and how to widen access to, the wealth of information held by the public sector. Professor Domingue is the Chair of the European Semantic Web Conference series, and an OU team led by KMi’s Dr Mathieu D’Aquin, created the Open Data University service: http://data.open.ac.uk as the world’s first comprehensive LInked Data portal for a higher education institution.

"The need for high quality training in the Linked Data area is particularly relevant for the Open University", said Professor Domingue. "I’m very happy to see that this is now taken up as Recommendation 6 of the review". The review recommendation 6 is: "Building on existing activities around capability, there should be a focused programme of investment to build skill-sets in basic data science through our academic institutions, covering both genuinely unfettered ‘basic research’ and research of ‘practical immediate value’ to the national data strategy. We cannot rely only on markets and government departments and wider public sector bodies to maximise the potential of this relatively new and fast-developing field in which we are positioned to be a world leader."

"Indeed, it is a major topic of research here, such as in my own EUCLID project under the EU FP7 Research Programme", he added. "But also critical for the future integration of scholarly knowledge exchange and future teaching syndication. As the review says, of ‘practical immediate value’ indeed!"

Related Links:

The Shakespeare review of public sector information

The EUCLID project

The Open Data University

Futurium Webinar

Friday 24 May 2013 | KMi News

Today, as part of the "Future Fridays" series of webinars for The European Commission’s Futurium initiative, Professor Peter Scott, Director of the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, presented his vision of the Future of Education & Learning.

The live Webinar was hosted under the Digital Agenda for Europe events aimed to discuss policy innovation with a long term vision. Professor Scott led a discussion on "New channels. New affordances. New learners?" which picked up on foresight thinking from EU projects like STELLAR and TELMAP. This work aims to help us to see the emerging shape of a new learning landscape, and to put innovations like Learning Analytics and MOOCs into the wider context.

"Indeed, new channels for reaching learners are appearing constantly in our networked world", said Professor Scott. "In this talk I will connect these visions to the practical experience of the UK’s Open University in the design of learning experiences to fit the affordances of these new channels. The Open University distributes materials to learners worldwide via its OpenLearn programme, on iTunes U., in YouTube, and via a variety of other ‘podcast’ channels. As Apple announce the billionth download from iTunes U, now is a good time to reflect upon the new channels and the new affordances they offer. Indeed, the Open University on iTunes U (with over 60 Million downloads to date) is 70% to iOS mobile and tablet devices. Is it possible that the "book" affordance is the most important one to focus on next?"

Related Links:

The Digital Agenda for Europe Futurium

The STELLAR community

The TELMAP Project

The visit of HRH The Duke of York to The Open University

Friday 24 May 2013 | KMi News

Today Thursday 23rd May, His Royal Highness Andrew, The Duke of York visited the Open University. His Royal Highness was met by Martin Bean, the Open University Vice-Chancellor and Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant for Buckinghamshire. The Duke met with a range of eminent guests and friends of the Open University an unveiled a plaque in the JLB Nexus area to commemorate his visit.

During the tour of Open Unversity innovation highlights, the Duke met with KMi Director, Professor Peter Scott, and KMi research student Drahomira Herrmannova. Peter introduced the Duke to our interactive book research and work in iTunes U and provided a perspective on ‘post personal computing’, and Dasha discussed ‘Big Data’ and learning analytics research.

Other University highlights included a discussion of our new FutureLearn venture, our new Open Educational Resource work in OpenLearn, and the new LTS App ‘OU Anywhere’.

Related Links:

The Duke of York

KMI Interactive Books Project

KMi tutors at Goethe University Frankfurt

Wednesday 22 May 2013 | KMi News

KMi’s Fridolin Wild tutored doctoral candidates at the Goethe University Frankfurt on how to do natural language processing with the famous statistical programming language and environment R.

The doctoral school at the Institute of Business Informatics engages under the lad of Prof. Roland Holten in analysing social interaction in software development processes – in order to improve agile models of development.

The tutorial helps to gear up for natural language processing activities required to unveil the nature of conversation in software development teams.

Related Links:

Introductory slides

Online Learning and Linked Data at WWW 2013

Tuesday 21 May 2013 | KMi News

KMi organised a tutorial about Online Learning and Linked Data on May 13 at the World Wide Web conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The tutorial was a joint event between the EUCLID and LinkedUp projects and was delivered by John Domingue and Alexander Mikroyannidis from KMi and Stefan Dietze from L3S Research Center, Germany on behalf of Mathieu d’Aquin (KMi).

The tutorial focused on the latest developments in online learning and Linked Data, presenting new online learning methods for supporting the teaching of Linked Data, together with examples of how these methods have been used in the EUCLID project to produce and deliver online learning resources about Linked Data. Additionally, ways in which Linked Data principles and technologies can be used to support online learning and create innovative educational services were explained, based on use cases and applications considered by the LinkedUp project. The tutorial presentations are available in the EUCLID web site.

Alexander Mikroyannidis also presented a paper about the FORGE project at the 3rd International Workshop on Learning and Education with the Web of Data (LILE 2013). FORGE is a new FP7 project starting this October, which will be making use of Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) facilities for online learning. FORGE will be taking the first step towards turning FIRE into a pan-European educational platform for Future Internet through Linked Data.

The rest of the WWW conference featured high-quality keynotes and panel discussions, including the ones delivered by Luis von Ahn (inventor of reCAPTCHA) and Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web). And of course, being in Brazil, there was lots of caipirinha and dancing at the social event!

Related Links:

The Online Learning and Linked Data tutorial

The FORGE presentation

Presentation of KMi Research at the University of Bergen

Sunday 19 May 2013 | KMi News

Following a kind invitation from Prof Bjørnar Tessem and Prof Csaba Veres, I spent three excellent days at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies of the University of Bergen in Norway. During my time in Bergen I gave two lectures. The first one focused on my work on the Rexplore tool for exploring and making sense of scholarly data, while the second one centred on KMi, illustrating its range of R&D activities and its strategic mission in the context of the wider aims of the Open University. In addition, ample time was dedicated to discussing possible research collaborations and in particular Prof Tessem and I had a meeting with fishery experts at the Directorate of Fisheries, to discuss the development and application of novel semantic and data mining approaches to the problem of efficient and sustainable management of fishery resources. A follow-up visit of Prof Tessem to KMi took place a few weeks later, during which we had further in-depth discussions about establishing a research collaboration in the fishery domain.

Related Links:

Rexplore

Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen

Pushing the envelope with Learning Frontiers

Monday 13 May 2013 | KMi News

KMi’s work on the Future of Learning with Technology was commended by the European Commission at the TEL-map project’s final performance review last week in the Euroforum in Luxembourg.

The work lead by KMi highlights the key high-impact innovations in learning with technology, helping to extend Europe’s capacity to innovate and helping to increase its standing as one of the world’s leading knowledge regions.

Together with the top ten grant getters of ICT funding in the area of technology-enhanced learning, KMi developed over the past 30 months a set of change scenarios for what the future of learning with technology should look like for schools, universities, and work places.

While often innovation in learning with technology that emerged from one setting fails to cross the ‘chasm’ to others, the scenarios selected (together with the adaptive roadmapping methodology) have been trialled and provide evidence that they will have wide social, economical, educatinal, and technological impact.

The innovation presented fall into three areas: they help improving awareness of each other and of knowledge, they transform learning (and teaching) to be more engaging by monitoring affect and preventing disruption, and – finally – they make progress in open collaboration in learning at scale across organisational and cultural boundaries.

The scenarios are available soon as an eBook: Wild, Lefrere, Scott (Eds.): Advances in Technology-Enhanced Learning.

Related Links:

Learning Frontiers

KMi delivers the 2nd International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments

Friday 10 May 2013 | KMi News

The 2nd annual International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2013) took place on May 7 in Aachen, Germany. The event was organised and delivered by Alexander Mikroyannidis (KMi), Hans-Christian Schmitz (Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Germany) and Rocael Hernandez (Galileo University, Guatemala). This year, WCLOUD was a shared event between the 5th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU) and the 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER).

The event was well attended and a lively discussion would follow each paper presentation. The presented papers covered a wide range of topics related to Cloud Education Environments, with a focus on applications in real-life educational contexts and evaluations by learners and educators.

Alexander Mikroyannidis presented the results of the ROLE project in terms of the lessons learned from the project’s test-beds. He provided an overview of the approaches followed in each test-bed for supporting self-regulated learning, as well as the impact of these approaches in the learning context of each test-bed.

The new project weSPOT was also presented by Alexander at CSEDU. weSPOT is a 3-year FP7 project, which started last October and aims at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today’s curricula and teaching practices.

The WCLOUD papers will be published in the CSEDU proceedings under an ISBN reference, both on paper and on CD-ROM. They will also be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library and indexed by Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index (ISI), INSPEC, DBLP and EI (Elsevier Index).

Related Links:

WCLOUD 2013

WCLOUD 2012

Stefan Rueger visits Moscow for ECIR

Friday 10 May 2013 | KMi News

Stefan Rueger of KMi was invited on behalf of BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group to visit the European Conference on Information Retrieval Research in March 2013 in his role as Programme co-chair and mentor in the conference’s doctoral consortium.

ECIR is a strong going conference series under the umbrella of BCS and is now in its 35th year, the same length of time as its international sibling conference ACM SIGIR. It was the first time that ECIR was held in East Europe and the first time it was held in a country of the former Soviet Block. Stefan and his programme co-chair Jaap Kamps (University of Amsterdam) put together a strong programme of 30 papers and 25 posters from 287 submissions with the help of 37 Senior PC members and 192 reviewers. The 920 pages Springer proceedings also contained demo papers and a short overview of the workshops and tutorials organised alongside the main conference.

Stefan has been involved with the ECIR conference series for nearly a decade and organised it twice as General Chair before (2006 at Imperial College London and 2010 at The Open University).

Related Links:

ECIR 2013

Keynote: Learning in a Post Personal Computer World

Wednesday 08 May 2013 | KMi News

Today, I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote opening talk for the eMadrid event running, you would not be surprised to learn, in Madrid, Spain as a guest of Caros III University. This event is run annually and is a coordination action to bring together the Universities of this huge city and have them reflect upon the impact of new technology. This year, the focus on learning had them seeking to understand a Web 2.0 impact upon Spain and their Universities. My own talk on "Learning in a Post Personal Computer World" emphasised the impact of new technologies and the affordances of new devices for their students.

Gonzalo León Serrano (Vice-Chancellor of Research, UPM) Edmundo Tovar (eMadrid Responsible in the UPM) and Carlos Delgado Kloos (Coordinator, eMadrid Network-UC3M) led the day; I did some interviews through the day, and many presentations were in Spanish – so my language skills are definitely being tested.

Related Links:

SlideShare Talk: Learning in a Post Personal Computer World

iLearning for the iGeneration @ IAT Tech Conference, UAE

Wednesday 08 May 2013 | KMi News

KMi Director, Professor Peter Scott spoke today to the Technological Education Conference (IAT TEC 2013) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This event attracted more than 1000 educators not only from the UAE but also from different parts of the globe including the US, UK and GCC countries. For the first time since its launch in 2010, IAT TEC was moderated and organized by Emirati students from different Applied Technology High Schools (ATHS) across the country.

The keynote took inspiration from the OU’s innovations with Apple technologies to highlight some of the new directions in tablet and mobile learning interactivity which are now available to the iGeneration in the UAE. After the keynote, Professor Scott joined a panel including Dr. Najla Al Naqbi from Abu Dhabi Educational Council (ADEC), Ahmed Ashour from Microsoft Gulf, Rehab Rajab from IAT and two of ATHS students, Iman Al Hosani, ATHS Abu Dhabi Girls, and Zayed Al Hosani, ATHS Abu Dhabi Boys. The panel discussed topics on the future of technology to answer the question ‘What’s Next in iEducation?’

Related Links:

http://www.iat.ac.ae/iattec/

Strong OU Representation at LAK13, Leuven

Wednesday 17 Apr 2013 | KMi News

Last week a group of KMI and OU colleagues attended the 3rd International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK13) in Leuven, Belgium.

The conference theme this year was ‘Dialectics in Learning Analytics’ with three core facets:

The Middle Space – in which learning, and analytics intersect
Productive Multivocality – encouraging communities to come together around the boundary object of the middle space to develop theory and practice
The Old and the New – bringing new technologies to bear on old problems of learning

The strong accord with our work in KMI was reflected in contributions to the conference, with KMI well represented by involvement in at least 5 full papers, and two workshops/tutorials co-organised by KMI colleagues:

‘Discourse Centric Learning Analytics (DCLA)’ building on our work in natural language processing for learning
‘Using Linked Data in Learning Analytics’ building on our semantic web and linked data expertise

The DCLA workshop also featured OU work with KMI represented by Duygu Simsek, Simon Buckingham Shum, Ágnes Sándor, Anna De Liddo, Rebecca Ferguson’s paper ‘XIP Dashboard: Visual Analytics from Automated Rhetorical Parsing of Scientific Metadiscourse’ (PDF, presentation on slideshare) and Simon Knight and Karen Littleton’s paper ‘Discourse, Computation and Context – Sociocultural DCLA Revisited‘ (presentation on slideshare with audio).

The full paper ‘Epistemology, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Learning Analytics‘ (presentation on slideshare, video to follow), by KMI’s Simon Knight and Simon Buckingham Shum with CREET’s Karen Littleton – – was one of four papers to receive a ‘best paper’ nomination at the conference.
OU Representation at LAK13 The OU was well represented with involvement in (not necessarily lead involvement) at least 7 papers at the full conference. Those papers are below and account for a our strong KMI and OU representation at the conference.

Interpreting Data Mining Results with Linked Data for Learning Analytics: Motivation, Case Study and Directions Authors: Mathieu D’Aquin Nicolas Jay ACM Link: 327 Tags: data mining linked data leaning analytics course enrolment sequence mining interpretation sequential analytics sequence enrollment ou Abstract: Learning Analytics by nature relies on computational information processing activities intended to e…

Improving retention: predicting at-risk students by analysing clicking behaviour in a virtual learning environment Authors: Annika Wolff Zdenek Zdrahal Andriy Nikolov Michal Pantucek ACM Link: 324 Tags: predictive modelling retention student data virtual learning environment distance learning vle dm ou Abstract: One of the key interests for learning analytics is how it can be used to improve retention. This pap…

MOOCs and the Funnel of Participation Authors: Doug Clow ACM Link: 332 Tags: learning analytics participation academic mooc moocs analytics massive open online courses massive open online courses ou Abstract: Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are growing substantially in numbers, and also in interest from …

An evaluation of policy frameworks for addressing ethical considerations in learning analytics
Authors: Paul Prinsloo Sharon Slade ACM Link: 344 Tags: learning analytics policy ethics distance learning policy distance learning policy framework data privacy informed consent data governance ou Abstract: Higher education institutions have collected and analysed student data for years, although the purpo…

Epistemology, Pedagogy, Assessment and Learning Analytics Authors: Simon Knight Simon Buckingham Shum Karen Littleton ACM Link: 312 Tags: assessment learning analytics educational assessment pedagogy la epistemology discourse analytics social learning analytics discourse analysis sociocultural ou Abstract: There is a well-established literature examining the relationships between epistemology (the nature …

An Evaluation of Learning Analytics To Identify Exploratory Dialogue in Online Discussions Authors: Rebecca Ferguson Zhongyu Wei Yulan He Simon Buckingham Shum ACM Link: 313 Tags: social dialogue learning analytics educational assessment discourse analytics computational linguistics cue-phrase matching educational dialogue exploratory dialogue k-nearest neighbour maxent discourse_analytics computational linguistics ou Abstract: Social learning analytics are concerned with the process of knowledge construction as learners build…

Visualizing Social Learning Ties by Type and Topic: Rationale and Concept Demonstrator Authors: Bieke Schreurs Chris Teplovs Rebecca Ferguson Maarten De Laat Simon Buckingham Shum ACM Link: 305 Tags: social-network visualization visualisation sna social network analysis social network analy social learning analytics networked learning social_network_analysis social learning analytics network analytics social learning analytics network awareness tool ou Abstract: Social Learning Analytics (SLA) are designed to support students learning through social networks, a…

Related Links:

LAK13 Conference Website

Photo Stream for the event

Twitter Archive

DCLA Workshop

OU papers in full

weSPOT meets in Leuven

Monday 15 Apr 2013 | KMi News

The weSPOT project held its first General Assembly in Leuven, Belgium last week. The meeting took place in conjunction with the International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (LAK 2013). weSPOT is a 3-year FP7 project, which started last October. The project aims at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today’s curricula and teaching practices. weSPOT supports the meaningful contextualization of scientific concepts by relating them to personal curiosity, experiences, and reasoning. It also addresses several challenges in the area of science learning and technology support for building personal conceptual knowledge.

The KMi team (Alexander Mikroyannidis, Alexandra Okada and Peter Scott) is leading WP3: Personal and Social Inquiry Workflows. This WP has an instrumental role in the project, as it will deliver the infrastructure for enabling learners to build and share personal inquiry workflows. Through this infrastructure, learners will be able to create mashups of personal and social learning tools in order to perform scientific investigations. They will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments to social networks, and receive feedback from the assistive inquiry technologies and their peers.

Related Links:

The weSPOT project

CORE selected one of the Top 100 Thesis Dissertation References on the Web

Thursday 04 Apr 2013 | KMi News

CORE has been placed among the Top 100 Thesis & Dissertation References on the Web by OnlinePhDProgram.org. The list has been published yesterday. Online Ph.D. Program.org is dedicated to helping future doctoral candidates find the right program that meets their needs, desires, and goals. The site offers helpful blog posts, articles, and a wealth of other information that can answer questions about online Ph.D. programs.

Related Links:

The Top 100 Thesis Dissertation References on the Web list

Marcbucks Celebration for KMi’s Oldest and Newest Professors

Tuesday 26 Mar 2013 | KMi News

Emeritus Professor Marc Eisenstadt and Professor of Learning Informatics Simon Buckingham Shum joined together to ‘clink coffee mugs’ at the opening of our new Marcbucks Coffee area by the KMi Podium, today.

Emeritus Professor Eisenstadt returned to KMi today to cut the ribbon on the space we have created in his name next to the well known Stadium Podium webcast venue here in the lab. He recalled the history of KMi – back into our origins in 1995,

Marc then shared his first Marcbucks mug of tea and a donut with the young researcher who joined us from York University as part of the (then) New Technology Research Initiative for that 1995 KMi launch and who is now our latest Professor! Quite a few of the NTRI staff have remained with the University since that auspicous launch by Professor Tom Vincent and Professor Marc Eisenstadt, and it was great to see the old and the new together again.

The rules of the new Marcbucks space were underlined by the KMi Director: "No work here" said Professor Scott, "… come away from your desk to unplug, and return fresh to the challenges of Knowledge Media for the Open University!" Marc noted that Google and other companies ensure that workers have time to step away from their desks – so this idea could help us to keep up the freshness and innovation of which we are so proud!

Related Links:

Congratulations Professor of Learning Informatics, Simon Buckingham Shum

The STADIUM for the KMi Podium

Congratulations Professor Buckingham Shum

Tuesday 26 Mar 2013 | KMi News

Today, Simon Buckingham Shum was awarded a Chair in the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University. As Professor of Learning Informatics Simon will bring a Knowledge Media perspective to understanding the explosion in digital data that is having a transformative impact on business, government and data-intensive academic fields. Learning Informatics places the learner at the heart of this challenge and includes a number of key new research topics such as Learning Analytics, Collective Intelligence and Argument Visualization.

Learning Analytics in particular is now a key concern to our University and others both operationally and in research. Simon has had a leading role in establishing this area as a scholarly field. He was Program Co-Chair for the 2012 Learning Analytics conference, and a co-founder of the Society for Learning Analytics Research. He serves on the Advisory Groups for a variety of learning analytics initiatives in education and enterprise, and is also a Visiting Fellow at University of Bristol Graduate School of Education. He is a founding member of LearningEmergence.net, and was Co-Founder and General Editor of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education. His background is in Psychology (BSc, York), Ergonomics (MSc, UCL) and Human-Computer Interaction (PhD, York).

Congratulations, Professor Buckingham Shum!

Keynote at Future Classrooms 2013, Northern Ireland

Monday 25 Mar 2013 | KMi News

Future Classrooms 2013 was held in Belfast ‘Titanic Centre’ on March 1st 2013. Professor Peter Scott from KMi gave a keynote talk on "What advice has tertiary education to offer to us teachers?" presenting some of the experience of new technologies in mobile and ubiquitous learning from the OU perspective.

The conference was Northern Ireland’s first major event designed to help education leaders and key decision makers develop strategies for the creative use of technology in the classroom. Changes in how young people learn today will help to prepare our future workforce for a modern competitive economy of tomorrow. This year’s focus was on the importance of creative approaches across the curriculum and advice on how mobile technology can be deployed to support this.

The event was a joint enterprise of a range of NI organisations including the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure; the AMMA and NERVE centres; Studion-ON; and Northern Ireland Screen. The conference was opened by Stephen McGowan (Head of Creativity @ DCAL, NI launches Creativity Month and the Creative Classrooms at #fc2013ni pic.twitter.com/Ddv6hqsqcv Other speakers on the day included: Bro McFerrin, from Allstate – one of NI’s biggest employers of programmers and developers, and Jonathan Chesney from the Worldesk company, representing innovation in Northern Ireland.

One significant feature of the conference was the launch of a set of excellent support resources for NI schools, including a ‘Creative Classrooms Teachers pack’ and a new ‘Introducing Mobile Technology handbook’. "It is clear that NI is leading the way for the rest of the UK to follow" said Professor Scott. "A very exciting place to be".

Related Links:

Twitpic of Peter presenting to the NI conference

Shortcut to the FutureClassrooms Mobile Handbook

KMi wins final ROLE award at successful closing review

Friday 22 Mar 2013 | KMi News

The final review of the ROLE project took place this week in Luxembourg, and the KMi team led by Dr Alexander Mikroyannidis – who were awarded the ROLE dissemination trophy 3 times in the past – were given the award by the consortium for the whole project!

The final review meeting was very successful, concluding a 4-year endeavour of 16 institutions into the world of Personal Learning Environments and Self Regulated Learning. The reviewers commended the project partners on their technical and pedagogical work. Special commendations were received for the the work done in the test-beds of the project and for setting up a number of additional test-beds inside and outside the project consortium. Alex’s KMi ROLE team coordinated the activities of all the project test-beds. In addition to the 5 original test-beds, 14 more were created, attracting more than 4,000 users. In order to raise awareness about Personal Learning Environments and Self Regulated Learning among eLearning communities, the OU team has developed bespoke Open Educational Resources available as study units in LabSpace (see http://labspace.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7433 and http://labspace.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7898) and as an interactive eBook (currently under production).

The KMi team has been particularly active in sharing, promoting and disseminating project activities and results, for example in organising a series of hands-on workshops with a variety of audiences: notably the JTEL Summer School and the PLE Conference in Portugal, the OER World Congress in Paris, the Build a Widget Day in KMi, the Dev8Ed Conference in Birmingham, and the E-Learn conference in Montreal. We were also closely involved in establishing the, now annual, series of International Workshops on Cloud Education Environments. The first of these took place in Guatemala in November 2012 and the second will be co-located with the CSEDU and CLOSER conferences this May in Aachen, Germany. This is the level of activity that saw us carry away the prestigious ROLE awards on so many occasions – and this final time!

Europeana Cloud kicks off under clear skies to develop new infrastructure for its aggregators

Monday 18 Mar 2013 | KMi News

A cloudless sky in the Hague, Netherlands saw on the 4th and 5th March the Europeana Cloud kick-off. The event was visited by about 70 delegates from the partner institutions and also by the chief of the responsible European Commission unit. One of the important tasks of the kick-off was to further discuss the infrastructure requirements that will be used to select and shape the type of the Cloud to be developed. This initial meeting on 4-5 March marked the official start of three years of collaboration between 35 partners. It is a diverse group, including representatives of libraries, research infrastructures, developers, publishers and researchers. They come from many different backgrounds but nevertheless share a common goal of establishing a cloud-based system for Europeana and its aggregators. Europeana Cloud is a €4 million Best Practice Network coordinated by the Europeana Foundation, designed to establish a cloud-based system for Europeana and its aggregators. In Europeana Cloud will be new content, new metadata, a new distributed storage system, new tools and services for researchers and a new platform – Europeana Research. Content providers and aggregators, across the European information landscape, urgently need a cheaper, more sustainable technical infrastructure that is capable of storing both metadata and content. Researchers require a digital space where they can undertake innovative exploration and analysis of Europe’s digitised content. Europeana needs to get closer to the target of 30 million items by 2015. KMi is the partner with the second highest number of person month (after Europeana Foundation) out of 33 partners. KMi was invited to the project based on our experience in content aggregation and text-mining acquired in the CORE family of projects. Apart from developing the Cloud specification, reviewing existing Cloud technologies and assessing their suitability for Europeana, KMi will also be responsible for experimenting with different models for identifying semantically related content from a database of around 30 million objects. This technology will be then provided as a service of the Cloud.

Related Links:

Europeana Cloud Kicks Off Under Clear Skies

Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing CSCW 2013 – San Antonio, Texas

Saturday 16 Mar 2013 | KMi News

I recently returned from Texas, San Antonio where I was in attendance at the 16th ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) conference. While there I gave Two workshop papers:

W8: Collaborative Information Seeking: Tracking Epistemic Beliefs and Sensemaking in Collaborative Information Retrieval, Knight, Buckingham Shum and Littleton (2013)
W10: CSCW and education: Collaborative Sensemaking in Learning Analytics, Knight, Buckingham Shum and Littleton (2013)

The first described the use of KMI’s Cohere platform to support sensemaking around collaborative information seeking, while the second described the need for a combined CSCW and educational research agenda into the multi-level sensemaking around the visualisations of analytics at the various hierarchical levels – from students to governmental. Both papers were well received and the workshops were a productive networking opportunity with some possibility for collaboration in the future.

CSCW generally was exciting with a lot of interesting work going on around collaborative information seeking, social q&a, and knowledge management tools such as Wikipedia. I’m slowly working through my pile of cards to keep in contact with those doing work related to mine.

There was also a lot of interest in what the OU is doing particularly with respect to FutureLearn and Learning Analytics.

I kept a twitter archive for CSCW2013: http://goo.gl/xn59q (apparently I was the 2nd most prolific tweeter)

I’ve also blogged some more extensive notes on this here http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/knight/2013/03/cscw2013-2-workshop-papers-texan-fun/

KMi achieves excellent results in NTCIR-10 evaluation competition

Tuesday 12 Mar 2013 | KMi News

The KMI team consisting of Petr Knoth, Drahomira Herrmannova and Zdenek Zdrahal achieves in the NTCIR-10 CrossLink evaluation competition according to the organisers overall best results in the English to Chinese, Japanese and Korean (English to CJK) task and is the top (steadily among the three best and mostly second best) performer in the CJK to English task. Ten international teams took part in the evaluation. This is the second time team KMi participated in this competition.

NTCIR is a major forum (similar to TREC) of evaluation workshops designed to enhance research in Information Access (IA) technologies including information retrieval, question answering, text summarization, extraction, etc. The NTCIR-10 conference will take place as usually in Tokyo, Japan this June. The CrossLink task (Cross-Lingual Link Discovery – CLLD) is a way of automatically finding potential links between documents in different languages. It is not directly related to traditional cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) because CLIR can be viewed as a process of creating a virtual link between the provided cross-lingual query and the retrieved documents; but CLLD actively recommends a set of meaningful anchors in the source document and uses them as queries with the contextual information from the text to establish links with documents in other languages. Wikipedia is an online multilingual encyclopaedia that contains a very large number of articles covering most written languages and so it includes extensive hypertext links between documents of same language for easy reading and referencing. However, the pages in different languages are rarely linked except for the cross-lingual link between pages about the same subject. This could pose serious difficulties to users who try to seek information or knowledge from different lingual sources. Therefore, cross-lingual link discovery tries to break the language barrier in knowledge sharing. With CLLD users are able to discover documents in languages which they either are familiar with, or which have a richer set of documents than in their language of choice.

Related Links:

NTCIR-10

KMi hands Compendium over to its community

Tuesday 12 Mar 2013 | KMi News

With KMi’s support, Compendium’s user and developer community have self-organised to take its future software development forward.

BACKGROUND:
The OU’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) and Verizon co-founded the Compendium Institute, and in 2002 KMi became the software development hub, releasing Compendium as a freely distributed application, funded by external research grants, and resulting in a significant body of research. In 2009, KMi and Verizon released Compendium Open Source under the LGPL licence. In recent years, KMi’s knowledge mapping research interests have shifted to web-centric platforms for Contested Collective Intelligence, such as Cohere and Evidence Hub, meaning that Compendium is not (at present) under continuous development by the KMi team. Future projects may reactivate KMi’s development of Compendium, and they continue to study the data from its usage, developing an account of expert fluency with such tools.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Compendium is considered so valuable by its user community, that it has self-organised to ensure that it remains a living software application. The community has been discussing the possibility of driving the development of Compendium through a community effort. In late 2012 the Compendium Institute fully backed this movement and two teleconferences spanning the globe were initiated – and of course facilitated through Compendium (see the Dialogue Maps from the online User Meeting and Developer Meeting — thanks KC Burgess Yakemovic, CogNexusGroup!).

Emerging from these, a number of ideas for the future development of Compendium were collected and the requirements for setting up the development of Compendium as open source were discussed. Based on these developments a small group of dedicated users and developers started the development of CompendiumNG, with NG standing for ‘next generation’, or short CNG. They have already made good progress in setting up a project on the GitHub open source code hosting platform, have resolved some pervasive bugs, and are now preparing the code for solid open source development.

The first release of CNG is just around the corner, and they have set up a project website which you can find at: www.compendiumng.org

Workplace Learning Evidence Hub for OU in Scotland

Tuesday 12 Mar 2013 | KMi News

I was recently in Edinburgh where I ran a hands-on workshop for the OU in Scotland team led by Ronald Macintyre, who have a project fnuded by the Scottish Government on how Scottish higher education institutions are engaged with workplace learning.

The OUiS team will be co-designing an Evidence Hub to help them map the state of the art, but instead of a traditional website or report, the Evidence Hub makes it possible to crowdsource input. A Hub provides a collaborative, knowledge-building environment for people to build on (or contest) each others’ ideas. Here’s a Tutorial to get started.

As part of rolling their sleeves up and getting their hands dirty, the team populated a demo Issue with Claims, Evidence and Resources in the our Testbed Hub, a sandpit for experimentation (open to anyone so come on in!). See the demonstration Knowledge Building and Chat views, and Organizational Network.

Watch this space for news as the Hub takes shape…

CORE at the World Summit on the Information Society review organised by UNESCO

Friday 08 Mar 2013 | KMi News

The first multi-stakeholder review of the achievements of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10) entitled "Towards Knowledge Societies for Peace and Sustainable Development” was hosted by UNESCO in Paris from 25 to 27 February 2013. The event attracted about 1000 participants from around the world; about 1500 additional people participated on-line. Zdenek Zdrahal was invited to participate in the high-level roundtable entitled “24. Using E-Science to Strengthen the Interface between Science, Policy and Society”. The panel was chaired by the Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences, Ms Gretchen Kalonji and included seven members (governmental ministers, ambassadors, Head of Digital Science Unit of the European Commission and the Ex-Chief Scientific Advisor for UK Government department). The aim of the roundtable was to explore the opportunities and challenges of using e-Science to support decision making in science policy, to look at the technical requirements for designing a web-based platform to support decision making in science policy and to share experiences gained from developing similar platforms.

Zdenek Zdrahal presented the CORE system for aggregating, semantic enrichment and accessing open access scientific papers. The potential of CORE for supporting novel approaches to E-Science was explained. As an example, the conference portal “UNESCO Repository for Connecting Local and International Content (CLIC)” developed for UNESCO by the CORE team at KMi was presented. Documents submitted to the UNESCO conferences through CLIC are semantically enriched and linked to the most similar scientific papers aggregated by CORE from the world open access repositories. Since one of the WSIS+10 hot topics discussed by many participants from governments, industry and academia was “broadband learning”, the possibility of using CORE services for projects like Futurelearn were also outlined. The presentation continued by a number of informal meetings with the WSIS+10 participants where the future directions of CORE development and the possibilities of using CORE services were discussed.

Related Links:

schedule of events, agenda, participants

CLIC portal

WSIS10 presentation

Linked Data at the Basis of Academic Community Understanding and Management

Friday 15 Feb 2013 | KMi News

Vivo (http://vivoweb.org/) is a platform for universities and academic institutions in general to manage and share their research outputs, communities and network. It is also one of the growing number of systems and tools that employ the principles and technology of linked data in an academic context. KMi’s Mathieu d’Aquin was invited in January to go present in a workshop organised by the consortium behind the Vivo platform, to discuss his experience in building the pioneering linked data platform of the Open University (data.open.ac.uk), the institutional and practical implications of such a platform, and generally the application of linked data in the higher education domain. A particular point of focus in this workshop was the way in which the linked data approach makes it possible to consider individual institutions such as the Open University as part of a more global network, sharing educational resources and academic-related information through semantic web technologies, as demonstrated in particular through the LinkedUniversities.org initiative led by Mathieu.
(see Mathieu’s presentation on slideshare)

KMi Researchers fight adverse weather to bring Contested Collective Intelligence Tools at XEROX Research Centre Europe!

Thursday 14 Feb 2013 | KMi News

On the 10-12 of February 2013, Simon Buckingham Shum and Anna De Liddo were invited from Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) to present KMi’s cutting edge technologies on Contested Collective Intelligence.

In the talk Simon and Anna described the theory and technologies for Contested Collective Intelligence.

Contested Collective Intelligence (CCI) is a distinctive subset of the broader Collective Intelligence design space that is relevant to the many organizational contexts in which it is important to work with contested knowledge.

Due to different intellectual traditions, competing organizational objectives, information overload or ambiguous environmental signals, knowledge cannot always be univocally defined and represented. This motivates the need for specifically designed tool in which contested knowledge can be shared, collaboratively constructed and debated.

KMi’s Cohere and The Evidence Hub are two Social Web tools which aim to achieve this goal: specifically to help Online Communities of Practice to collaboratively debate issues, share evidence and build knowledge in contested domains.
In the talk Simon and Anna described the theoretical underpinnings and demonstrated practical applications of Cohere and the Evidence Hub.
Between those Simon and Anna also showed results of the collaborative work with Ágnes Sándor at XRCE, using XIP to provide combined human and machine annotation of Web documents.

Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE)

Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) is the European branch of Xerox global research group. It is located in the heart of the French Alps near Grenoble, France. XRCE is a multidisciplinary research centre with scientists in computer science, human-computer interaction, natural language processing, machine learning applied to information, data and documents. Its mission is to be a centre of excellence for the understanding and design of technology that enables innovative business processes and empowering IT services for knowledge workers in industry.

XRCE is part of the global Xerox Innovation Group made up of 800 researchers and engineers in four world-renowned research and technology centres. While drawing on the strength of the Xerox Corporation around the world, XRCE’s focus is Europe. The centre cooperates with the scientific community, and forms partnerships, collaborates with a wide range of European research organizations.

The centre participates in a variety of regional, national and European Union networks and projects. As part of its Open Innovation program, XRCE is currently part of 9 European projects and 6 French national projects. The centre welcomes scholars from across the world. It runs an extensive annual intern program and partners with universities through the Xerox Foundation, which each year funds around 40 projects at 30 colleges and universities worldwide.

Key KMi’s Contacts at XEROX

At present KMi collaborates with two research scientists at XEROX: Dr. Ágnes Sándor and Dr. Gregorio Convertino.

Dr. Ágnes Sándor is a project leader and has been working at XRCE since 1996 as a computational linguistics researcher. Her activities have included the construction of morphological analyzers and part-of-speech taggers for English, French and Hungarian. In the past years, she has been focusing on discourse analysis and content extraction based on meta-discourse. She has published papers on all these fields.

Dr. Gregorio Convertino is a senior research scientist and he recently joined XRCE, after working for three years (2008-2011) doing research in social computing at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His research on collaborative and social computing at XRCE and PARC focuses on analyzing requirements, prototyping, and systematically evaluating collaborative software tools for knowledge workers in the enterprise.

Simon and Anna are grateful to Agnes and Gregorio for the invitation and for the beautiful time spent in “snowy” Grenoble!

Anna & Simon

Related Links:

Contested Collective Intelligence Paper

The Evidence Hub

Cohere

Taking it outdoors: The OpenScience Lab to develop a Networked Field System with the Field Studies Council

Saturday 09 Feb 2013 | KMi News

As part of the OU’s OpenScience Lab, Trevor Collins and Chris Valentine have started a new collaboration with the Field Studies Council (FSC) to produce a portable web server and network to support outdoor learning.

Trevor and Chris had their first meeting at the Preston Montford Field Studies Centre on Tuesday (February 6th) with Sam Rudd (Curriculum Development Manager, FSC), James Drever (IT Manager, FSC), Javi Hidalgo (Network Manager, FSC) and Jim Wright (Education Team Leader, Preston Montford Field Centre). Jim and Sam explained the types of activities they organise at the field centres, showing examples of the resources and equipment they use and the outdoor areas they teach in. James and Javi gave an overview of the technologies used at field centres, including the FLAIR system that was initiated in one of their Hack day events. We explained how we had got involved in developing portable networks for fieldwork and the key the lessons learned to date. The discussion then focused on how we could work together to produce a robust field kit to support a set of popular learning activities the field centre regularly run with visitors.

Of the wide range of activities the centres provide, we decided to work initially with the team at Preston Montford to work up a few example case studies. This would enable us to create a generic system that could then be adapted for use in some of the other FSC centres (or by other groups through the OpenScience Lab). The two topics we’ll be working on initially will be ponds and rivers, where we can draw on existing teaching materials for UK primary and secondary school levels as well as adult groups. We will trial the system with FSC staff and visitors as part of an iterative development cycle. The prototype will be designed and developed in the next couple of months, with field trials and further development running between April and June 2013.

The idea for the project came about over a year ago at a showcase event at the Margam Field Centre organised by the HEA’s ‘Enhancing Fieldwork Learning’ project. Trevor and John Lea (from KMI) where there demonstrating the work they’d been doing in the ‘Enabling Remote Activity’ project to provide a portable network to improve the accessibility of OU fieldwork courses for mobility impaired students. Julian Cremona (from the Dale Fort Field Studies Centre) was demonstrating the work he had been doing with students in Singapore, using iPads and Google Docs as a way of collating and sharing field data. The idea for the ‘Network Field System’ was to put the two together, so that students could use the web browser on a mobile device to access a local web server that would guide them to collect their field data, collate the data across groups and provide instant visualisations while still in the field without an internet connection.

Related Links:

OpenScience Lab

Field Studies Council FSC

FLAIR (Field Logging Analysis and Instant Resource) system

FSC Hack Day

HEA’s Enhancing Fieldwork Learning project

OU’s Enabling Remote Activity ERA project

22,000 Downloads for Future Internet Book

Wednesday 30 Jan 2013 | KMi News

We have just been informed by Springer that our book: The Future Internet: Achievements and Technological Promises, published in 2011, has now had over 22,000 chapter downloads. The book, whose chief editor is John Domingue, covers the main technical areas related to the Future Internet, a European initiative which brings together over 150 projects under Challenge 1 with a combined budget of over 5,00M Euros.

The areas covered in this text include architectural and socio-economic issues, as well as trust, security, networking, services and multi-media content. These contents represent the results of the Future Internet Assembly, a twice-yearly gathering of EU Future Internet projects, for which John Domingue served as a steering committee member for four years. The book contains a forward from the Directors of Converged Networks and Services and Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures, Luis Rodriguez-Rosello and Mario Campolargo. Following an agreement with Springer the volume is published online under open access conditions.

Related Links:

Future Internet Book online

KMi to Play a Key Role in Shaping the New Cloud-based Europeana Research Platform

Tuesday 29 Jan 2013 | KMi News

The eCloud (Europeana Cloud: Unlocking Europe’s Research via The Cloud) project is about to start on the 1st of February 2013. Europeana Cloud is a €4 million project coordinated by the Europeana Foundation, designed to establish a cloud-based system for Europeana and its aggregators. In Europeana Cloud will be new content, new metadata, a new distributed storage system, new tools and services for researchers and a new platform – Europeana Research.

Content providers and aggregators, across the European information landscape, urgently need a cheaper, more sustainable technical infrastructure that is capable of storing both metadata and content. Researchers require a digital space where they can undertake innovative exploration and analysis of Europe’s digitised content. Europeana needs to get closer to the target of 30 million items by 2015.

KMi is the partner with the second highest number of person month (after Europeana Foundation) out of 33 partners. KMi was invited to the project based on our experience in content aggregation and text-mining acquired in the CORE family of projects. Apart from building the eCloud infrastructure, KMi will also be responsible for experimenting with different models for identifying semantically related content from a database of around 30 million objects. This technology will be then provided as a Cloud service.

Related Links:

Europeana Cloud

CORE

TELLME Valencia

Monday 28 Jan 2013 | KMi News

The Valencia, Spain base of the furniture company AIDIMA, at their Instituto Tecnológico del Mueble, Madera, Embalaje y Afines was host to the third general meeting of the TELLME consortium this week. KMi Director, Prof. Peter Scott, joined the meeting to progress our work on this Collaborative project of the ICT Work Programme under the European Commission 7 Framework Programme.

TELLME is bringing together a rich mix of Service oriented Manufacturing; Learning Ecosystems; Living Labs of SMEs; and Learning at the Workplace into one programme. The furniture manufacturing scenario, represented by the AIDIMA team focuses on learning in a Spanish ecosystem of manufacturing and learning support companies. The meeting ran a Barcamp session to promote a set of project technologies to the Furniture Design Learning specialists. High on the agenda were KMi technological pieces like Sociallearn, FlashMeeting and Crunch (pictured).

Related Links:

Fridolin’s Crunch Barcamp Promo

The TELLME Project Website

Milton Keynes City Council adopts ParkJam to Ease Car Parking Stress

Thursday 24 Jan 2013 | KMi News

Yesterday Milton Keynes Council began promoting KMi’s mobile app ParkJam. This free app lets drivers check parking availability from any Android phone. The app uses Linked Data technology to integrate information about parking availability from multiple sources including the electronic billboard signage system which runs in Milton Keynes city centre, and from drivers themselves who can report car park availability by just tapping on the app’s interface.

For this initial deployment we have enhanced the detail captured for the car parks in central Milton Keynes and at the OU’s Walton Hall campus, but the app can be used globally as the underlying map data is automatically imported from the volunteer mapping project OpenStreetMap.org. Additionally, ParkJam users can easily add data on any car parks that are missing.

For the OU’s Walton Hall campus deployment OU security staff add data on the availability of car parks as they fill up during the morning and after lunch.

ParkJam is available from our website (parking.kmi.open.ac.uk), from the Google Play app store (search for “ParkJam”), and you can like it on Facebook (facebook.com/parkjamapp) and follow on Twitter (twitter.com/parkjamapp).

Related Links:

Milton Keynes Council ParkJam Story

Milton Keynes Council Parking website

The 2nd International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments

Tuesday 22 Jan 2013 | KMi News

Building on the success of the 1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012) which took place in Antigua, Guatemala, WCLOUD 2013 will take place in Aachen, Germany on May 6-8. The workshop is a shared event between the 5th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU) and the 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER).

Workshop Chairs
Hans-Christian Schmitz – Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, Germany
Rocael Hernández – Galileo University, Guatemala
Alexander Mikroyannidis – The Open University, UK

Important Dates
Paper Submission: February 14
Authors Notification: February 22
Final Paper Submission and Registration: March 6

Related Links:

Workshop web site

KMi to build the official UK Open Access Repository Registry

Tuesday 22 Jan 2013 | KMi News

KMi together with University of Nottingham (CRC) and CottageLabs have been awarded a grant in the JISC Digital Infrastructure Programme to build a UK Open Access Repository Registry. KMi was invited to participate in this closed call directly by JISC based on our work in the CORE project. It has already been decided that the resulting software will become an essential component of UK RepositoryNet+ who will guarantee its long-term sustainability.

RepNetRegistry will build on our experience supporting OpenDOAR to provide an advanced, data-driven infrastructure maximising the potential for use with 3rd party services, such as aggregators, cross-search tools or multiple-deposit interfaces, by exposing authoritative quality coltrolled data through a RESTful API.

In the context of this project, the CORE team will be responsible for collecting and providing repository statistics from across all UK repositories and providing them as authoritative repository benchmarks to the developed Open Access Repository Registry.

Peter Whalley Tributes

Sunday 20 Jan 2013 | KMi News

It is with great sadness we pass on the news that Dr Peter Whalley, who recently retired from KMi due to ill-health, died on Tuesday 8 January 2013 in Willen Hospice.

Peter joined the OU in 1976, initially working in the Institute of Educational Technology. He joined the Knowledge Media Institute at its formation in 1995, where he was a ‘creative visionary’ in the new media team, and a stalwart of the lab. Peter brought numerous new ideas to his research and to students of the Open University. He was deeply engaged in applying his ideas within schools, including a longstanding collaboration with the innovative staff and children of our local middle school, Heronsgate, where many of his prototypes and experiments saw their first ‘student click’. Most recently, he was a strong evangelist and contributor to the OU’s flagship ‘virtual microscope’ work.

Our thoughts are with Peter’s wife, Liz, and their children Ben, Matthew and Jessie at this sad time. The funeral was held on Monday 21 January in Simpson Church, Milton Keynes. Tributes to add below can be emailed directly to kmi-director [at] open [dot] ac [dot] uk

Peter Scott

After returning from the DES in 1988, Peter was a great influence on my research and development of applications of IT in education and training – from the very start he continually inspired with great ideas that led to innovative projects that attracted funding from numerous sources. My first contact with Peter was when he walked into my office and made disapproving comments about the PC on my desk! Little did I know at the time how dedicated that he was to Apple’s technology. I was soon ‘converted’ and it proved in itself to be decision that I remain extremely grateful for as it opened up many new opportunities to widen my research. To this day I remember, as do many others, Peter’s Virtual Microscope. It would be an impressive development in this day and age with the powerful technology that is now used. However, it was truly pioneering in the early days of computer technology. At that time people were amazed to see a magnified image that could be rotated by 360o in polarised light – easy these days but not in early pioneering days. Peter worked closely with colleagues in the Earth Sciences Department and collaboratively on developing a Quicktime VR application to enable disabled students to participate in ‘field trips’ that were otherwise inaccessible. In 1992, Peter and I put together a successful application to the Department of Health to develop a multimedia, CD based system to provide access to information for disabled people. Peter’s Topic Access Video application, developed initially for a school project, subsequently provided a model, funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, at the UK’s leading centre for providing training for professionals giving advice to disabled people about the choice of specialised equipment. Peter’s contribution to learning at Heronsgate School was outstanding and memorable. It was inspirational for children and teachers. Two applications that stand out are the Mars Buggy and First Flight (a simulation of the Wright brothers plane). When Lord David Puttnam visited the Heronsgate School he was amazed at the confidence of young children who talked to him about multimedia and film making. Overall, Peter made a major contribution to the application of multimedia in education and training. He leaves a tremendous legacy.

Tom Vincent

I first met Peter when he was working in IET on the nature of textual displays and readability, and recall his profound grasp of everything from the underlying psychological theories of perception right down to the electronic circuitry needed to conduct experiments and build prototypes. Peter exerted a powerful influence on the whole shape and tone of KMi from the very beginning in the mid-90’s. He had strong views, which typically turned out to be correct, about what was needed to build motivating tools for learners and what kinds of things we as researchers should be showing off to the world — more often than not it was the demonstrations of his projects that we chose to show to lab visitors, making him very much a key player in creating the ‘wow’ factor of KMi. He was way ahead of the curve in terms of understanding the potential impact of technogy on learners of all ages. Back when wireless technology was still new and unreliable, he approached me with the idea of beaming a high-speed internet signal from the rooftop of our building outwards to schools in the area, bouncing the signal via intermediate buildings if so required. His vision became a reality, and formed the core of what later became mkschools.net, through which dozens of schools in the area attained a high-speed internet connection many years before this capability was widely available. Peter was never infatuated with technology for its own sake: instead, he saw technology as a force to be harnessed and moulded by learners, especially young learners, to expand their minds through creative scientific experiments, designed and run by the learners themselves. His work thus directly influenced countless researchers, young and old alike, and his creative input and productive output will be sorely missed.

Marc Eisenstadt

Peter was a really good man, and I greatly respected his work, he was really enthusiastic and was a great role model to me as a new PhD student: I found his enthusiasm really wonderful and loved his office full of mad gadgets that he’d then take out to schools to enthuse others about science. This was somebody I could aspire to be. Deepest sympathies to his family, and all his friends in KMi and beyond.

Mark Gaved

Sad loss of a very innovative and exciting thinker and enthusiast.

Simon Kelley

This is such bad news! I will remember Peter every time I set my Lego robot going (it was designed and built by him and runs on one of my microscopes). He has been an inspiration to us all and will be greatly missed.

Andy Tindle

Peter was an enthusiastic innovator as a researcher on adults’ reading techniques in IET’s Textual Communications Research Group, which he joined from Brunel University. Later he worked on the Virtual Microscope, Topic Access Video, ImagineIT and many other projects with Tom Vincent.

David Hawkridge

We first met Peter in the Dark Ages (mid 80s) when computers were just appearing in Earth Sciences, provided they were PCs of some sort. Peter was a vital leader of the Mac group, "because we could all do so much more with a Mac (and probably you could use one too)". Peter ‘acquired’ a Mac (then like gold dust) for a very bright Earth Sciences research student who wanted to embed complex chemical analyses on a map. Peter just appeared with the machine one day: "that guy’s doing important work, he needs a Mac". Peter was a real enthusiast for all he did, his work was fun. He was the driving force behind the early Virtual Microscope; whatever was being implemented, Peter was always several steps ahead, pushing everyone on. Later, when a prototype V-M was sent to summer school for students who had difficulty with microscopes, it was typical Peter that he came to Reading to spend a week working with students: "I need to see students using it, not what you lot think they are doing". After many years working very closely with Andy Tindle and others in Earth Sciences: "I’ve been told I’m not allowed to spend any more time on the V-M, so…..(of course)… you’ll be seeing MORE of me in Earth Sciences, if that’s OK with you lot" Typical Peter, never one to take ‘management’ too seriously. It says a lot for the light touch of Tom & Marc that the V-M continued to flourish, with Peter fully involved. We’ll remember Peter for the sheer enthusiasm for a new thing, soft or hardware, he’d just discovered, like his remote drive Mars buggy, developed for use at his local school, but for a while its website was most frequently visited by NASA! The university needs adults like Peter who never lose their love of working with kids of all ages, developing educational toys.

Dave Williams, Dee Edwards (OU Earth Sciences, retired)

ROBUST Second Year Review

Saturday 19 Jan 2013 | KMi News

ROBUST passed its second year review with flying colours last December in Luxembourg. ROBUST is a €7M year project involving several leading academic institutes as well as businesses such as IBM and SAP.

Two of the main highlights of the review were prototypes produced by IBM and SAP, that integrate several ROBUST technologies to support the management of their online communities.

A key component in both demonstrators was the behaviour service developed in KMi, which analyses the IBM and SAP communities data and graphs and generates a map of the various behaviour categories that are emerging from those communities, and predicts their future health.

The reviewers highlighted the high commercial potential of the presented analyses and encoranged the consortium to develop a strong business plan to maximize the exploitation and profit of the work developed within the project.

UNESCO Policy Brief: Learning Analytics

Thursday 20 Dec 2012 | KMi News

UNESCO’s Institute for Information Technologies in Education publishes Policy Briefs with recommendations for senior decision makers. KMi has provided the latest briefing, on Learning Analytics.

Summary: Learning Analytics is a rapidly growing research field and commercial , with potentially disruptive potential. While educationalresearchers have for many years used computational techniques toanalyse learner data, generate visualizations of learning dynamics,and build predictive models to test theories — for the first time, these techniques are becoming available to educators, learners and policy makers. Learning analytics promise is to transform educational research into a data-driven science, and educational institutions into organisations that make evidence-based decisions. However, critical debate is needed on the limits of computational modelling, the ethics of analytics, and the educational paradigms that learning analytics promote.

Keynote: Our Learning Analytics are Our Pedagogy

Thursday 20 Dec 2012 | KMi News

Learning Analytics embody assessment regimes: which ones do we need for the future of learning? The replay from my keynote address to the Expanding Horizons 2020 conference at Macquarie University is now up.

I gave an overview of how the field is developing at macro, meso and micro scales, and then later on make a connection to the seminal work of the Assessment Reform Group on Assessment for Learning, in which University of Bristol played an active role through Patricia Broadfoot, and also to Paul Collard, who presents what is for me a provocative metaphor for the challenge we now face in education: musical reproduction ≠ musicality…

Abstract: “Learning Analytics”: unprecedented data sets and live data streams about learners, with computational power to help make sense of it all, and new breeds of staff who can talk predictive models, pedagogy and ethics. This means rather different things to different people: unprecedented opportunity to study, benchmark and improve educational practice, at scales from countries and institutions, to departments, individual teachers and learners. “Benchmarking” may trigger dystopic visions of dumbed down proxies for ‘real teaching and learning’, but an emu response is no good. For educational institutions, our calling is to raise the quality of debate, shape external and internal policy, and engage with the companies and open communities developing the future infrastructure. How we deploy these new tools rests critically on assessment regimes, what can be logged and measured with integrity, and what we think it means to deliver education that equips citizens for a complex, uncertain world.

Congratulations to Dr. Izabel Meister

Sunday 16 Dec 2012 | KMi News

Congratulations to Dr. Izabel Meister on a successful defence of her PhD in Brazil. She achieved the highest score on the evaluation! Izabel was a KMi visiting student for a year under the co-supervision of Dr. Ale Okada here. She also participated in the KMi group of the European Project – OpenScout. Her research programme was a partnership with KMi’s the Centre of New Media group lead by Peter Scott and Dept. Educação, Arte e História da Cultura – Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie Brazil lead by Maria de los Dolores Jimenez Peña.

Her thesis – “The weaving of knowledge in social networks habitat of collective intelligences” – focused on social networks, which can be configured as a space of creation and acquisition of knowledge. Her research indicates that knowledge in the network is constructed from the overlap between the knowledge and collective intelligence. This connection-based process, denominated “the weaving of knowledge”, comprises the relationship between convergence and expansion determined by the “state of relevance” in addition to interacting agents and contexts.

Dr Meister’s research took a multidisciplinary approach guided by three principles: knowledge, collective intelligence and complexity. The method used was virtual ethnographic research for observing and tracking records of some social networks: The Colearn Community (lead by Ale Okada), whose interactions were analysed in the OpenScout-Tool Library based on ELGG platform and on Facebook, as well as “the Filtros Educação & Aprendizagem XXI” group (lead by Paula Ugalde) who is interconnected to Colearn due to some of its same members.The Tool Library – part of the European Project: OpenScout – was developed by KMi team: Dr. Alexander Mikroyannidis and Dr. Suzanne Little, as a social network space for communities sharing stories and tools for adapting OER.

According to Dr. Peña, her supervisor in Brazil, the viva panel were impressed with the scientific rigour with which it had been approached. Her innovative work also presented originality, particularly in bringing together very topical themes such as social networks, collective intelligence and Open Educational Resources.

Dr. Meister, well done!

FuturICT FET Flagship: open access special issue

Tuesday 11 Dec 2012 | KMi News

KMi is part of the FuturICT FET Flagship project submission, to develop a science of global, socially interactive systems. An open access journal special issue marks the scientific agenda that this 10 year project has mapped out…

The European FET Flagships competition has the following mission:

FET Flagships are ambitious large-scale, science-driven, research initiatives that aim to achieve a visionary goal. The scientific advance should provide a strong and broad basis for future technological innovation and economic exploitation in a variety of areas, as well as novel benefits for society.

KMi’s John Domingue and myself, together with Design Faculty’s Jeff Johnson, are part of the FuturICT project, which recently submitted its proposal for the first 30months of a 10 year research programme (PDF).

FuturlCT is a FET Flagship project using collective, participatory research, integrated across the fields of ICT, the social sciences and complexity science, to design socio-âinspired technology and develop a science of global, socially interactive systems. The project will bring together, on a global level, Big Data, new modelling techniques and new forms of interaction, leading to a new understanding of society and its co-â evolution with technology. It will place Europe at the forefront of a major scientific drive to understand, explore and manage our complex, connected world in a more sustainable and resilient manner.

Today sees the publication of an open access special issue to accompany the proposal. Within the special issue, you’ll find a fascinating set of contributions from European scientists who set out a 10 year research agenda within their fields: what are the really tough problems? There are also visionary position papers outlining the kind of socio-technical infrastructure that FuturICT will investigate, and a foregrounding of the ethical dimensions that human Big Data and Analytics always raise.

Related Links:

More detailed story…

FuturICT Flagship Pilot Project

LinkedUp has been launched!

Friday 07 Dec 2012 | KMi News

Funded by the EU in the FP7 programme, the LinkedUp project will advance the adoption of open Web data, in particular for education, in particular through:

The LinkedUp Challenge: which will identify, support and promote highly innovative applications and technologies which exploit open Web data
Curated datasets: LinkedUp will catalog and curate open Web data to make it accessible for data consumers, in particular in educational contexts.
Evaluation Framework: the LinkedUp evaluation framework (metrics, methods, benchmarks) can be reused and instantiated to evaluate Open Web Data applications in particular in the educational domain.
Web data success stories: applications and use cases identified during the LinkedUp Challenge will help data consumers the education sector to capitalise on open web data

The kick-off meeting was held last month in Hannover and the project made a great start in getting the first phase of the work of the ground. The consortium includes partners both from academia and from the business environment, ensuring that a wide variety of use case scenarios will be covered. In addition, we have established links with 12 renowned associated partners assisting in gathering resources and building a community of open web data practitioners in the education space.

SoLAR Storm: distributed lab for Learning Analytics PhDs

Friday 07 Dec 2012 | KMi News

As the field of Learning Analytics develops, there is an urgent need to equip a new generation of educational researchers and data scientists. SoLAR Storm is an online research lab to connect PhD students and supervisors globally.

A widely cited report by McKinsey Global Institute identifies a huge global skills gap: people who can combine deep analytical skills to make sense of big data, plus the ability to think strategically for an enterprise. This applies equally to education.

The Society for Learning Analytics Research seeks to tackle this need, and Storm in particular targets doctoral level researchers, who at present do not necessarily find themselves in the kind of strong research groups that PhDs find in more established fields. A purely online lab, Storm hosts a monthly closed session for students to get feedback on their work, and a monthly open webinar when guest speakers bring different perspectives, including academia and enterprise. Of course, Storm connects students so that they can also then make the opportunities to meet up f-f when the opportunities arise — they are the next generation of research leads, analytics architects and educational entrepreneurs.

Learning Analytics Summer Institute, Stanford

Tuesday 04 Dec 2012 | KMi News

We’ve just announced what should be a field-defining event for Learning Analytics: a summer institute bringing together 100 participants at Stanford University in July 2013, with satellite Institutes running globally.

Learning Analytics as both a research topic and emerging marketplace has recently garnered the attention of faculty, educational researchers and administrators, policy makers, data scientists and learning technology entrepreneurs. Unprecedented quantity of, and access to, learner-generated data has opened up new opportunities, for instance, for researchers to better understand how learners learn, for educators to assess the impact of teaching activities and interventions, and for learners to receive personalized, real-time, automated support for their learning advancements.

The Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI) is a strategic five-day event, July 1-5, 2013, co-organized by SoLAR and Stanford University. The objective is that participants will leave better equipped to actively engage in advancing the LA field through their teaching and research activities. Specifically, LASI has two goals:

Build the field of Learning Analytics through cross disciplinary interactions, identification of research and teaching needs, advancement of LA methods, and connecting isolated researchers.

Develop the skills and knowledge of doctoral students and academics, equipping them to engage actively in LA research and teaching.

Full details on the website…

Related Links:

LASI-13

COMPOSE project kicked off in Barcelona

Thursday 29 Nov 2012 | KMi News

Last week saw the kick-off meeting in Barcelona for COMPOSE, a €7 million, 3 year research project supported by the European Union.

The COMPOSE project aims at enabling new services that can seamlessly integrate real and virtual worlds through the convergence of the Internet of Services with the Internet of Things. COMPOSE will achieve this through the provisioning of an open and scalable marketplace infrastructure, in which smart objects are associated to services that can be combined, managed, and integrated in a standardised way to easily and quickly build innovative applications.

The COMPOSE project builds upon existing European research projects and ongoing standardisation activities to provide a comprehensive marketplace framework that will be able to cover the whole service life cycle by integrating a number of innovative technological enablers in a coherent way. The project will develop novel approaches for virtualising smart objects into services and for managing their interactions. This includes solutions for managing knowledge derivation, for secure and privacy-preserving data aggregation and distribution, and for dynamic service composition advertising and discovering objects’ capabilities and service provisioning and monitoring.

The COMPOSE project is expected to give birth to a new business ecosystem, building on the convergence of the Internet of Services with the Internet of Things and the Internet of Content. The COMPOSE marketplace will allow SMEs and innovators to introduce new Internet of Things-enabled services and applications to the market in a short time and with limited upfront investment. At the same time, COMPOSE will allow major European players in the information and communication industry, particularly cloud service providers and telecommunications companies, to reposition themselves within new Internet of Things-enabled value chains.

The project has 12 partners, which include the World Wide Web Consortium, IBM, Barcelona Supercomputing
Center, and Fraunhofer FOKUS.

Related Links:

KMI project page

Taking Education to the Cloud!

Monday 26 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The 1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012) took place in Antigua, Guatemala on November 15-16. The event was organised by Rocael Hernandez Rizzardini (Galileo University, Guatemala), Hans-Christian Schmitz (Fraunhofer FIT, Germany), and Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK). It was attended by approximately 50 participants.

On the first day, 14 peer-reviewed papers were presented, covering a wide range of topics around Cloud Education Environments, including tools, methodologies, pedagogical issues and visions. Geographically speaking, Europe and Latin America were equally represented.

The second day was dedicated to a hands-on ROLE workshop. Alexander Mikroyannidis introduced the concepts behind Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and presented the lessons learned from experimenting with and evaluating PLEs in the context of the ROLE project. Hans-Christian Schmitz presented the challenges and opportunities of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) in a variety of learning contexts and within ROLE. The participants also had a chance to try out some of the ROLE tools and discuss their perceptions about PLEs and SRL.

The event was deemed to be quite successful. It enabled a fruitful exchange of experiences, best practices, and visions between representatives from Europe and Latin America. A representative from the Guatemalan Ministry of Education who attended the event noted that Cloud Education Environments, as well as PLEs and SRL mark the way forward for education in Guatemala and in the wider region.

The workshop proceedings will be published online with an ISSN from CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Extended versions of selected papers will also be published in an upcoming special issue of the Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS).

The 2013 instalment of this event will be organised in Europe. More details to follow soon!

Related Links:

The 1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments

Photos from the event

The ROLE project

Keynote at Galileo University

Monday 26 Nov 2012 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University) and Hans-Christian Schmitz (Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology) delivered a joint keynote talk on November 13 at Galileo University in Guatemala City. The talk initiated the 4th e-Learning Integral conference organised by the Research and Development Department GES of Galileo University. The e-Learning Integral conference is an annual event promoting innovation in e-Learning, both in technologies and methodologies of teaching and learning online, in the context of changing paradigms, academic traditions and cultures.

In his talk, Alexander introduced the emerging technologies related to Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) and described the impact of these technologies on formal and informal education. Hans-Christian presented the lessons learned from supporting SRL specifically in the context of the ROLE project. Both presenters moderated a discussion with the audience about the challenges and opportunities of PLEs and SRL.

Related Links:

The 4th e-Learning Integral conference

The ROLE project

KMi sponsors the 4th ROLE Widget Enchantment Contest

Monday 26 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The ROLE Widget Enchantment Contests have been an open invitation to people (educators, learners, developers, etc) that are interested in developing and using widgets for learning purposes. The ROLE project has run 4 such contests, supporting the participants in realising their widget ideas with the use of the ROLE Software Development Kit (SDK).

The 4th contest was a particularly successful one, as it had 10 entries, 4 of which were selected by the project and sponsored to be implemented. KMi sponsored the Galileo University team in Guatemala, consisting of Rocael Hernandez Rizzardini, Byron Linares and Alexander Baquiax. The team developed a widget bundle for supporting searching for learning content, organizing it and presenting the knowledge acquired through different tools (mind maps, slides, reports, etc.) in a Personal Learning Environment (PLE). Additionally, the widget bundle was evaluated within a course at Galileo University.

Alexander Mikroyannidis presented the award (an iPad with its cover) to the wining team on November 16, in the context of the International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012). The outcomes from developing and evaluating this widget bundle were also reported in a paper presented at the same event.

Related Links:

The ROLE Widget Enchantment Contests

The ROLE Widget Store

The ROLE SDK

The 1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments

The Online Learning Debate: Guardian Event

Monday 26 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The latest Guardian Sponsored online learning debate on "pedagogy, technology and opening up higher education", featured KMi Director – Prof Peter Scott and IET Director – Prof Josie Taylor discussing MOOCs and online learning with a number of eminent participants including Sir John Daniel (a past OU Vice Chancellor).

The Sponsored Q&A session was run as a live text chat on the Guardian Website on Friday 23 November from 12-2pm GMT. With the launch in December 2011 of MITx and recently here in the UK University of Edinburgh’s decision to join the Coursera, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have excited higher educational thinkers. The technology for the discussion today was primitive but effective – with no audio visual meeting technology, but simply an unthreaded ‘blog-like’ text chat interaction between the ‘higher education network’ members. (See the link below).

With 207 comments, 183 tweets and 89 Facebook shares, the debate sparked significant interest in the Guardian Higher Education Network community, even beyond the event itself… and it will continue to generate excitement.

Related Links:

The debate on the Guardian site

KMi’s research into game-changing web solutions featured at top International Web Conference

Friday 23 Nov 2012 | KMi News

KMi’s work featured strongly in the research track at the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2012) held in Boston, USA, last week, where our members presented 4 of the 40 papers. This is the premier international forum for the Semantic Web / Linked Data Community where scientists, industry specialists, and practitioners meet annually to discuss the future of practical, scalable, user-friendly, and game changing web solutions. KMi’s leadership in the field was also highlighted by the announcement of Harith Alani as program co-chair for ISWC 2013 to be held in Sydney, Australia.

In addition, the KMi-led application of these technologies at the Open University was also presented in the Industry Track (by Mathieu d’Aquin, in collaboration with Stuart Brown from Communication Services). This was an occasion to reflect and share our experience and the lessons learnt in the last two years on creating a linked data platform (data.open.ac.uk) which has slowly become a core part of the university’s information infrastructure, with clear impact on some areas of its business practices. One materialisation of such an impact is the development of the DiscOU service (http://discou.info), which demonstrates how linked data can be used to support the discovery of open educational resources from other online resources (here BBC programmes). DiscOU was shown at the demo session of the conference. Both presentations related to the application of linked data at the Open University generated much discussion and excitement, making several members of other universities to consider the benefits of linked data and the possible applications of DiscOU for their own institution.

The KMi-authored research track papers were:

In the Knowledge Discovery session, Chenghua Lin presented a paper entitled "Feature LDA: a Supervised Topic Model for Automatic Detection of Web API Documentations from the Web" in the research track, co-authored by Yulan He, Carlos Pedrinaci and John Domingue. The paper, funded by the FP7 project VPH-Share, proposes a novel approach to text classification, based upon a probabilistic framework, and which outperforms the current state-of-the-art. The model serves as the main component for our on-going work to build a next-generation search engine for Web APIs. Web APIs form the main technological building block of eCommerce as they allow agents to buy and sell goods and services on the Web. A current barrier to use is that to current search engines, such as Google, Web APIs are indistinguishable from normal Web pages. Our approach, as described in the paper, begins to tackle this problem. Also in this track, Matthew Rowe (ex-KMi, now a lecturer at Lancaster University) presented a paper titled "Who will follow whom? Exploiting Semantics for Link Prediction in Attention-Information Networks", co-authored with Milan Stankovic from Hypios Research, and Harith Alani from KMi. The paper presents a novel approach for using concept graphs to predict follower edges in directed social networks.

The Information Exchange session included Enrico Motta’s paper entitled ”Mining Semantic Relations between Research Areas” which was co-authored with Francesco Osborne of University of Torino. This presented a novel algorithm for finding relationships between keywords found in web documents and its application to the problem of providing a robust semantic structure which can enable the efficient navigation and analysis of very large collections of research publications. In particular this approach is fully automatic and avoids the need for manual curation of archives of research publications. Indeed, this team later also gave a demonstration of Rexplore, an application for making sense of research publications on the web, which was one of the most successful demonstrations at the conference.

Finally, in the Social & Collaborative Semantics session, Hassan Saif presented a paper “Semantic Sentiment Analysis of Twitter”, which examined the value of using semantic features for the classification of positive and negative sentiment in Tweets.

The KMi contributions to the conference can be viewed online at the conference website.

Related Links:

ISWC 2012

ISWC 2013

Industry Track

Demonstrations

First UK Flare for Society for Learning Analytics Research

Thursday 22 Nov 2012 | KMi News

On Monday the UK’s first SoLAR (Society for Learning Analytics Research) Flare was held at the OU’s Jennie Lee building, jointly organised by colleagues in KMi and IET, and JISC CETIS. The Flare was an opportunity for a diverse set of stakeholders to meet up, discuss current activity in learning analytics research and practice, probe some areas of interest in breakout sessions, and set the community’s research and deployment priorities for the future.

A variety of stakeholders from researchers, to educators, to vendors were invited, and the day saw a set of ‘lightening’ presentations (2 minutes) on what people are currently doing (see link below), followed by some breakout sessions covering:

Retention & Success
Pedagogy and Learning Analytics
Dashboards
Data sources

The day finished with some useful discussions regarding priorities moving forwards including:

Dissemination of case studies
Creation of an evidence hub
End user workshops
Dashboard workshops – particularly a critical eye for end users
Creation of special interest groups

SoLAR – which the OU and KMi are playing a key role in – looks forward to working to support and develop some of these priorities further.

Related Links:

Flare Slides and Programme

Sheila’s Quick Links from SoLAR Flare Meeting

Learn how you can benefit from the ROLE project

Thursday 22 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The ROLE project has released a new video, outlining its scope and outcomes. Several project partners, among them Peter Scott and Alexander Mikroyannidis, talk about their experiences in the project. The achievements of ROLE are explained, as well as how one can benefit from them.

A lot of the filming for this video was done at the Open University campus and KMi. You may not instantly recognise the setting, as the filming was made on an exceptionally sunny day 🙂

The kick-off meeting of the IEREST project

Monday 19 Nov 2012 | KMi News

I attended (with Chris Valentine via FlashMeeting) the kick-off meeting of the IEREST project, a LLP-funded initiative of some of the most relevant universities in the field of intercultural communication to provide exchange students (mainly within the Erasmus Programme) with real intercultural education, so they have all the tools to get the most out of their stay abroad. The role of KMi is mostly to provide techinical support to the project by way of the website, a learning portal and systems for assessment.

Related Links:

IEREST Project

The Open University receives 759k from EU for learning technologies

Friday 16 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) has been awarded two grants of €408,000 (£323k) and €351,000 (£285k) from the European Commission for two projects which build bridges between innovation and education, both in the classroom and in the manufacturing workplace.

The grants are specifically for its Technology Enhanced Learning Livinglab for Manufacturing Environments (TELLME), which is launching today in Milan, and Working Environment with Social, Personal and Open Technologies (weSPOT) projects.

The two new grants to KMi will allow The Open University to explore diverse contexts for technology enhanced learning bridging the school classroom and the manufacturing workplace. The bridge between the enquiring student in the school classroom, and the enquiring SME worker is one that is not immediately obvious – but many of the learning topics and technologies are surprisingly similar.

These two new grants have been awarded to the New Media research team, led by KMi Director Professor Peter Scott, who said: "These new grants will explore diverse contexts for technology enhanced learning in a social, tangible world; WeSPOT will lower the threshold for linking everyday life inquiry with science teaching in schools all over Europe, while TellMe will explore social learning and the use of multimedia learning objects within business ecosystems".

The WeSPOT project started in October 2012, and is being led by Dr Ale Okada and Dr Alexander Mikroyannidis. It aims at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today’s curricula and teaching practices. WeSPOT will support the meaningful contextualization of scientific concepts by relating them to personal curiosity, experiences, and reasoning.

Students will be enabled to develop their inquiry-based learning skills by taking on the role of an explorer and will be motivated by their personal curiosity, guided by self-reflection, and develop knowledge personal and collaborative sense-making and reasoning. The project will involve providing a European reference model for inquiry; a diagnostic instrument; support tools and make use of social media for integration and viral marketing.

The TellMe project, which started this month, is led by Fridolin Wild, and will bring Technology Enhanced Learning to a new area: SME-driven human-centric and service-oriented manufacturing workplaces. Here KMi will be extending its learning research programme into support for learners in diverse companies: from the manufacture of helicopters, furniture to basic textiles.

Another innovation milestone: The Open University launches iBooks textbooks for iPad

Friday 16 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The Open University has launched a collection of new iBooks textbooks for iPad, available through the iBookstore. As Apple releases the new category of educational product outside the US, The Open University adds iBooks textbooks to its range of innovative media. iBooks textbooks give the OU the opportunity to bring strong learning interactions into the electronic book format, with serious questions and a high level of student interaction ‘in text’.

Peter Scott, Director of KMi, said, "Because The Open University designs pedagogy to fit the student’s needs of any channel, the innovative iBooks textbooks for iPad offer an exciting new channel. The OU aims to be there, ahead of the pack."

These new format text resources, created with iBooks Author are also now embedded with the OU’s highly successful free courses in iTunes U. With over 58 Million international downloads of its materials since the channel launch, and 2 Million iTunes U course subscriptions, the iBooks textbooks compliments its free iTunes U courses.
The iTunes U ‘course’ narratives provide an extra pedagogical context for these texts, with additional resources (not always the OU’s), extra tests, and ideas of how the texts could be used in different ways in different learning contexts.
For example, the OU’s popular iTunes U ‘Volcanoes’ course now refers to the new iBooks textbook ‘Changing face of the Earth’. This uses the graphical plotting of complex data and considering what the plot data means right inside the book itself, with video and questioning resources to help learners.

The Open University is already ‘open at scale’ in electronic books with over 450 free “ePub” book resources available via The Open University on iTunes U. The release of new format iBooks textbook resources can now enrich that mix, and allow the OU to further innovate with a rich feature set and innovative learning interactivity.

The Open University’s Changing face of the Earth textbook is now available on the iBookstore on iPad or at www.itunes.com/iBookstore.

Editors Notes:
The Open University’s iBooks textbooks are available on the iBookstore on iPad or at www.itunes.com/ibookstore.
Apple, iBooks and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store and iBookstore are service marks of Apple Inc.

OUs full text search system makes huge leaps in widening access to academic papers

Friday 16 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The Open University has widened access to academic research material – available through its Open Access search facility CORE- thanks to technical leaps in this innovative system created by the OU’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi).

CORE – which stands for Connecting Repositories – has seen unprecedented success in the past year and has more than tripled in size, now offering content from a global network of repositories, freely available to scholars worldwide.

CORE – COnnecting REpositories – provides a large easy-to-search database to help academics, researchers and students to find, explore and download research papers. When the service was first launched in 2011 CORE could source material in 60 repositories – today it aggregates data from over 230 internationally plus content from thousands of Open Access journals acquired through the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). This means the service holds more than nine million metadata items and about half a million full text files. Funding from JISC is permitting the project to develop further analytical processes with DiggiCORE project, which will utilise social media tools.

Unlike other Open Access scholarly search systems, CORE also aggregates the full-text files, and not only metadata, and therefore ensures the publication full-texts are freely available for download. Users of commercial academic search systems, such as Google Scholar, can be denied access to the full article, particularly when subscription fees are required. This is often frustrating for scholars. CORE specialises in searches of the full-text items held in approved Open Access repositories, ensuring a vastly improved level of accessibility for users. Anyone searching for full texts on CORE will therefore be able to download all content they discover.

CORE offers a unique application interface (API) that makes it possible for others to easily build applications utilising the Open Access content. The CORE API has a lot potential. “For example, it allowed us to build an application that enables people to search for Open Access content from mobile devices or to develop a content recommendation plug in for libraries,” says Peter Knoth, the software designer and founder of the CORE system.

The reason for CORE’s success rise is clear, says Peter: “A huge amount of research papers has been available online as Open Access, but there was limited technical infrastructure that would support different kinds of users in exploiting it. CORE is not only a search system, it is a free platform for developing applications that need access to the full-text of research articles. A very large amount of data is now available through the CORE API. The CORE Linked Open Data repository has this month already grown to 100 million RDF triples making it by far the largest Linked Open Data repository at the Open University.
“CORE has created a resource which offers some intriguing possibilities. The API to the aggregation puts this valuable information into the hands of researchers and developers and offers them the chance to use it in new and better ways.” says Andy McGregor, the JISC manager of the Resource Discovery programme.
“The strength of CORE is that it can be applied in multiple scenarios. In addition to searching for scientific publications, we expect the CORE infrastructure to be used for analytical and research purposes, ” says Zdenek Zdrahal, the director of the CORE project.

“The CORE platform has become a basis for the development of new services and motivates further research,” says Zdenek. In the currently running JISC funded DiggiCORE project, which is a collaboration of the Open University and the European Library, the CORE system is used as a platform for analysing networks of research publications to help better understand the properties of high impact publications and influential authors. But components of the CORE system are also likely to find its use in future projects.
CORE is now available for flexible use online and on mobile devices and tablets and is already benefiting journals, scholars, at conferences and as technical support answering the demand for Open Access to academic research papers.

Related Links:

The CORE project page

Strong KMi presence at EKAW 2012

Tuesday 13 Nov 2012 | KMi News

The International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW) is a key event in Europe for the research communities in areas such as ontology engineering, the semantic web, knowledge discovery, knowledge acquisition, etc. KMi has a long history of contributions to the conference and, again this year, KMi had a strong presence.

Enrico Motta presented the paper “Realizing Networks of Proactive Smart Products” which details the work realised within the SmartProducts project, on a distributed architecture of SmartProducts that can proactively collaborate to solve problems and tasks in their environment. This work has in particular be applied in the context of kitchen appliances collaborating within a smart-kitchen context, and has been especially welcome for connecting works done in the past on problem solving, with more recent trends around distributed data and knowledge architectures and the Semantic Web.

Mathieu d’Aquin was, together with Andriy Nikolov, chair of the poster and demo track of the conference. Demo submissions were included in the proceedings and the session itself was very busy, generating lots of interactions between conference attendees.

Big Educational Data Science

Friday 09 Nov 2012 | KMi News

I was at Stanford University recently as a member of the Big Educational Data Science affinity group, charged with roadmapping the field of Learning Analytics.

Convened by Prof. Roy Pea, and funded by the Gates Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, this group comprises a great mix of academics, education entrepreneurs, dot-coms, data science experts and technologists.

A series of reports next summer will sketch the emerging contours that we see defining the new field of Learning Analytics, and the skillsets needed for the new generation of Big Educational Data Scientists.

Stefan Rueger named Programme Co-Chair for Web Intelligence 2013

Wednesday 07 Nov 2012 | KMi News

KMi Professor Stefan Rueger has been named PC Co-Chair of The 2013 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence. The conference will be held next November in Atlanta, Georgia.

Web intelligence is commonly seen as a combination of applied artificial intelligence and information technology in the context of the web with a view to study and characterise emerging – or design new – Web-empowered products, systems, services, and activities. The Web Intelligence conference, held for the 12th time since 2001, has recognised these new directions and provides a scientific forum for researchers and practitioners to further topics such as web intelligence foundations; world wide wisdom web (W4); web information retrieval and filtering; semantics and ontology engineering; web mining and farming; social networks and ubiquitous intelligence; knowledge grids and grid intelligence; web agents; web services; intelligent human-web interaction; web support systems; intelligent e-technology; intelligent cloud web systems for big data mining; Intelligent green web systems; and other related areas.

The 2013 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI13) and its sister conference, the 2013 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT-13), will be held in Atlanta, USA, Nov. 17-20, 2013. The two co-located conferences are sponsored by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Intelligent Informatics (TCII), Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), and ACM-SIGART.

Previously, the conference has been held in Maebashi, Japan; Halifax, Canada; Beijing, China; Compiegne, France; Hong Kong; Silicon-Valley, USA; Sydney, Australia; Milano, Italy; Toronto, Canada; Lyon, France; and Macau.

Related Links:

WI 2013

Future Learning Now!

Monday 22 Oct 2012 | KMi News

Who knows what technology and knowledge will look like at the university of the future? Well, KMi does!

Informed by the hundreds of experts consulted within the two EC-funded projects STELLAR and TELMAP, Fridolin Wild of KMi paints a picture of the future in his keynote at the ‘Future Learning Now!’ day of the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Vienna, Austria.

In the near future, we can expect learning apps and interactive ebooks to be further on the rise. Where the Open University is already today, others will follow.

In the more distant future, Wild predicts three movements: we will have more awareness of learning through improved learning analytics. We will help foster passion in learning through social sharing, recommender systems, and new, exciting forms of HCI (such as augmented reality and haptic interfaces). Last but not least, we will see massive collaboration across institutions: personal learning environments, social learning networks, open education practices and resources, massive open online courses seem to be part of an irreversible movement.

Institutions interested in their fitness for the future will be delighted to find more details in the report on Grand Challenges for TEL (see link below).

Related Links:

TEL Grand Challenges

Slides

Future Learning Now!

The kickoff meeting of the weSPOT project

Wednesday 17 Oct 2012 | KMi News

The kickoff meeting of the weSPOT project took place in Heerlen, Netherlands. Funded by the European Commission, 9 partner institutions will collaborate throughout the next 3 years to provide a Working Environment with Social, Personal and Open Technologies for Inquiry Based Learning across European higher academic institutions and schools.

The weSPOT environment will support users (from 12 to 25) to develop their inquiry based learning skills by means of smart support tools for orchestrating inquiry workflows including mobile apps, learning analytics and social collaboration.

KMi – represented by Ale Okada, Alex Mikroyannidis and Peter Scott – will be responsible for Personal and Social Inquiry Workflows as well as two pilots related to Biodiversity and Food.

weSPOT is tackling the key issue of innovating inquiry based learning by integrating social, personal and open technologies for connecting informal and formal learning experiences. During the project, a reference model for inquiry skills as well as a diagnostic instrument will be developed to measure the individual performance on the defined inquiry skills.

Related Links:

weSPOT Project

Best practices from ROLE at the E-Learn 2012

Wednesday 17 Oct 2012 | KMi News

The World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education (E-Learn) took place in Montreal, Canada last week. KMi and the ROLE project were represented by Alexander Mikroyannidis.

Alexander Mikroyannidis presented a paper co-authored with Teresa Connolly about the lessons learned and the best practices from the Open University test-bed of the ROLE project. He also hosted a round table discussion about ROLE and the challenges associated with supporting Self-Regulated Learning in Higher Education.

E‐Learn is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to eLearning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors.

Related Links:

E-Learn web site

OU test-bed paper

ROLE round table

iPad University launch in UAE

Friday 05 Oct 2012 | KMi News

How do you mark the start of the largest experiment to test a nation-wide mobilization of mobile learning in higher education anywhere in the world?

On September 25th 2012 His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, UAE Minister for Higher Education & Scientific Research inaugurated the First Annual Global Mobile Learning Congress 2012 at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain. This congress marked the achievement of the Federal Mobile Learning Initiative (initiated only in April 2012), and has set the three Federal higher education institutions of UAE to introduce iPad-based teaching and learning for entering Foundation Program students this September – starting an exciting programme to explore post personal-computer learning at scale. Something like 14,000 students will use Apple’s new iPad to "learn different".

KMi Director, Peter Scott presented the Open University’s perspective on learning in post-personal computer world at the congress as part of a series of international guest presentations helping both celebrate the launch, and help the UAE team to think carefully about how they will be tracking and evaluating its impact as the Foundation students progress in their work. Other Congress speakers included Dr. Ruben Puentedura, the Founder and President of US-based consulting firm Hippasus, which focuses on transformative applications of information technologies to education; Dr. James Ashby, President and Chief of Psychometrics, CORE Edutech, USA, and who is a leading innovator in research-based education designs for elementary, secondary, and higher education; and Apple Distinguished Educator David Baugh recounting the great success of the School in a Box initiative which allows remote schools, villages and towns in places such as Nepal.

Federal Mobile Learning Initiative Chairman Dr. Tayeb Kamali noted that this event was just the start of an important an ongoing collaborative project from the three Federal higher education institutions to help boost students’ learning outcomes.

It is a very exciting time to be learner in the UAE! And yet more exciting to be a teacher in this new world.

Related Links:

The HCT News story on the iPad Launch

Changing the way Europe learns…

Wednesday 03 Oct 2012 | KMi News

The 2012 European Learning Industry Group (ELIG) Annual Meeting took place 1-2 October 2012 in Dublin. The event was hosted by Intel, Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Learning Technology Centre and Trinity College in Dublin.

ELIG Members, the Executive Committee, Advisory Board Members and Special Guests participated in a lively occasion. Teresa Connolly represented KMi and the ROLE Project. The event was not only the ELIG Annual meeting but also celebrated the 10th anniversary of ELIG "Towards the next decade of innovation for learning and knowledge".

Other attendees included academics, industry partners and social entrepreneurs including Professor Vinny Wade (Academic Director of the Learnovate Centre at Trinity College, Dublin), Liina Munari (Project Officer from DG Connect, European Commission), Bror Salmelin (Adviser at DG Connect), Markku Markkula (Member of the Committee of the Regions in the European Commission), Fabrizio Cardinali (Vice President, eXact learning solutions) and Martin Curley (Vice President, Intel Labs).

ELIG is an open industry group with members representing the value chain for 21st century learning solutions. Innovation in learning, knowledge creation and dissemination are central to ELIG endeavours. ELIG represents a broad spectrum of interest from the Learning Industry: Telecommunications and IT companies, Educational Institutions, Publishing & Media organisations, eLearning Service Providers, Professional Associations, Research Institutes and Industry Associations.

Related Links:

ELIG Website

The ROLE Project

Innovating learning through Education 3.0

Wednesday 03 Oct 2012 | KMi News

Innovating learning through Education 3.0 was the key theme of the first conference InovaEduca 3.0, which was held in Sao Paulo Brazil, 1st of October. This event provided a forum for researchers and practitioners to meet and discuss the wide-ranging of principles and practices on the uses of technology for improving competences and skills in the Digital Age of Open Knowledge.

The term Education 3.0 has recently emerged to highlight the importance of preparing all students for this digital age. Keats & Schmidt (2007) describes Education 1.0 as one-way process. Education 2.0 focuses on interactive online learning. Education 3.0 is characterized by “rich, cross-institutional, cross-cultural educational opportunities within which the learners themselves play a key role as creators of knowledge”. Advances in technology have been changing the ways we communicate with other people, how we acquire and assimilate information as well as how we create knowledge. Users, both organizations and individuals, can now create their own networks, construct content together and enable formal or informal learning collaboratively (Okada, Connolly and Scott, 2012). According to Jim Legel (2012) the Education 3.0 School should encourage students to:

Work collaboratively on problems worth solving
engage in self-directed research
learn how to tell a good story
employ tools appropriate to the task
learn to be curious and creative

These issues were discussed on InovaEduca 3.0. More than 500 attendees from higher and basic education came to engage in a programme which contained keynotes from Brazil, USA and UK: Adriana Martinelli (Ayrton Senna Institute); ; Angel Marchelli (Microsoft); Jim Lengel (New York University); Gil Giardelli, (Miami Ad School); Luciano Meira (UFPE, Brazil) ; Vani Kenski, Gil Marques (USP – Brasil) and Ale Okada (Open University – UK)

Okada had a special participation through live web conference. Her talk focussed on COLearning – Collaborative Open Learning where teachers and students are colearners -partners on the process of sensemaking, understanding and creating knowledge together. She introduced two books launched in KMi and UNESCO this year:

“Collaborative Learning 2.0: Open Educational Resources“ (by IGI Publishers) was written by 58 authors, who are leading researchers and practitioners in their field, from 14 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK and USA.

“Open Educational Resources and Social Networks” (by Scholio Publishers) written by 35 research groups from South and North America and Europe. This e-book was developed during the OpenScout Project based on “the OER Flow” developed by Scott Leslie and Okada

She also described two examples of co-inquiry based learning projects for Innovating learning through Education 3.0

The project WESPOT “Working Environment with social personal and open technologies for inquiry based learning”, funded by the European commission, is starting now (2012 – 1015). Its aim is to provide technologies for students performing their scientific investigations collaboratively. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers.

The project developed in 2008 “Flying across Brazil, Portugal and France” by schools from these three countries won the competition “Innovative Educators”, sponsored by Microsoft. Students’ co-investigation focused on the “14-Bis” airplane built by Brazilian pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont and flown in France in 1906 – setting the first aviation record in Europe. Students in the project used blogs and FM to share information between countries about the 14-bis airplane and Santos-Dumont’s life.

Related Links:

OpenScout successfully completed

Thursday 27 Sep 2012 | KMi News

The final review of the OpenScout project took place yesterday in Luxembourg. The review was very successful, with an outcome of “excellent progress” for the project. The project officer and the reviewers commended the consortium on fostering the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in management education and training.

Alexander Mikroyannidis presented the outcomes of the workpackage he has been leading. The main objective of this workpackage has been the facilitation of OER reuse and adaptation through the provision of Social & Educational Metadata and Community-based Quality Assurance Mechanisms.

Particular commendations were received on the efforts of the KMi team in building a library of tools for the adaptation of OER, as well as the publishing of an ebook with best practices for OER adaptation. The OpenScout work in KMi has been carried out by Alexander Mikroyannidis, Alexandra Okada, and Peter Scott. Izabel Meister, Suzanne Little, and Teresa Connolly have also been members of the team.

OpenScout was a three year project, running from September 2009 until August 2012. OpenScout’s activities are now continued within the Special Interest Group (SIG) Open Content for Business and Management.

Keynote at the European Conference on Service Oriented and Cloud Computing

Tuesday 25 Sep 2012 | KMi News

Another week, another Keynote. On this occasion at the first European Conference on Service Oriented and Cloud Computing (ESOCC). This conference was formed last year from the long running European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS) with the (obvious) extension to Cloud Computing. In addition to KMi’s John Domingue, the conference Keynotes included Bryan Stephenson from HP labs in the US and Paolo Traverso of FBK-ICT in Italy.

The talk titled “Linked Services for the Web of Data” gave an overview of the results from number of KMi projects including SOA4All, NoTube, VPH Share and PlanetData. Also, the Keynote covered new work including: Linked Data representations of SAP’s Unified Service Description Language which form a corner-stone of the emerging Internet of Services, the new EU project Compose which will create a service marketplace integrated with the Internet of Things, and FuturICT a large initiative which aims to develop a new paradigm for ICT based on social sciences to help spot large threats to society. The FuturICT platform is formed from the Planetary Nervous System, combining data from global sensors and mobile and social networking systems, the Living Earth Simulator where large scale simulations of behaviour can be modelled and the Global Participatory Platform enabling engagement with the produced data and models.

The conference was hosted in Bertinoro at a fortress built by the Counts of Bertinoro in the first decades of the tenth century and where Dante is said to have visited.

Related Links:

ESOCC Home page

iServe Home Page

SOA4All page in KMi

Linked USDL Page

NoTube home page

VPH Share home page

FuturICT home page

OER for business and TEA for assessment

Monday 24 Sep 2012 | KMi News

The annual General Assembly of EA-TEL e.V., the European Association for Technology-Enhanced Learning, has seen an exciting line-up of new special interest groups: the SIG TEA (co-lead by Denise Whitelock of the Open University) deals with technology-enhanced assessment and SIG OpenScout cares for OER in business and management education.

The annual meeting was also used to announce the 9th joint doctoral summer school in TEL, which is to take place in Limassol, Cyprus, from May 27-31, 2013. "We’re very glad to be able to prefinance activities such as our annual doctoral summer school – thanks to our members", says Fridolin Wild of KMi, treasurer of the association. The Open University is a founding member of EA-TEL e.V.

The assembly took place at the annual research conference EC-TEL, Sep 18-21, Saarbruecken, Germany.

In the picture (left to right):
Kathrine Maillet (president of EA-TEL e.V.), Carlos Delgado Kloos (background, general chair EC-TEL conference 2012), Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Minister President of the Saarland, Germany), Fridolin Wild (KMi, treasurer of EA-TEL e.v.)

Related Links:

SIG TEA

SIG OpenScout

EC-TEL 2012

EA-TEL e.V.

SEALS result is excellent

Monday 24 Sep 2012 | KMi News

After the successful final review meeting held on 10th, July in Madrid, here arrives the approved review report for the SEALS project that KMi has been significantly involved with for the last three years. The overall assessment rating is EXCELLENT. The report states that the SEALS project has fully achieved its objectives and technical goals for the period and has even exceeded expectations. Here are some highlighting quotes from the report:

“SEALS has made excellent progress in its final year and has delivered results at a very high standard of quality.”

“The quality of the results exceeded expectations.”

“All partners involved in the SEALS project have deployed their skills cohesively and have performed well together. The work done in SEALS has been considerable and is of the highest quality.”

“Many partners over performed, especially in the context of the quality of the results generated.”

“The SEALS results are too important to discard.”

Related Links:

SEALS project

SEALS SWS evaluation campaign

KMi’s ROLE team wins dissemination trophy – yet again!

Thursday 20 Sep 2012 | KMi News

The ROLE team in KMi has won the dissemination trophy for the 3rd time in a row. The team is led by Alexander Mikroyannidis and consisting of Peter Scott, Teresa Connolly, Joe Corneli and Fridolin Wild.

The team’s engagement in bringing ROLE closer to the TEL community has been recorded in a number of events, among others the JTEL Summer School and the PLE Conference in Portugal, the OER World Congress in Paris, as well as events in the UK, such as the Build a Widget Day in KMi and the Dev8Ed Conference in Birmingham.

Additionally, two free online courses have been developed in LabSpace, contributing to the better visibility of ROLE and raising awareness about the advantages of Responsive Open Learning Environments and Self-regulated learning.

AIMSA 2012 Keynote

Friday 14 Sep 2012 | KMi News

Following the long association between KMi and the AIMSA conference series this week saw John Domingue give the conference’s opening Keynote. His talk titled “Linking Services and Linked Data” gave an overview of the results from the SOA4All, NoTube, VPH Share and PlanetData projects, illustrating how the spheres of Linked Data and services will be connected in the future to form a new global computing platform.

In particular the talk described how work on Linked Services integrates Web APIs and Linked Data facilitating the creation of applications which consume and produce Linked Data from online components. This work builds upon a number of KMi technologies including the Linked Data service repository iServe. The applications created thus far cover a number of diverse areas including: house hunting; a new approach to advertising within an online video context; easing car parking stress through a crowd-sourcing smart-phone App; and sharing human body processes with a view to creating patient avatars. New work with SAP aims to support the emerging Internet of Services through a Linked Data representation of a business level service description language.

The AIMSA conference series has provided a biennial forum for the presentation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and development since 1984. The conference, which is held in Bulgaria, covers the full range of topics within AI and associated disciplines and provides comprehensive forum for international scientific exchange between Central/Eastern Europe and the rest of the world.

For AIMSA 2012, there was a particular emphasis on the application and leverage of AI technologies in the context of knowledge creation and accessing, acquiring, and sharing to empower individuals and communities.

Related Links:

AIMSA Conference website

iServe Website

SOA4All website at KMi

NoTube project website at KMi

VPH Share website at KMi

Planet Data website

AIMSA 2012 Keynote slides on slideshare

Linked USDL website

WeGov on the BBC

Thursday 13 Sep 2012 | KMi News

Hansard Society, one of the partners in WeGov, lead the organisation of an event in Westminster on 11th of September to debate if and how can social media inform policy-making, and what are the various issues associated with this emerging field.

In a coverage of the event, the BBC highlighted the growing field of using social media to inspire policy making, and the contencious issues of privacy and trust that were debated at the event.

The BBC pointed to the WeGov project, describing it as an EU funded software that is "specifically designed for politicians, enabling them to monitor debates, filter out the background ‘noise’ and zoom in on what people are saying about them and their policies in a particular geographical area."

The event was attended by more than 80 delegates, and involved a keynote on WeGov project, delivered by its coordinaotr Dr Paul Walland from IT Innovation. Others who spoke at the event are:

Kevin Brennan MP – Social Media MP of the Year, 2010
Rory Cellan-Jones – Technology Correspondent, BBC
Nick Jones – Deputy Director of Digital Communications, Prime Minister’s Office & Cabinet Office
Deborah Mattinson – Director, Britain Thinks
Nick Pickles – Director, Big Brother Watch

Related Links:

WeGov project

BBC article on the event

Drahomira Herrmannova was awarded the dean’s prize for her diploma thesis

Tuesday 11 Sep 2012 | KMi News

Drahomira Herrmannova was awarded the Prize of Zdena Rabova by the Brno University of Technology. This prize is awarded annually by the dean of the faculty to two students for excellent study and science results. The nomination was supported by Drahomira’s diploma thesis, which she wrote during her period at KMi and which was based on paper by Drahomira and Petr Knoth, presented at JCDL conference 2012.

Best paper award at SocialCom

Saturday 08 Sep 2012 | KMi News

And the best paper award of the ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing goes to …….

Claudia Wagner, Matthew Rowe, Markus Strohmaier and Harith Alani: "Ignorance isn’t Bliss: An Empirical Analysis of Attention Patterns in Online Communities"

This paper presents work that identiﬁes attention patterns in community forums and shows how such patterns differ between communities of different types. The exploration was facilitated through a two-stage approach that provided novel features able to capture the community and focus information pertaining to the creators of community content.

Results showed that the attention patterns of different communities are impacted by different factors and therefore suggest that these patterns may only be valid in a certain context and that the existence of generic attention patterns in social media forums is highly questionable.

We concluded that ignorance isn’t a bliss since understanding the idiosyncrasies of individual communities seem to be crucial for predicting which post will catch the attention of a community and manages to stimulate lengthy discussions in a forum

The work was the fruit of a collaboration between KMi and Graz University, initiated by Claudia’s internship in KMi in 2011.

Related Links:

SocialCom 2012

Against the odds at SocialCom 2012

Tuesday 04 Sep 2012 | KMi News

The ASE/IEEE International Social Computing conference managed a 23% acceptance rate this year, maintaining a high profile and quality program and presentations.

KMi submitted three papers to this conference, under the auspice of FP7 ROBUST and EPSRC ViolenceDet projects, and achieved a 100% acceptance rate! Matthew Rowe and Harith Alani, in the paper titled "What makes communities tick? Community health analysis using role compositions", showed how user behaviour models and analysis can be used to measure health of business online communities. Claudia Wagner from Graz University, who did an internship in KMi, presented the paper titled "Ignorance isn’t Bliss: An Empirical Analysis of Attention Pattens in Online Communities", co-authored with Matthew Rowe and Harith Alani from KMi, and Markus Strohmaier from Graz University. The paper investigated the idiosyncrasies that individual community forums exhibit in their attention patterns and how the factors that impact activity differ.

The third paper from KMi was titled "Online Sentiment and Topic Dynamics Tracking over the Streaming Data", coauthored by Yulan He, Chenghua Lin, and Amparo Elizabeth Cano. The paper proposed a dynamic joint sentiment-topic model (dJST) that allows the detection and tracking of views of current and recurrent interests and shifts in topic and sentiment. The proposed model dynamically updates itself to capture the most recent language use of sentiments and topics in social media.

The relative high presence of KMi members and work in SocialCom demonstrates the excellence and reputation of our group in the fast growing inter-disciplinary field of Social Computing.

Evidence-Hub.net rollout

Friday 10 Aug 2012 | KMi News

As part of our Collective Intelligence R&D, for the last few months we’ve been developing the concept of an Evidence Hub, learning user experience lessons from the first example we developed for the Hewlett Foundation on the Open Learning Network project, generifying the shell into one that can be customized for the different communities who have been excited by the concept, and moving to an open source release shortly.

For info and demos go to Evidence-Hub.net

If you want to read more about the rationale behind the Hub’s design, check out:

De Liddo, Anna; Buckingham Shum, Simon; McAndrew, Patrick and Farrow, Robert (2012). The open education evidence hub: a collective intelligence tool for evidence based policy. Presented at Cambridge 2012: Joint OER12 and OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2012 Conference, 16-18 April 2012, Cambridge, UK. Eprint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/33253

To learn more about the underlying concept of Contested Collective Intelligence, and how this can be supported through human annotation such as this, combined with machine annotation, check out:

De Liddo, Anna; Sandor, Agnes and Buckingham Shum, Simon (2012). Contested Collective Intelligence: rationale, technologies, and a human-machine annotation study. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 21(4-5), pp. 417-448. Eprint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/31052

EnquiryBlogger: open source Learning Analytics for blogging

Wednesday 25 Jul 2012 | KMi News

The EnquiryBlogger project has just released a suite of plugins turning WordPress into a social learning journal with learning analytics.

WordPress is the world’s most popular open source content management system and blogging platform. EnquiryBlogger plugins add Dispositional and Enquiry-Based Learning Analytics.

EnquiryBlogger is a collaboration between the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (Simon Buckingham Shum & Rebecca Ferguson), and University of Bristol’s Centre for Systems Learning & Leadership (Ruth Deakin Crick).

LearningEmergence, where EnquiryBlogger is hosted, is a global network of researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of deep learning, complex systems, transformative leadership and knowledge media.

See the website for details, downloads, webcasts and publications…

Related Links:

EnquiryBlogger

IET TCM Event: Introduction to Responsive Open Learning Environments

Wednesday 25 Jul 2012 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis delivered a seminar on July 18 at the IET Coffee Mornings about Responsive Open Learning Environments. The seminar introduced the core concepts behind the ROLE project and gave a chance to participants to try out some of the technologies developed by the project. The podcast of this event, as well as the relevant online resources, are available in the links below.

Related Links:

Event podcast

Event cloud

International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments

Wednesday 25 Jul 2012 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis is co-organising an international workshop on Cloud Education Environments, on November 15-16 in Antigua Guatemala. The workshop will focus on the exchange of relevant trends and research results, as well as the presentation of practical experiences gained while developing and testing cloud education environments, both from a teaching and a learning perspective. Best papers will be selected for submission of an extended version in a Special Issue on Cloud Education Environments of the Journal of Universal Computer Science.

Important Dates:
Extended Abstracts (2 pages): 30 Sept
Notification of acceptance: 10 Oct
Camera-ready submissions (6 pages): 4 Nov

Related Links:

Workshop web site

The Common Wealth of Learning publishes a report on Linked Data for education, based on KMis experience

Tuesday 24 Jul 2012 | KMi News

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation including more than 50 independent sovereign states, created to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. Impressed by the work realised in the LUCERO project, by the deployment of data.open.ac.uk (the world’s first university linked data platform), and by the impact it had on The Open University and the broader higher education community, COL commissioned a report on the use and deployment of Linked Data principles and technologies for open and distance learning, which was published last week.

The report covers the general principles underlying Linked Data technologies and their relevance to the field of education, especially focusing on open and distance learning. It illustrates use case scenarios of Linked Data for learning and teaching through describing existing applications, and details the process of adopting and deploying Linked Data for educational resources and learning-related information. Through publishing it on its website under an open license, COL hopes that this report will become a valuable resource to a wide variety of organisations, raising the general awareness of the benefits of using open Web technologies such as Linked Data for educational purposes.

Related Links:

The report in PDF

Looking back at JISC’s flagship hack event in ed tech: Dev8eD

Monday 23 Jul 2012 | KMi News

KMi presented work at JISC’s Dev8eD in Birmingham a few weeks ago – all centred around widget-based personal learning environments. See this interview with KMi’s Fridolin Wild to see what this is all about.

Related Links:

Interview

Stefan Rueger named programme co-chair for ECIR 2013

Friday 20 Jul 2012 | KMi News

Professor Stefan Rüger of KMi was named programme co-chair of ECIR 2013 to be held in Moscow in March 2013.

This is the 35th annual instalment of the conference, which has been held in previous years in Toulouse (2009), Milton Keynes (2010), Dublin (2011) and Barcelona (2012), and which is considered the main European forum for presenting research in the field of Information Retrieval.

Related Links:

ECIR 2013

Build your Responsive Open Learning Environment – Workshop at the PLE Conference

Friday 20 Jul 2012 | KMi News

The 3rd PLE conference took place simultaneously in Aveiro, Portugal and Melbourne, Australia between July 11 – 13. Researchers, educators and practitioners in Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) and Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) were brought together for a lively exchange of ideas, practices and visions. The PLE conference has a distinct “unconference” nature, avoiding the common “death by PowerPoint” by featuring highly interactive sessions, even during the keynotes.

Alexander Mikroyannidis, together with other partners from the ROLE project, delivered a half-day workshop entitled “Build your Responsive Open Learning Environment (ROLE)”. Participants were introduced to the ROLE tools and learning methodologies and were allowed to use these tools in order to build their own Responsive Open Learning Environment. Additionally, participants were able to design their desired tools, according to their learning scenarios and requirements. The workshop was very well received and provided the opportunity to spark some interesting discussions around PLEs.

Alexander Mikroyannidis also presented at the conference a paper co-authored with Teresa Connolly about the lessons learned from the OpenLearn test-bed of the ROLE project. The OpenLearn test-bed concerns the use of widget-based PLEs by informal learners for finding and evaluating Open Educational Resources (OER). A recording of this “speed-dating” presentation and the slides are available in the links below.

Related Links:

PLE conference web site

ROLE workshop web site

Presentation of the OpenLearn test-bed

SSSW 2012: The Semantic Web Summer School

Friday 20 Jul 2012 | KMi News

The 9th European Summer School on Ontology Engineering and the Semantic Web (SSSW 2012) took place from 8 to 14 July in Cercedilla (Spain), confirming the SSSW series as the premiere educational event in the area of semantic technologies. Indeed, despite the decrease in attendance faced by other event organisers in this area (due mostly to economic circumstances), the 2012 edition was arguably one of the best in the SSSW series since it started in 2003, attracting 125 applications (for 50 places) from more than 25 countries.

The SSSW series of summer schools has, over the years, established a unique reputation for the quality of its teaching, which is based on an innovative pedagogical model, combining the practical with the theoretical, and adding teamwork and a competitive element to the mix. In addition, SSSW summer schools provide a stimulating environment in which participants benefit not only from the formal and practical sessions but also from informal and social interactions with both world-class researchers and the other participants to the school. To ensure such intensive interaction, a very high tutor-to-student ratio is implemented.

While keeping the same successful formula, several changes were introduced for SSSW 2012, including a renewed organisation team, with Mathieu d’Aquin replacing Enrico Motta as Director, and Oscar Corcho replacing Asun Gomez Perez as co-director (UPM, Spain). As ever, feedback and comments from all involved (students, tutors, invited speakers) have been overwhelmingly positive, as SSSW continues to provide exceptional value and a unique experience in an area that has now become very competitive.

Related Links:

Website of SSSW 2012

CORE Fight for Open Access in Scotland!

Wednesday 18 Jul 2012 | KMi News

The 7th International Conference on Open Repositories (OR 2012) has seen last week close to 500 participants, the highest number in its history. The theme and title of OR 2012 in Edinburgh – Open Services for Open Content: Local In for Global Out – reflects the current move towards open content, ‘augmented content’, distributed systems and data delivery infrastructures. A very good fit with what CORE (core.kmi.open.ac.uk) offers.

The CORE system developed in KMi had a very active presence. Petr Knoth has presented different aspects of the CORE system in a presentation, at a poster session (with Owen Stephens) and also during the developers challenge. CORE has been also discussed in a number of presentations by other participants not directly linked to the Open University. Perhaps the most important case being the UK RepositoryNet+ project presentation. UK RepositoryNet+ is a socio-technical infrastructure funded by JISC supporting deposit, curation & exposure of Open Access research literature. UK RepositoryNet+ aims to provide a stable socio-technical infrastructure at the network-level to maximize value to UK HE of that investment by supporting a mix of distributed and centrally delivered service components within pro-active management, operation, support and outcome. While this infrastructure will be designed to meet the needs of UK research, it is set and must operate effectively within a global context. UK RepositoryNet+ considers the CORE system as an important component in this infrastructure.

The similarity of the CORE approach with that of William Wallace, a Scottish hero in the picture, is the determination to fight for freedom. In this case, freedom of access to content. There is, hopefully, also one difference. We wish CORE will not end end up in the same way as William Wallace … We will see -:)

Related Links:

OR2012

William Wallace

SEALS: Supporting the Evaluation of your Semantic Tools

Friday 13 Jul 2012 | KMi News

The three-year SEALs (Semantic Evaluation at Large Scale) project has now come to an end with a very successful final review with the independent expert reviewer stating it is “technically remarkable” and the Commission’s Project Officer marking it as excellent. In addition to the above quota, the expert reviewer said the project have done something the semantic technology community really needed.

SEALS addressed two key challenges: the creation of a lasting reference infrastructure for automated and reproducible evaluation of various semantic technologies, such as ontology matching, semantic searching, semantic Web Services, and semantic storage and reasoning, and the continuous benchmarking of semantic technologies at a large scale via public worldwide evaluation campaigns.

KMi’s significant involvement in this project was to lead the Semantic Web Service (SWS) evaluation research work package as well as organize worldwide evaluation campaigns for SWS tools. The major outcomes of KMi from this project include a reference implementation of services required for the evaluation of SWS discovery tools, the generation of the WSMO-Lite SWS test collection and the successful organization of two evaluation campaigns for SWS discovery tools.

Related Links:

SEALS project

SEALS slides

SEALS SWS evaluation campaign

KMi’s Sensemaking research featured in OpenMinds

Wednesday 04 Jul 2012 | KMi News

OpenMinds, The Open University’s refreshed Alumni magazine, launched this month, featuring the work of KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum. Read all about how information overload, sensemaking and complexity!…

(With thanks to our SysAdmin team for loaning the KMI server room for dramatic shots!)

Related Links:

OpenMinds online version

KMi hosts Social Learning Analytics symposium

Tuesday 03 Jul 2012 | KMi News

KMi hosted a Social Learning Analytics symposium, in which we provided an update on the research programme. It served as a student work-in-progress event, and was a hybrid f-f/webinar as part of SoLAR Storm — the new virtual research lab convened by the Society for Learning Analytics Research, to build research capacity in this new field by networking PhD researchers with each other and the wider community.

Full details and replays below…

Related Links:

Social Learning Analytics symposium

World OER Congress, 20-22 June, Paris

Tuesday 26 Jun 2012 | KMi News

The Paris OER Declaration was formally adopted at the 2012 World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from 20 – 22 June 2012.

Over 550 delegates including representatives of Government, educators, NGOs, and universities attended the Congress which was organized in full partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and supported by a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (USA).

Teresa Connolly and Ale Okada attended the event on behalf of KMi. A poster was displayed in the exhibition area about the Responsive Open Learning Environments (ROLE) project as well as one about their recently published (as editors with Peter Scott) “Collaborative Learning 2.0: Open Educational Resources” book.

The ROLE poster promoted two recently created OER courses (developed with Alex Mikroyannidis): one introducing the project itself and one focusing on Self-Regulated Learning (SRL).

Take-away materials about ROLE proved to be very popular!

Related Links:

The Paris OER Declaration

The ROLE project

The ROLE course

The ROLE SRL course

Why Open Education matters video by David Wiley

Yes, we can! – The CORE team organises a workshop at JCDL 2012 in Washington, DC

Monday 18 Jun 2012 | KMi News

KMI and the European Library/Europeana jointly organised the 1st International Workshop on Mining Scientific Publications associated with JCDL 2012 – the most prestigious conference in the world of digital libraries. The workshop was attended by major players in the field including the National Library of Medicine, Library of Congress, CiteSeerX, Elsevier and British Library. Although Barack in the end didn’t come, the workshop was very successful, the only problem being the lack of chairs in the room. We (the workshop organisers – Petr Knoth, KMi; Zdenek Zdrahal, KMI and Andreas Juffinger, The European Library/Europeana) were motivated by the positive response of the community to the importance of issues researchers face when mining research publications to improve the way research is carried out and evaluated.

A paper authored by Drahomira (aka Dasha) Herrmannova and Petr Knoth (both KMI) entitled ‘Visual search for supporting content exploration in large document collections’ presented by Dasha during the workshop received encouraging feedback. Another KMI talk was given by Petr who discussed the issues in current digital library aggregation systems, especially those focusing on Open Access, and explained the advantages offered by the CORE system in a presentation titled “COnnecting REpositories (CORE): Aggregating and Enriching Content to Support Open Access.”

All papers presented at the workshop are available on the workshop web page below.

Related Links:

1st International Workshop on Mining Scientific Publications

Recording of the Build a Widget Day is now available

Monday 18 Jun 2012 | KMi News

The recording of a 1-day ROLE workshop held last March in KMi is now available online (see link below). The workshop was entitled “Build a Widget Day” and was co-organised with the British Institute for Learning and Development (BILD), a partner in the ROLE project. The audience was learning and development practitioners from across the UK. Participants discussed the value of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) in the workplace, had a chance to explore some of the ROLE tools that support SRL, as well as design their own widgets.

Related Links:

Recording of the Build a Widget Day

The ROLE project

mEducator project has successfully finished

Wednesday 13 Jun 2012 | KMi News

mEducator (Multi-type Content Re-purposing and Sharing in Medical Education) project has successfully finished as it marked as excellent on the final review meeting (22/05/2012). During the last three years, the mEducator established the Best Practice Network (BPN) aiming to implement and critically evaluate existing standards and reference models in the field of e-learning in order to enable specialized state-of-the-art medical educational content to be discovered, retrieved, shared and re-used across European higher academic institutions. KMi (Semantic Web Service research group) worked as a core partner provided a Linked Data based medical learning resource discovery and sharing solution that can be evaluated in the BPN.

“The mEducator Linked Educational Resources dataset” (see first link) is the other major contribution of KMi, which contains data about educational Web resources (over 23000 triples), mainly from the biomedical field. Automated enrichment techniques are used to extend and structure the naturally poorly structured metadata available on the Web and to establish links with other well-known linked open data sources, such as DBpedia or domain-specific vocabularies such as MESH or SNOMED. A set of dedicated query APIs including SPARQL endpoints has been developed for openly sharing, accessing and querying mEducator dataset. In addition, 5 web applications, based on our technologies, are now running serving several medical educational institutes.

Related Links:

The mEducator Linked Educational Resources dataset

SmartLink tool

Crete in May: ESWC Summer School, ESWC Conference and a Dinner Keynote

Wednesday 06 Jun 2012 | KMi News

Following a longish tradition the end for May saw two weeks of events starting with the ESWC Summer School held in a small village the south of Crete. This school borrows from long-held OU pedagogical principles for running such events combining technical hands-on sessions with a two-day project where students build their own Linked Data applications to present back to the school. Interspersed with these activities the school included Keynotes from notable Semantic Web researchers including: Enrico Franconi, Chris Welty, Lora Aroyo and Marko Grobelnik. KMi involvement in the school was high with Matthew Rowe acting as a tutor and John Domingue serving as the School Director with Elena Simperl of KIT. Activities moved to the north of the island where the ESWC Conference was held. This year the conference received over 200 submissions and attracted over 250 attendees. In addition the research paper track the conference also included a PhD Symposium, tutorials, workshops, posters, demos, panels, an EU project networking session and an AI Mashup Challenge. Keynotes at the conference included: Abraham Bernstein of the University of Zurich, Jeroen van Grondelle of the Semantic Web SME Be Informed, Alon Halevy from Google, Alek Kolcz from Twitter, Monica Lam from Stanford, Marta Nagy-Rothengass Head of the Data Value Chain Unit at the European Commission and Julius van de Laar who was involved in the US 2008 presidential election campaign for Barack Obama. KMi involvement included posters (Jacek Kopecky and John Domingue), workshop organization (Vanessa Lopez and Enrico Motta), 5 papers (Carlo Allocca, Mathieu D’Aquin, Trevor Collins, Enrico Motta, Paul Mulholland, Andriy Nikolov, Matthew Rowe and Annika Wolff). The paper from Andriy Nikolov, Mathieu D’Aquin and Enrico Motta on Unsupervised Learning of Data Linking Configuration was shortlisted for a best paper award As part of the Conference Banquet John Domingue gave the after dinner talk (also listed as a Keynote for some reason). This proved fairly popular with the presentation highlighted at one point on the SlideShare home page as it was the most talked about slidedeck in Facebook. The ESWC 2013 Summer School will again be held in Crete in September and the Conference will be held in May again but will move to Montpellier, France. As ever the end of May in Crete proved to be a very enjoyable and stimulating experience!

Related Links:

ESWC 2012 Conference Website

ESWC Conference Series Website

STI International Website which is the legal entity organising the events

Dinner Talk Presentation

Learning Analytics 2012 conference

Tuesday 29 May 2012 | KMi News

Vancouver has just hosted the 4-day 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge. What we see unfolding is an intriguing landscape for educational research and delivery, whose contours may be remoulded in the way that data science has impacted other academic fields, and businesses.

LAK’12 sold out, after doubling in size from last year’s inaugural conference. With sponsorship from the Gates Foundation, EDUCAUSE, and leading VLE vendors, this testifies to the huge interest and energy around the implications of the Big Data/Analytics/Predictive Modelling wave, for when it crashes on learning.

I was there as Programme Co-Chair, a workshop co-chair, also chairing two panels and presenting two papers. Together with colleagues from IET, the OU had a very strong presence.

The impact of analytics is not only on traditional educational institutions, but also the learning revolution on the social web which sees a boom in educational start-ups specialising in weaving together social media and data analytics to provide learning that is increasingly personalised, but motivatingly collective.

A post-conference invitational Summit brought together major educational professional associations, technology companies small and large, and academics to map some of the key challenges for the road ahead. I brought along two JISC colleagues, who are in the process of formulating national strategy from their perspective.

There were some key points for conference debate around Learning Analytics, which can be recognised as incarnations of the overarching concerns around the economic and academic realities (and rhetoric) which seem to drive Big Data, Computational Mining/Modelling/Prediction infrastructures. In brief:

* ETHICS. Data does not speak for itself: the whole enterprise of modelling and analysing the world computationally is inextricably linked to human interests and judgements. What to measure, what to ‘clean’, what to extract, how to render it, how to read it, how to act on it… See the excellent critique Six Provocations for Big Data for more on this, and my talks Learning Analytics: Dream or Nightmare?

* EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION? There is a huge driver in certain countries for analytics to improve course completion rates. There is quite clearly an economic incentive for institutions, and one might have thought, for students. Some of the most impressive work which has excited a lot of interest has been in analytics which give students and tutors real-time feedback in the VLE, using predictive modelling of course completion based on online behaviour patterns and demographics. However, a debate broke out at LAK12, around whether course completion = real learning. There is concern that analytics are being recruited simply to reinforce the current educational paradigm with its traditional pedagogical approaches (often very weak). There is deep concern that our educational systems are not equipping students adequately for a world of unprecedented complexity (see FuturICT project!). There was much talk of looking under lamp-posts because that’s simply where it’s easiest to see with relatively impoverished computational lenses… The alternative, or complement? Perhaps analytics in support of more radical pedagogical models, based on theories of deep learning and the transferable 21st century competencies that our children, students and workforce need.

* EDUCATIONAL DATA MINING = LEARNING ANALYTICS? I hosted a panel debate in which we invited panellists from the longer established EDM community, to explore with panellists from LAK, the nature of the EDM-LAK relationship. This turned into an interesting debate, conducted in very polite terms (mostly!), which seemed to confirm that EDM researchers contribute expertise in designing and improving data mining algorithms and large, fine-grained data sets (often from intelligent tutoring systems), from which some LAK researchers could certainly benefit. However, LAK is also concerned with other forms of analytic (e.g. social networks; discourse; dispositions), and has a priority to bring in the wider constituency of stakeholders who form the ecosystem around analytics, from learners and educators, to administrators to policymakers at institutional, regional and national levels. This seems to me very appropriate, since data and analytics platforms (in general) do not exist in a vacuum, but always within intellectually, economically and politically charged contexts.

Many thanks to all who made LAK12 such an intellectually and socially stimulating experience. The replays of all sessions are on the LAK12 website, so you can enjoy the cut and thrust for yourself — and join us next year in Leuven (just outside Brussels) for LAK13!

Related Links:

2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics Knowledge

My research on Learning Analytics

LAK 2013, Leuven

Replay Dispositional Learning Analytics talk

Replay Social Learning Analytics talk

ROLE workshops at the JTEL Summer School 2012

Monday 28 May 2012 | KMi News

A very successful JTEL summer school was held last week in Estoril, Portugal. PhD students in the area of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) from across Europe spent the week learning about the latest trends in TEL, exchanging ideas about their PhD projects, and (of course!) socialising.

Alexander Mikroyannidis delivered the workshop: “Build your Personal Learning Environment”. 14 students attended this session and had the chance to use the tools of the ROLE project in order to find learning resources and start building their Personal Learning Environment (PLE) according to their research interests.

Other ROLE workshops held during the summer school included a coding session using the ROLE SDK, a widget design session, as well as a session about personalised support for self-regulated learning.

Related Links:

JTEL Summer School 2012

Slides from the Build your PLE workshop

Ontology Engineering in a Networked World

Wednesday 23 May 2012 | KMi News

The NeOn project, a flagship KMi-led EU FP6 initiative, was launched in March 2006 and ran for 4 years. A key aim of the project was to advance the state of the art in using ontologies for large-scale semantic applications, in particular by providing innovative tools and methods to support the process of creating, managing, reusing and integrating distributed ontologies available on the web.
“Ontology Engineering in a Networked World” provides a practical compendium of many of the innovations produced by the NeOn project, in particular presenting a practical methodology for the process of building ontology-based applications in the new network-centric contexts enabled by the Semantic Web. The NeOn methodology is presented in a prescriptive way to facilitate its adoption by students and practitioners and at the same time all the various activities described in the methodology are supported by tools developed during the project and integrated in the NeOn Toolkit. As Dr Richard Benjamins writes in his preface, “this book contributes to putting ontological engineering in a more realistic environment: out of the labs and into the real world (wide web), where reuse and interrelationships are more the rule than exceptions”.

Related Links:

NeOn Project

NeOn Toolkit

Find in Springer Catalogue

Cor! It’s time for CORE!

Wednesday 02 May 2012 | KMi News

Is an article published by the University of London Computing Centre featuring certain aspects of the CORE system. Check it out …

Related Links:

Cor! It’s time for CORE!

KMi launches the first handbook of research on Collaborative Learning 2.0: OER

Tuesday 24 Apr 2012 | KMi News

“Collaborative Learning 2.0: Open Educational Resources”.

Edited by
Ale Okada
Teresa Connolly
Peter J. Scott
(Open University, UK)

The purpose of this book is to understand how OER and Web 2.0 can be deployed successfully to enrich the collaborative learning experience and ensure a positive outcome in terms of user generated knowledge and development of skills.

This book offers current state of the art in collaborative learning through Open Educational Resources and the Web 2.0. This collection work presents the latest research through case studies, trends and also considers future developments within the field. With solid theoretical foundation and precise guidelines, authors analyse the benefits that these “user-generated content, resources and tools” promise.

“Collaborative Learning 2.0: Open Educational Resources” was written by 58 authors, who are leading researchers and practitioners in their field, from 14 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK and USA. The book comprises of some 560 references, 168 key terms and definitions as well as 25 chapters including introductions and is organised in four sections:
Section 1 – ” Widening participation and OER Communities
Section 2 – ” Producing, reusing and recreating OER
Section 3 – ” Sharing User-generated content
Section 4 – ” Social Learning, Rich Media and Games

The chapters cover a wide-range of topics including:
– Assessment
– Collaborative Learning
– Communities of Practice
– Continuous Professional Development
– Interactive Contents
– Knowledge Sharing
– New Media Environments
– OER in Higher Education
– Personal Learning Environments
– Peer-support
– Social Media
– Social Networking
– Social Learning
– Virtual Laboratories
– Web 2.0

This project began in January 2010 and the process of writing, reviewing as well as publishing this book occupied the editors and authors for almost two years.

Find out more at the book’s website.

Related Links:

KMI OER BOOK

IGI PUBLISHERS

AAAI Spring Symp on Intelligent Web Services Meet Social Computing IWEBSS

Friday 20 Apr 2012 | KMi News

Development of web services faces significant challenges concerning quality of design, development costs, endorsement of services by the community, integration and interoperability of services from different domains and effective sharing of services among users and developers.

This spring symposium brought together two lines of research whose combination can help in dealing with these issues, namely intelligent web services and social computing research.

Social Computing is a promising approach that can help to understand user and community behaviour and related computational challenges around Web services development.

This symposium was co-organised by Tomas Vitvar from the Czech Technical University, Harith Alani from KMi, and David Martin from Apple. The programme included three invited talks by Jamie Taylor from Google, Jhon Musser from the Programmable Web, and Fausto Giunchiglia from the University of Trento.

The symposium took place in Stanford, CA, and was attended by Harith Alani and Carlos Pedrinaci from KMi.

Related Links:

AAAI Spring Symposia 2012

IWEBSS

New ROLE course about Self-Regulated Learning

Tuesday 17 Apr 2012 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis and Teresa Connolly have prepared in collaboration with other ROLE partners, a new ROLE course about Self Regulated Learning (SRL). The course, which is available in OpenLearn, provides an overview of the concepts behind SRL and also offers an opportunity to use a selection of learning tools that have been developed by the ROLE project. The learner is introduced to SRL through a series of learning scenarios and examples that are accompanied by the relevant learning activities. These learning activities enable the learner to use the ROLE tools in order to apply the SRL principles to their own learning, as well as assess their SRL skills.

The previous ROLE course in OpenLearn introduced learners to the ROLE and PLE concepts and allowed them to start building their PLE by using some of the widgets that the project has developed.

Like all other OpenLearn courses, the ROLE courses are open educational resources that can be downloaded, reused, repurposed, and republished under the Creative Commons licence.

Related Links:

The ROLE-SRL course

The ROLE-SRL course screencast

The ROLE course

The ROLE course screencast

Successful review for ROLE

Friday 30 Mar 2012 | KMi News

The 3rd annual review of the European project ROLE (Responsive Open Learning Environments) took place on March 27 in Luxembourg. The project consortium presented the ROLE technological achievements and their applications in different learning contexts.

Alexander Mikroyannidis presented the lessons learned and best practices from piloting and evaluating the ROLE technologies in the test-beds of the project. The ROLE test-beds involve a variety of learning contexts and audiences, namely teachers, students, workplace learners, and developers.

The project consortium received commendations from the reviewers on the scientific impact of its work. The reviewers particularly acknowledged the effort put on increasing user adoption in the test-beds.

ROLE has now entered its 4th and final year. During this period, emphasis will be given to the externalisation and sustainability of the project’s outcomes.

Related Links:

The ROLE project

The ROLE sandbox

The ROLE Widget Store

The ROLE Showcase platform

OU rolls out Argument Mapping in its VLE

Thursday 29 Mar 2012 | KMi News

One of the research fields which KMi leads is Computer-Supported Argumentation, in particular, Argument Mapping — the visualization of the structure of an argument or debate for greater comprehension, better analysis, and collaborative sensemaking. A great example of knowledge transfer to the OU’s frontline is the ArguEd project led by Paul Piwek (Maths, Computing & Technology Faculty), an OU strategic project aiming to provide “evidence-based improvement of VLE-based formative assessment of students’ argument analysis and evaluation skills.”

To quote the site’s summary:

“CONTEXT: The ability to analyse and evaluate arguments is a key transferable skill. Firstly, it is an indispensable skill for study at Higher Education level. From the University’s point of view, retention is likely to be better for students that have mastered it. Secondly, it is central to many employability skills such as “negotiating/persuading, contributing to discussions”, “analysing facts and situations” and “the ability to produce clear, structured written work and oral literacy”. Finally, it is a skill that helps citizens to assess their own and other people’s arguments both on issues of personal importance and questions about the society they live in.

RESEARCH QUESTION: The presentation of TU100 (“My Digital Life”), which includes a part (Part 5, Block 5) dedicated to argument analysis skills, presents an opportunity to collect data from relevant iCMAs and TMA questions for answering the question: Which mistakes do students make when analysing arguments and how can we help them avoid these mistakes?”

Paul showed me the introductory tutorial on argument mapping in the OU’s Moodle-based VLE (using the OU’s OpenMark formative assessment technology), and the integrated drag+drop interface for students to complete simple argument map templates, in their analysis of a target text. The screens show how the learner drags the statements into the template in order to demonstrate their ability to parse the text into the top level claim, and supporting/challenging premises/sub-premises. Learners can then check their map, which preserves the elements in the correct place, but leaving them to try again with those they got wrong.

Fabulous to see this in use by 2000 students, and hopefully something that will spread to other faculties, now that the infrastructure is in place within the OU’s VLE. Kudos to Paul for all his hard work!

Related Links:

MCT ArguEd Project

TU100: My Digital Life

Dr Paul Piwek

CompendiumDS helps OU win gold

Thursday 29 Mar 2012 | KMi News

A great success story for KMi technology transfer: our Compendium knowledge mapping tool was customized by the OU’s Learning & Teaching Solutions team for a groundbreaking OU course U101 “Design thinking: creativity for the 21st century”.

I met with U101’s chair Peter Lloyd several years ago when the course was in conception, and we discussed the potential role that Compendium might play and the kinds of customisations it would need. Well, Peter and his team ran with it, and the results are impressive.

They produced a special edition called CompendiumDS (for Design Studio) which provides a radically new way for design students to share their projects, submit them as multimedia Compendium maps (the OU’s assignment system was extended to handle Compendium XML files), and tutors marked them by annotating the maps. U101 secured the Institute of IT Training 2011 Gold Award, with specific mention of CompendiumDS (news story).

The simplified CompendiumDS user interface is introduced in this JISC Design Studio briefing with a couple of screencasts, and a research paper documents the process including some CompendiumDS template examples:

Lloyd, Peter (2011). Does design education always produce designers? In: Researching Design Education: 1st International Symposium for Design Education Researchers, May 18-19, 2011, Paris, France. Eprint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/32291

Related Links:

Institute of IT Training 2011 Gold Award

U101: Design thinking: creativity for the 21st century

CompendiumDS features in JISC Design Studio briefing

Peter Lloyd, Professor of Design Studies

KMi’s Compendium knowledge mapping app

First Open University iBook now in Store

Tuesday 27 Mar 2012 | KMi News

The first Open University interactive iBook title “Moon Rocks” was published into the Apple Book store last week (22 March). The Open University already has over 420 eBooks in our very popular iTunes U courses, but this iBook is the first to use Apple’s new interactive publishing system.

Today the book has been featured by Apple in the “new and notable” section of the UK iTunes book store and has been highlighted in a new iTunes U course release worldwide.

The Moon Rocks iBook was produced with Apple’s iBook Author software from an ePub created by Andy Tindle and and Simon Kelley from the OU Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space & Astronomical Research. The course “Moons: an introduction” which uses the new format book is also ‘featured’ in iTunes U today. Nice one!

‘Moon Rocks’ contains a number of highly interactive elements, including NASA images and movies, plus panoramas, quizzes, and elements from our celebrated ‘Virtual Microscope’. This release is the result of extensive work between the CEPSAR authors; the Learning and Teaching Solutions team; and our own new media folks in the Knowledge Media Institute.

Well done, all!

Related Links:

Moon Rocks iBook

The iTunes U Moons course

KMi hosts the first Build A Widget Day

Tuesday 20 Mar 2012 | KMi News

KMi hosted the first Build A Widget Day last week, co-organised with the British Institute for Learning and Development (BILD). The event was attended by approximately 12 representatives of BILD member organisations.

Alexander Mikroyannidis presented the latest learning tools developed by the ROLE project and introduced participants to the ROLE course available in OpenLearn (see link below). Participants had the opportunity to use some of these tools through the structured learning activities of the course.

Additionally, participants were engaged into group activities for designing their own learning tools. The widget designs that were developed through these activities will be implemented in a subsequent code-bash event supported by the ROLE developers community (details to be announced).

Related Links:

Build A Widget Day agenda

The ROLE course in OpenLearn

Collective Intelligence Workshop @ CSCW2012

Tuesday 28 Feb 2012 | KMi News

KMi’s Anna De Liddo and Simon Buckingham Shum have recently chaired the second international Collective Intelligence workshop held in conjunction with the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW2012) in Seattle, Washington on February 11-15, 2012.

The workshop brought together researchers and practitioners in the field of collective intelligence and online discourse to discuss and understand the forms of CI that can be constructed through discourse and action, which enables advanced forms of collective sensemaking such as idea generation and prioritization, argumentation, and deliberation.
We received contributions covering topics such as:

– Collective Intelligence
– Community Ideation and Idea management Systems
– Argumentation
– Online Deliberation
– Online Discourse technologies – such as email, blogs, wikis, chats, web forums, Q&A sites, peer-rated news aggregators, social networks, ideation and argumentation tools.

The workshop has attracted senior and junior highly recognized researchers in the field from both academia and enterprise (such as i.e. IBM Watson, IBM Cambridge and Tokio, XEROX PARC, XRCE, and Samsung) which presented a full range of new technologies to reinvent online discourse and build collective intelligence and community action.

Workshop co-chair with Anna and Simon were Dr. Gregorio Convertino, senior reseach scientist at Xerox Research Center Europe (XRCE) and visiting researcher at PARC; Dr. Agnes Sandor, Project Leader at the Xerox Research Centre Europe; and Dr. Mark Klein (http://cci.mit.edu/klein/), Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.

The organizers have previously chaired successful workshops in the field of Online Discourse and Collective Intelligence.
Anna De Liddo and Simon Buckingham Shum have co organized the ODET 2010: Online Deliberation Emerging Tools workshop, co-located with the Fourth International Conference on Online Deliberation (30 June – 2 July, 2010). The ODET invitational workshop (http://olnet.org/odet2010) succeeded in bringing together many of the leading researchers and practitioners in computer-supported dialogue, deliberation and argumentation – modes of discourse central to activities including social learning, collective intelligence, debate analysis and participatory democracy. Drawing on experiences spanning business, mass media, education, government and many other public sectors, the workshop considered the state of the art in tools that are emerging from the labs, reflecting on the lessons that are being learnt around the effective usage and deployment of these tools.
Gregorio Convertino co-organized the workshop on Collective Intelligence in Organizations (www.parc.com/ciorg, [18]). The workshop occurred twice in two leading ACM conferences, CSCW 2010 and Group 2010. It brought together leading researchers and designers who are studying or developing Collective intelligence (CI) tools aimed at workers in organizations. Both workshop venues and a special journal issue (to appear) were organized to articulate the emerging research agenda around new CI tools, studies of new forms of CI in organization, and new research methods.

Participant list and Workshop Proceeding can be downloaded from the workshop website.
Here below we list the submitted workshop papers in order of presentation on the workshop day.

– The Effects of Rationale Awareness in Iterative Human Computation Processes (Research Paper)
Lu Xiao
The University of Western Ontario

– Supporting Collective Intelligence through a Recursive Annotation Tool (Research Paper)
Federico Cabitza, Marco P. Locatelli, Carla Simone
University of Milano-Bicocca

– Empowering the Middle Men: a Collaborative Innovation Platform (Research Paper)
Marcos Baez 1,3, Gregorio Convertino1,2, Arturo Mondragon2, Guillaume Bouchard2 and Cedric Archambeau2
Palo Alto Research Center1, Xerox Research Centre Europe2, University of Trento3

-Is the Crowd Biased? Understanding Group Value Judgments in Open Contribution Systems (Research Paper)
Jahna Otterbacher and Libby Hemphill
Illinois Institute of Technology

-Problems&Proposals: A Tool for Collecting Citizens Intelligence (Research Paper)
Fiorella De Cindio1, Ewa Krzatala-Jaworska2, Leonardo Sonnante1
University of Milan1, Paris 1 – Sorbonne University2

-Challenges for the Facilitation of Political Discourse in Technologically-Mediated Environments (Position Paper)
Christopher M. Mascaro1, Elizabeth A. Thiry2, Sean P. Goggins1
Drexel University1, Pennsylvania State University2

– Launching and Integrating a Civic Intelligence Forum (Position Paper)
Douglas Schuler
Public Sphere Project

-Enhancing Collective Intelligence by Enhancing Social Roles and Diversity (Position Paper)
John C. Thomas
IBM T. J. Watson Research

– The Variable Geometry of Collective Intelligence (Position Paper)
Giorgio De Michelis
DISCo, University of Milano – Bicocca

– A Discussion Dashboard for Collective Intelligence of Web Conversations (Position Paper)
Jodi Schneider, Alexandre Passant
DERI – National University of Ireland, Galway

– Beyond Discussions: Designing for Sociability and Structure (Position Paper)
Kate Ehrlich1, Steve Rohall1, Steve Ross1, Dan Gruen1, Tristan Ratchford1, John Patterson1, Hironobu Takagi2, Tatsuya Ishihara2, Akihiro Kosugi2
IBM Research Cambridge MA1, IBM Research Tokyo, Japan2

– What Can We Ask of a Crowd: Correlates of Problem Difficulty in StackOverflow (Position Paper)
Ben Hanrahan1, Les Nelson1, Gregorio Convertino1,2
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) 1, Xerox Research Centre Europe2

– Visualizations of Social Media Communication (Position Paper)
Karissa McKelvey, Filippo Menczer, Alex Rudnick and Michael Conover
Indiana University

– Is This What You Meant?: Supporting Active Listening and Grounding on the Web with Reflect (Demo)
Travis Kriplean, Michael Toomim, Jonathan T. Morgan, Alan Borning
University of Washington

– Cohere and XIP: Combining Human and Machine Annotation to Develop Collective Intelligence (Demo)
Anna De Liddo1, Agnes Sandor2 and Simon Buckingham Shum1
The Open University (UK) 1, Xerox Research Centre Europe2

– MIT Deliberatorium (Remote Presentation)
Mark Klein
MIT, Center for Collective Intelligence,
Cambridge Massachusetts, USA

Related Links:

Workshop Website

Related Links:

Workshop programme

Related Links:

Worpshop Porceedings

Related Links:

List of workshop papers Authors and Affiliations.

Related Links:

Workshop Abstract

New project: UK-wide, educational app store ‘EDUKApp’

Thursday 23 Feb 2012 | KMi News

KMi was contracted by JISC to create EDUKApp, an educational, UK-wide app and widget store. EDUKApp will be both a repository and community site that focuses on collecting and promoting widgets and apps for learning and teaching. The first prototype of EDUKApp was presented at the JISC CETIS, that took place in Nottingham on Feb 22-23 under the motto: "The Future Just Happened? Technology Innovation in Universities and Colleges". KMi researchers Fridolin Wild, Lucas Anastasiou, and Alexander Mikroyannidis used the half-day workshop to introduce to attending academics, governmental-level education officials, researchers, and software evangelists into personal learning environments, widgets, and the new store – with positive reviews and feedback.

The Open University – where learning runs day and night

Monday 20 Feb 2012 | KMi News

Students’ engagement with the Virtual Learning Environment

Students Live: The AA100 course activities*

Addition / Subtraction: [?]

You can also add and subtract a value to/from the counter using the add and subtract methods:

myCounter.add(567);
myCounter.subtract(567);
Set Value: [?]

You can manually set the value of the counter at any time using the setValue method:

myCounter.setValue(12345);
Increment To: [?]

You can set the counter to increment to a value using the current pace and inc values by using the incrementTo method:

myCounter.incrementTo(12345);
Smart Increment To: [?]

You can also let the counter figure out the best pace and inc values using a ‘smart’ increment technique.

myCounter.incrementTo(12345, 10, 400);

The above code would tell the counter to increment to 12,345 over a period of 10 seconds. I’ve also set a desired pace of 400 for the animation, but that will change when neccessary to optimize the animation.

Click the ‘Run smart increment example’ button to see a demo of this method in which the counter will increment to 4 different values, each with a duration of 10 seconds, dynamically adjusting pace and inc for optimal results.

More courses and analytic tools to come …

KMi experts predict the Future of Education

Wednesday 08 Feb 2012 | KMi News

On January 24-26, one hundred distinguished thought leaders from around the globe have convened in Austin/Texas on invitation of the New Media Consortium (NMC) to predict the Future of Education.

Within this three day retreat, thought leaders around the globe reflected and exchanged ideas around technology use in learning and connected emerging trends and metatrends, notions of renewal and transformation, and required action.

For the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute and the EU funded TELmap and STELLAR projects, Paul Lefrere and Fridolin Wild have been participating in this prestigious think tank.

“With downloads at nearly one million, readership of easily 1.5 million in over 100 countries, and 27 translations in the past ten years, the NMC Horizon Report series serves the higher education, K-12, and museum communities across the globe in their desire to understand the impact of emerging technologies on their chosen field or discipline”, as Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, states.

With a wealth of input from these three days, the new Horizon Report is currently under construction; it will have an additional focus reflecting over the 10 year period covered by previous NMC’s Horizon reports.

A small insight into one of 28 meta-trends screened: In times where libraries reinvent themselves and the publishing industry experiences a seismic shift, openness is the new imperative. As the first communique from the retreat states (see below for the link), “openness – concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information – is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world”.

Given this, it seems that the Open University may very well be the most important asset in the UK’s higher education landscape 🙂

Related Links:

TELeurope: Connect with research in technology-enhanced learning

Communique from the Horizon Project Retreat

ROLE Workshop with the eLearning Community

Friday 03 Feb 2012 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis and Teresa Connolly from KMi recently organised a ROLE workshop together with the eLearning Community (eLC) of the Open University. The workshop was part of a monthly showcase event demonstrating a wide range of both research and implementations of current eLearning applications.

Approximately 20 people were in attendance at the workshop and were thus introduced to the ROLE project through a presentation and a structured activity opportunity. The activity was divided in two parts: during the first part, participants had the opportunity to try a selection of ROLE widgets for finding and sharing learning resources. In the second part of the activity, participants used the ROLE mash-up recommender widget in order to start building their own PLE.

A report on the results of this event, together with results from similar past events, is available in the ROLE Showcase platform (see link below).

Related Links:

Suzanne leaving KMi

Tuesday 31 Jan 2012 | KMi News

Suzanne Little is leaving KMi today, after having spent the last 3 and a half years with us. She started working in KMi in July 2008 when she was appointed as Research Associate on the PHAROS project, as part of Stefan’s team. She took the opportunity to change roles as Project Officer on ECIR (March 2010), on SocialLearn (October 2010), then on OpenScout as of February 2011.

Suzanne will be joining the CLARITY research centre at Dublin City University. We wish her all the best with her new post and her career!

Open Educational Practice – making best use of free resources

Tuesday 31 Jan 2012 | KMi News

Teresa Connolly recently delivered two workshops at an Open Education Resources (OER) event in Leicester for the National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education (NIACE): “Open Educational Practice – making best use of free resources”.

Attendees soon became immersed in the imaginary world of OERopoly, a game that raises awareness about OER and encourages collaborative learning. In the spirit of openness some of the participants requested copies of the board game and associated project cards in order that they might replicate their enjoyable experience with their own colleagues and students elsewhere in the UK.

This is the seventh occasion at which OERopoly has been used in this way. Previous events have included workshops at the OpenEd ’10 conference in Barcelona, the OER ’11 conference in Manchester, and the Open CourseWare Consortium international OCWC ’11 conference in Boston. In addition the game has been used at various Support Centre for Open Educational Resources (SCORE) Short Term Fellowship events in the Open University. A workshop is also scheduled for the forthcoming joint SCORE and OCWC “Cambridge 2012” conference 16-18 April at Queen’s College, Cambridge.

A number of publications describing the use of the OERopoly game are available including a chapter in the forthcoming book: “Collaborative Learning 2.0: Open Educational Resources”, edited by Ale Okada, Teresa Connolly and Peter Scott, to be published April 2012.

Related Links:

Another member of CORE family

Monday 23 Jan 2012 | KMi News

DiggiCORE is a new two year project funded under the Digging into Data programme, which supports collaboration between the UK, USA, Canada and the Netherlands. The DiggiCORE partnership consists of KMI and The European Library. This makes DiggiCORE the only funded fully European project in the whole programme. The members of the DiggiCORE Advisory Board represent The Open University, SPARC Europe and the Europeana Foundation.

The objective of DiggiCORE is to analyse a vast set of research publications from the Open Access domain using natural language processing and social network analysis methods to identify patterns in the behaviour of research communities, to recognise trends in research disciplines, to learn new insights about the citation behaviours of researchers and to discover features that distinguish papers with high impact. The results of this analysis should enable the development of better methods for exploratory search and browsing in digital collections and should encourage new ways of evaluating research or the researcher’s impact beyond standard citation measures.

To enable the analysis, the DiggiCORE project will extend and improve the CORE system providing access to well-structured and organised information acquired by harvesting, cleaning, integrating and processing information from a very large and fast-growing collection of research publications distributed across more than 1,800 Open Access repositories and many Open Access journals. The Open University’s Open Research Online (ORO) is among the harvested institutional repositories. of the The DiggiCORE infrastructure will be freely accessible to the public through a set of web services.

Related Links:

The Open University in the new iTunes U App released today

Thursday 19 Jan 2012 | KMi News

Live from your correspondent in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, Apple have just announced iBooks2, iBooks Author and the new iTunes U.

The new-look iTunes U released by Apple today includes an innovative iTunes U app. The Open University was one of the showcase Universities in their recent launch – of the hundred courses they released in the new channel today 51 were produced by our LTS and KMi team. We may have been the only non-US partner at this particular party, but you can be sure that Universities will be rushing to join this excellent space… and from today Apple is opening to Schools, it seems!

The new free iTunes U app provides a range of new things for us to use. For example, one powerful new feature is the ability to include ordered multiple media collections. Previously, iTunes U collections were all freely accessible audio and video collections. Now, a ‘course collection’ can have a ‘contextual narrative that includes documents, eBooks, and even links to resources hosted elsewhere. Instead of looking like Music Albums, they look like University Courses laid out as simple “learning pathways”.

Neatly, these learning pathway courses correspond pretty well with the course pathways of our own SocialLearn project. That will help us ensure that everything we do here, will have an exciting life in all other OER channels. But it is clear that the Apple channel is fantastically well suited to their killer iPad and mobile integration strategy. Well done Apple. Well done us!!!

As for the new (tres cool) iBooks2 combo … watch this space!

Related Links:

SocialLearn

KMi supports FuturICT @FET Flagships Event, Warsaw

Tuesday 20 Dec 2011 | KMi News

Simon Buckingham Shum presented FuturICT’s “Global Participatory Platform” to the FET Flagship organizers in November, Warsaw, at a meeting for all six pilot projects to report on progress.

As reported in an earlier story (Sept 21, 2011), KMi is playing an active role in FuturICT, one of the EC’s FET Flagship pilots, funded to define a ground-breaking 10 year project. FuturICT (www.futurict.eu) is a visionary project that will deliver new science and technology to allow us to explore, understand and manage our connected world. Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying our complex, global, socially interactive systems probably constitutes the most pressing scientific challenge of the 21st Century. Integrating complexity science with information and communication technologies (ICT) and the social sciences, will allow us to design novel robust, trustworthy and adaptive technologies based on socially inspired paradigms. Data from a variety of sources will help us to develop models of techno-socio-economic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inspire a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organized ICT systems, which will support the building of societal-level collective intelligence.

KMI is part of this FET Flagship Pilot project, rated top of the six shortlisted to submit a full proposal for a 10 year 1billion project. KMI’s involvement is led by Simon Buckingham Shum with his work on web-based argumentation, collective intelligence and learning analytics, with John Domingue adding expertise in the brokering of semantic web services to orchestrate distributed data and services.

FuturICT was recently the cover story in Scientific American, which has generated significant media interest in the project. In contrast to the SciAm story, however, FuturICT is not seeking to pool all the world’s data in a centralised paradigm, but to leverage the power of the open, social, participatory, connected web of people and data, the Global Participatory Platform being one of the foundational elements of the concept.

Related Links:

KMi team wins dissemination trophy

Wednesday 07 Dec 2011 | KMi News

The ROLE project (Responsive Open Learning Environments) is running dissemination contests twice a year, where project partners compete over the number and quality of their dissemination activities.

The winner of the latest contest is the KMi team led by Alexander Mikroyannidis and consisting of Peter Scott, Teresa Connolly, Joe Corneli and Fridolin Wild. The team has been highly active in disseminating ROLE both within the UK and abroad, through scientific publications, seminars, open educational resources, and more.

The trophy is a pirate hat, awarded to the ‘captain’ of the team. The handover from the previous winner took place last week during the 3rd ROLE Developers Camp in Leuven.

Related Links:

KMi Learning Analytics keynote at Ascilite 2011

Tuesday 06 Dec 2011 | KMi News

Last night I was honoured to give a keynote address at Ascilite 2011, the Australasian conference on learning technology and higher education. Entitled “Learning Analytics: Dream, Nightmare, or Fairydust?”, the talk introduced the topic of learning analytics and considered some of the issues around power, principles and pedagogy that will lie at the centre of this rapidly growing research field, and commercial market.

Replay, slides and papers on the link below…

Related Links:

Learning Analytics: Dream, Nightmare, or Fairydust?

SmartProducts technology showcased at Ambient Intelligence 2011

Tuesday 22 Nov 2011 | KMi News

KMi researchers Andriy Nikolov and Keerthi Thomas travelled to Amsterdam last week for this year’s Ambient Intelligent Conference (AmI-11), where they presented the latest version of the SmartProducts Architecture for Proactive Problem Solving (SPAPS). Ambient Intelligence is a vision of the future where devices are integrated seamlessly in the environment and are able to co-operate to support users in a variety of tasks. The demonstration was very successful, attracting much attention from the conference delegates, who commented very positively both on the degree of innovation of the proposed solution and also on the quality of the technical implementation.

The scenario used in the demo shows how end-users in a Smart-Kitchen ambience are able to interact with a number of embedded and co-operating “smart products” – these include a Cooking Assistant, a Meal Planner, a Smart Fridge, and a Shopping Assistant, to receive assistance in meal planning both to minimise waste and to promote healthy eating. In particular, the demo illustrates how the Meal Planner is able to produce a set of menus for a planned party, taking into account a set of user preferences and dietary requirements, domain knowledge about food items, as well as information provided by the Fridge about suitable items already available in the house. Once a particular menu is selected by the user, it is then automatically sent to a Shopping Assistant, which generates a list of items to buy on the basis of the required ingredients and the availability of ingredients in the house. Later, when the user moves from the Kitchen to a Supermarket ambience, the Shopping Assistant is able to liase with Supermarket Agents, e.g., to identify offers which are relevant to the current shopping list.

The SPAPS architecture, which was entirely developed in KMi, combines research in semantic technologies with ubiquitous computing and builds on earlier KMi research on Problem Solving Methods and Ontologies to ensure that devices are able to reason proactively about which tasks need to be carried out, and can also engage in collaborative problem solving with other devices.

Related Links:

SmartProducts Project

OpenScout supports the collaborative reuse and adaptation of Portuguese and Brazilian OER

Wednesday 16 Nov 2011 | KMi News

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focus on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities – 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called “Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development”. From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.

Related Links:

KMi Presence at ISWC 2011

Tuesday 15 Nov 2011 | KMi News

KMi-ers were very much in evidence at the 10th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2011), which took place in Bonn, Germany on 23-27 October 2011. ISWC is the major international forum for research on the Semantic Web and the strong presence from KMi (13 members of the lab attended the conference) confirmed the lab’s reputation as a leading international research centre in the area. In particular, two papers authored by KMi-ers were presented in the highly competitive research track (19% acceptance rate): "Modelling and Analysis of User Behaviour in Online Communities" by Sofia Angeletou, Matthew Rowe and Harith Alani and "A Novel Approach to Visualizing and Navigating Ontologies" by Enrico Motta, Paul Mulholland, Silvio Peroni, Mathieu D’Aquin, Jose Manuel Gomez-Perez, Victor Mendez and Fouad Zablith. KMi was also present in the In-Use track, where Miriam Fernandez presented a paper entitled "Linking Data Across Universities: an integrated video lectures dataset", authored by Miriam Fernandez, Mathieu d’Aquin and Enrico Motta. There were also several contributions to workshops, including the paper "Semantic Technologies to Support the User-Centric Analysis of Activity Data", by Mathieu D’Aquin, Salman Elahi and Enrico Motta, which was presented at the "Social Data on the Web" (SDoW) workshop; the paper "Consuming Linked Data within a Large Educational Organisation" by Fouad Zablith, Mathieu d’Aquin, Stuart Brown and Liam Green-Hughes, presented at the Second International Workshop on Consuming Linked Data; the paper "Enabling Lightweight Semantic Sensor Networks on Android Devices", by Mathieu D’Aquin, Andriy Nikolov and Enrico Motta, presented at the Semantic Sensor Network" workshop; and the paper "An Event-Based Approach to Describing and Understanding Museum Narratives", by Paul Mulholland, Annika Wolff, Trevor Collins, and Zdenek Zdrahal. Finally, KMi-ers were also very much in evidence in the poster and demo sessions. Demos included "Building SPARQL-Enabled Applications with Android Devices", by Mathieu d’Aquin, Andriy Nikolov and Enrico Motta, and "Latest Developments in KC-Viz", by Enrico Motta, Silvio Peroni, and Mathieu d’Aquin. Both these demos made it into the final 3-papers shortlist for the best demo award. A KMi entry was also shortlisted for the best poster award: "Semantic smoothing for Twitter Sentiment Analysis", by Hassan Saif, Yulan He and Harith Alani. In addition to these contributions, KMi members were also in evidence in a variety of other events staged at the conference, as well as being part of various organizational committees. In sum, ISWC turned out to be yet another successful event for KMi, confirming the high standing of the lab in the Semantic Web area.

Related Links:

ISWC 2011

Congratulations Dr Rae!

Thursday 10 Nov 2011 | KMi News

Adam Rae became the 9th KMi student in the last year to successfully defended their PhD thesis on Friday 4th November. His thesis is entitled “Exploiting Social Networks for Recommendation in Online Image Sharing Systems” and experimental work undertaken during his studies has produced systems that help users in systems like Flickr to add more relevant tags to their photos, as well as systems that recommend images to users, based on the people they know and how they interact with each other online. His work has also shed light on the role social data has to play in significantly improving recommendation tasks in other similar online media sharing systems.

His studies were part of an academic/industrial collaboration funded by an EPSRC CASE studentship under the supervision of Stefan Rüger and Suzanne Little in KMi, and Roelof van Zwol at Yahoo! Research Barcelona.

Adam now goes on to a postdoctoral research position in Yahoo where he is extending his work in multimedia information systems by investigating geographic context information.

Celebrating another PhD

Friday 04 Nov 2011 | KMi News

Congratulations to Adam Rae who successfully completed his viva. Adam’s thesis is titled “Exploiting Social Networks for Recommendation in Online Image Sharing Systems”.

ServiceCORE project has started

Tuesday 01 Nov 2011 | KMi News

ServiceCORE is a follow up project of CORE funded by JISC. The project aims at developing a nation-wide service for searching, navigating and accessing Open Access publications stored across 143 British institutional repositories. The CORE system is unique in its way to use text-mining and linked data to connect and interlink semantically similar publications at the level of full-texts. Within ServiceCORE this functionality will be extended also to metadata records.

The fact that KMI has been funded to extend the current CORE system with new functionalities and to establish it as a British service is a great challenge as well as an acknowledgment of the CORE success and wide impact. Please read this news story to see what JISC says about CORE: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2011/09/openaccess.aspx.

The ServiceCORE project benefits from a very strong Advisory Board represented by members of OpenDOAR, UKOLN, MIMAS and The European Library.

Related Links:

Social Object Networks

Tuesday 18 Oct 2011 | KMi News

Harith Alani from KMi co-organised a workshop at the 3rd IEEE Conference on Social Computing which took place at MIT, Boston 9-11 October. The SocialObjects workshop focused on the new R&D challenges associated with management and analysis of multi-dimensional social networks.

The nuclei of most of today’s social networks are “Social Objects”; which are the objects around which people interact. Examples of such social objects include pictures on Flickr, songs on Last.fm, tags on Delicious, places on Foursquare, posts on Twitter, goods on Amazon, etc. Hence anything that allows people to connect, whether directly or indirectly, can be regarded as a social object, and can produce a social network graph.

Most current works, however, seem to flatten such multi-dimensional networks, where the social objects are often left out of the networks and analysis, and replaced with direct edges between the people in question (e.g. people who watched the same film on Netflix are represented as two directly connected nodes in a graph).

With more social networking sites becoming more open (e.g. through APIs, exportable profiles, 3rd party applications), it is now possible to generate very rich cross-community social networks that capture social connections in many different forms and around many different social objects. This raises a series of new questions and research challenges that this workshop highlighted, such as:

– What impact do the type and properties of a social object have on the particular social connection it generates?
– How do social connections and networks around heterogeneous social objects compare in terms of their dynamics and transitivity?
– What are the risks and opportunities associated with acquiring such multiple dimensional graphs?
– What technical challenges exist for acquiring, representing and analyzing such social-object centered networks?
– What new knowledge can be extracted from such rich object-centered social networks?
– How can social connections and interactions around specific social objects be fostered and exploited more intelligently for commercial and scientific purposes?
– What kind of new services and applications do knowledge captured through social objects networks enable?
– How do social object networks impact privacy of individuals and groups?

SocialObjects was co-organised with Jérôme Picault and Myriam Ribière from Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, France, and with Iván Cantador from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.

Related Links:

Linked Data Application Wins the UK Discovery Developer Competition

Friday 07 Oct 2011 | KMi News

DiscoBro, an application developed by Mathieu d’Aquin from KMi, is one of the three winners of a developer competition organized by the Resource Discovery Task Force and also won the award for the best use of the MusicNet linked dataset.

The aim of the competition was to demonstrate the benefits of open data and metadata to improve the utility of libraries, archives and museums for their users. Entries were required to make use of one or more of ten listed data sources, and were evaluated based on their usability and utility, especially in tasks related to the discovery of useful resources within the considered datasets.

DiscoBro, which is short for “Discovery Browser” is a simple Web application that makes it possible to discover data resources while browsing the Web.

It takes the form of a bookmarklet that can be dragged in the bookmark bar of the browser. While reading a page, the bookmarklet can be clicked to make appear on the side of it terms that correspond to resources mentioned in the text of the page. Each term links to the description of the corresponding resource in DBPedia (the Linked Data version of Wikipedia). Also, if the same term is described in one another data source, (e.g., MusicNet or ArchiveHub), links will appear in the list, to connect to the discovered resources.

What is remarkable here is how well such a simple addition to our usual interaction with Web content directly demonstrates the potential of linked data in terms of opening up to the discovery and reuse of online resources. Indeed, as expressed by Joy Palmer, Project Manager for UK Discovery, in her summary of the competition “instantly (it seems to me) we’re forced beyond the finding aid and document-centric mindset, and thinking about our descriptions as data that needs to be interlinkable to be found and used. It is remarkable how well Discobro works. My own search for the Stanley Kubrick archives in the Archives Hub using the bookmarklet immediately provided multiple links out to DBpedia entries on Kubrick’s life, cinematography, and films. All this is not achieved through a manual mashing of data, but an automatic ‘meshing’ that can scale (which is perhaps one of the most heady promises of Linked Data).”

Related Links:

mEducator Data set is in the Linked Open Data Cloud

Wednesday 05 Oct 2011 | KMi News

The "mEducator Linked Educational Resources" store is one of the outcomes of the mEducator project and is among a number of datasets which recently were included into the Linked Open Data cloud. The dataset contains data about educational Web resources (over 23.000 triples), mainly from the biomedical field, which was partially contributed by the 15 partners of the mEducator consortium and partially harvested and enriched from existing Web repositories. Automated enrichment techniques are used to extend and structure the naturally poorly structured metadata available on the Web and to establish links with other well-known linked open data sources, such as DBpedia or domain-specific vocabularies such as MESH or SNOMED. The dataset was created under the lead of The Open University and the L3S Research Center, Germany in collaboration with several core partners, namely Democritus University of Thrace (Greece), Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania), the CNR Institute for Educational Technology and the University degli studi di Catania.

Congratulations, Dr Lopez!

Tuesday 27 Sep 2011 | KMi News

Vanessa Lopez passed her viva with only minor modifications two weeks after another KMi student, Fouad Zablith, also passed his viva. Vanessa’s thesis “Open Question Answering on the large, distributed and heterogeneous Semantic Web” is the result on her topical and timely research.

One side effect of Vanessa’s research is an implemented and working question-answering system, PowerAqua. It is the first system to take advantage of the heterogeneous and distributed semantic data on the Web to interpret and answer natural-language user queries. In particular, PowerAqua is uniquely able to answer queries by combining and aggregating information coming from different autonomously created distributed semantic sources, providing novel mechanisms to find, map, disambiguate integrate and rank semantic data on the fly.

The examiners were Professor Anne De Roeck from the Computing department at the OU and Professor Fabio Ciravegna from the University of Sheffield, both of them emphasised the high quality of the thesis and the underlying work.

Related Links:

PowerAqua

KMi closes i-KNOW conference with vision of a university out of the box

Tuesday 27 Sep 2011 | KMi News

KMi professor Stefan Rueger gave the closing keynote of this year’s i-KNOW conference at Graz’s congress hall.

i-KNOW is the premier conference on knowledge management and knowledge technologies in Europe and has a tradition of bringing together more than 500 leading researchers and practitioners involved in knowledge management.

Rueger’s talk “Knowledge discovery in the web: potential, automation and limits” reflected on the value and potential of social networks, interlinked data, semantic web and data-mining. At the same time he elicited new research directions, which are only enabled by the sheer mass of data, sensors, facts, reports, opinions and inter-linkage of people.

Rueger presented the hypothesis that scale, linked open data, social networks, open educational resources and new modes of human information interactions provide for a rich and rewarding environment for knowledge discovery in the web. He looked at these ingredients in turn and mixed them to envisage killer applications: The combination of linked open data, open educational resources, learner networks such as SocialLearn, are potent ingredients for learning, teaching and competence building in a “e” type of university out of the box (the only missing elements being student administration, examination and accreditation). Another application of linked open data together with open algorithms is the truly reproducible science experiment, where labs share data and analysis for everyone to check with their own methods and data. Rueger also made the case for analysis with a view to automatically annotating documents for sensemaking and for citizen science, where social networks around nature observations contribute to extensive biodiversity surveys and beyond.

Related Links:

iKNOW 2011

KMi wins the Best Poster/Demo Award at TPDL 2011

Tuesday 27 Sep 2011 | KMi News

The KMi submission authored by Petr Knoth, Vojtech Robotka and Zdenek Zdrahal entitled: ” Connecting Repositories in the Open Access Domain using Text Mining and Semantic Data” won the Best Poster/Demo Award at the International Conference on Theory and Practise of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2011) which is this week taking place in Berlin, Germany.

The European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL) has been the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries for 14 years. For the 15th year the conference was renamed into: International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL).

Related Links:

CORE

Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2012

Friday 23 Sep 2011 | KMi News

KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum is Program Co-Chair for the 2nd International Conf. on Learning Analytics and Knowledge. There’s now 3 weeks to go to submit papers to the premier research forum for this fast moving field at the intersection of big data, learning sciences and analytics. Join us in Vancouver! (April 29-May 2, 2012)

We are experiencing an unprecedented explosion in the quantity and quality of information available not only to us, but about us. We must adapt individually, institutionally and culturally to the transition in technologies and social norms that makes this possible, and question their impacts. What are the implications of such data availability for learning and knowledge building – not only in established contexts, but also in the emerging landscape of free, open, social learning online?

Within the learning technologies research and development community, this question has catalyzed the International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference, now in its second year. Learning Analytics is concerned with the collection, analysis and reporting of data about learning in a range of contexts, including informal learning, academic institutions, and the workplace. It informs and provides input for action to support and enhance learning experiences, and the success of learners. Learning and Knowledge Analytics 2012 supports the emerging academic field by connecting the community of researchers and developers, creating and disseminating new developments and practices, studying transformations, and providing ongoing evaluation and critique of the conceptual, technical, and practice outcomes.

Educational institutions are under intense pressure to make improvements and savings, while still delivering on their mission to support learners using all possible means. The effective use of information about learners can be part of the solution to this dilemma. Analytics seeks to provide rapid, real time answers to questions such as:

Who is at risk of failing?
What kinds of interventions make most difference to learners?
How am I doing compared to my peers?
How effective is this course?
Who are the key people in this community?
Are there quality learning conversations in this forum?
What is or can be different about learning and learning experiences when combined with learning analytics?
Social media, open data, web analytics, semantic web, data mining and recommendation engines may hold the answers, but they also combine to create a powerful but complex data deluge, which surpasses the ability of organizations to make sense of it. What is needed to tame this technical complexity for learners, educators and administrators?

While ‘business intelligence’ infrastructure is well established for certain kinds of performance indicator, is there an equivalent for tracking the rather more complex processes of authentic learning and knowledge sharing? Is there the risk that learning analytics will damage learning and knowledge flows by monitoring and measuring them inappropriately?

These technical, pedagogical, policy and social domains must be brought into dialogue with each other to ensure that interventions and organizational systems serve the needs of all stakeholders.

Full details of topics, keynotes and the different ways to participate on the conference website.

Related Links:

Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2012

KMi helping to shape FuturICT EU Flagship

Wednesday 21 Sep 2011 | KMi News

More than 300 scientists from around Europe are responding to the EU FET Flagship call for a ground-breaking 10 year project. The ultimate goal of the FuturICT flagship project is to understand and manage complex, global, socially interactive systems, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. FET Flagships are ambitious large-scale, science-driven, research initiatives that aim to achieve a visionary goal. The scientific advance should provide a strong and broad basis for future technological innovation and economic exploitation in a variety of areas, as well as novel benefits for society. FuturICT was ranked top of a shortlist of six submissions, who now have a year’s funding to build the consortium and develop the detailed proposal. The vision is of integrating ICT, Complexity Science and the Social Sciences to develop models of techno-socio-economic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inform the development of a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organized ICT systems. KMi’s involvement, led by Simon Buckingham Shum, working with Prof Jeff Johnson in Maths, Computing & Technology Faculty, focuses on the applications to Education, and the concept of a Global Participatory Platform which opens up participation to diverse stakeholders in society. How can the power of large datasets, modelling, simulation and visualization tools, and the debates about their significance for society, become a public good, rather than the preserve of an elite?

ROLE online course now available in OpenLearn

Friday 16 Sep 2011 | KMi News

Alexander Mikroyannidis and Teresa Connolly have prepared an online course about Responsive Open Learning Environments, which is now available in OpenLearn. The course provides an overview of the concepts behind Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and also demonstrates a selection of learning tools that have been developed by the ROLE project. Additionally, it gives the learner an opportunity to use some of these tools through a set of learning activities.

The European project ROLE is aiming at empowering learners for lifelong and personalised learning within a responsive open learning environment. The project is advancing the state-of-the-art in human resource management; self-regulated and social learning; psycho-pedagogical theories of adaptive education and educational psychology; service composition and orchestration; and the use of ICT in lifelong learning.

Related Links:

From R to R2

Tuesday 13 Sep 2011 | KMi News

Fridolin Wild of KMi gave an invited talk in the special track on ‘Science 2.0’ at this years I-KNOW’11, in which he reflects on the change taking place in research practice, participation, and supporting technology.

Fridolin observes, that the cottage industry model of research is outdated (= one location, one institution), but that at the same time its alternatives – far-flung teams in industrial-scale, distributed research projects – are not yet equipped with the support instruments desperately needed.

While Web 2.0 technologies bear the potential to overcome this crisis and bear the potential to even broaden out participation in scholarly communication into civil society, required social-media-based research instruments still fall short in functionality.

“For example”, he predicts, “models of access to research artefacts currently shift from ‘R’ to ‘R^2’: from retrieval of research articles to retrieval and recommendations”, with vendors of research environments investing heavily into recommender systems, not only into search technology.

“We can expect brilliant new research support instruments coming up on the horizon”, he adds, “but still they are far from covering the use cases possible.”

In the subsequent open discussion, challenges for research on research 2.0 are identified and include – amongst others – predictive models for research trend detection, relevance measures fostering creativity rather than topicality, and new instruments for discourse analysis.

Fridolin is a researcher at the Knowledge Media Institute and the general scientific manager of the European Commission funded Network of Excellence STELLARnet. STELLARnet is currently developing a research 2.0 infrastructure for the research area of techology-enhanced learning.

Related Links:

… go on with vigour and to hope for the best

Tuesday 13 Sep 2011 | KMi News

Teresa Connolly, of KMi & SCORE Fellow, recently delivered a workshop at the 18th International ALT conference in the University of Leeds, 6-8th September: “Enhancing synergies between technologists, learning support specialists and academics utilizing Open Educational Resources (OER)” along with SCORE Fellows Alannah Fitzgerald (Durham) and Jane Gay (Kingston) in association with Gabriel Reedy (Kings College, London) and Tom Browne (Exeter). The workshop was well attended having been designed to equip learning technologists with strategies for collaborating with academics and learning support professionals in the adoption and adaptation of OER for learning and teaching.

ALT presented the idea that: In 2011, education systems throughout the world are attempting to do more, better, and often with less. As the political, economic, social, agency and technological landscapes change, it is tempting for people in the learning technology community simply to “go on with vigour, hoping for the best” quoting Pitt the Younger, 1791, speaking about the disruptive effects of the French Revolution on trade and on the British position generally.

Related Links:

ALT C 18th Conference, University of Leeds 2011

KMI @ NTCIR CrossLink competition

Friday 09 Sep 2011 | KMi News

The KMI team consisting of Petr Knoth, Lukas Zilka and Zdenek Zdrahal scored first in the NTCIR CrossLink competition in the manual assessment category in A2F P@5. The team placed consistently in the top three in other categories. Twelve international teams took part in the evaluation. NTCIR is a major forum (similar to TREC) of evaluation workshops designed to enhance research in Information Access (IA) technologies including information retrieval, question answering, text summarization, extraction, etc. The NTCIR-9 will take place as usually in Tokyo, Japan this December. The CrossLink task (Cross-Lingual Link Discovery – CLLD) is a way of automatically finding potential links between documents in different languages. It is not directly related to traditional cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) because CLIR can be viewed as a process of creating a virtual link between the provided cross-lingual query and the retrieved documents; but CLLD actively recommends a set of meaningful anchors in the source document and uses them as queries with the contextual information from the text to establish links with documents in other languages. Wikipedia is an online multilingual encyclopaedia that contains a very large number of articles covering most written languages and so it includes extensive hypertext links between documents of same language for easy reading and referencing. However, the pages in different languages are rarely linked except for the cross-lingual link between pages about the same subject. This could pose serious difficulties to users who try to seek information or knowledge from different lingual sources. Therefore, cross-lingual link discovery tries to break the language barrier in knowledge sharing. With CLLD users are able to discover documents in languages which they either are familiar with, or which have a richer set of documents than in their language of choice.

KMi at Web of Data summer school

Wednesday 24 Aug 2011 | KMi News

KMi professor Stefan Rueger taught international students last week at the summer school “Web of Data” held in St Petersburg, Russia. The summer school aimed to bring cutting-edge topics, problems and methods in Information Retrieval and Database Technology to graduate and PhD students as well as experienced academic and industrial researchers. The main sponsors of the summer school were Yandex, a Russian search engine company, and Google.

Stefan Rueger gave a series of lectures on multimedia information retrieval and discussed new and emerging research topics with the participants. Multimedia databases are amongst the most difficult databases to query and index meaningfully. This course looked at cases where the query itself is a multimedia excerpt, for example, when you stroll around in an unknown place and want to send a photo of an interesting landmark to a search engine as a query hoping you are told more about it. This course discussed underlying techniques and common approaches to facilitate multimedia queries and indexing: fingerprinting of multimedia to recognise known objects; metadata and piggy-back text access where automated processes create text surrogates for multimedia; automated image annotation; content-based image queries and indexing. Thelatter was studied in great depth analysing features and distances, and how to effectively combine them for efficient database access.

All in all eight topics were covered during the week of the summer school in two parallel sessions, while the evenings between 6pm and 7.30pm were taken by an adjoining Young Scientists Conference in Information Retrieval. Four Social events from 8pm to midnight ensured there was every opportunity to network beyond learning. The school was co-organized by Saint Petersburg State University, Russian Information Retrieval Evaluation Seminar (ROMIP), and EDBT Association.

Related Links:

Web of Data summer school

New Reference for the Semantic Web

Monday 22 Aug 2011 | KMi News

The Handbook of Semantic Web Technologies edited by John Domingue, Dieter Fensel and Jim Hendler has just been published by Springer. This two volume reference work contains 22 chapters spanning over 1000 pages covering all the essential areas of Semantic Web research today. The book was first conceived in the summer of 2008 when the editors along with Springer felt that the Semantic Web was moving into a mature phase whereby significant corporate interest was aligned with changes in the main funding streams. A reference was required to support the new phase. To this end an advisory board was setup which provided advice on structure and possible authors. This set composed of the advisory board and chapter authors comprised a very significant portion of the world’s leading researchers in the area including for example Chris Bizer, Tim Finin, Frank van Harmelen, Ian Horrocks, Mark Musen, Nigel Shadbolt, Guus Schreiber, Amit Sheth, Steffen Staab, Rudi Studer and Chris Welty. Besides editorship KMi also played a significant role in the work with chapter authors including: Harith Alani, Mathieu d’Aquin, John Domingue, Enrico Motta and Carlos Pedrinaci. The text is split into two volumes: the first covering the foundations of the Semantic Web and the second covering applications from both a technical and market perspective. Although early days the signs are that this tome will soon become the main reference work for the area.

The Future of Research Communication

Monday 22 Aug 2011 | KMi News

KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum and Anna De Liddo spent an intensive 4 days in Germany last week working with leading figures to envisage the future of research communication.

Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics is a premier venue for hosting invitational informatics workshops. “FORC: The Future of Research Communication” was a Perspectives Workshop, bringing together leading people from academia, libraries and publishing.

Together with slides from various talks, the joint outcome will be a white paper designed to catalyse action to open up scholarly publishing and catalyse new collaborations around the socio-technical infrastructure needed to evolve a system which is increasingly not fit for purpose for the tackling the complex, urgent challenges of today (to borrow Doug Engelbart’s phrase, from 1962).

The future technical infrastructure will bring the “consumers” and peers closer to researchers as people, and the materials of their research (data, models, workflows, arguments, etc), using the wealth of channels and media now available.

Background

KMi’s pioneering work since the late 1990s into social, semantic scholarly publishing and internet argumentation has established it as one of the leaders in the field (e.g. the Journal of Interactive Media in Education; the EPSRC Scholarly Ontologies Project; the Hewlett Foundation Cohere Project).

Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics:

(German: Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik GmbH) is the world’s premier venue for informatics. World-class scientists, promising young researchers, and practioners come together to exchange their knowledge and to discuss their research findings. The Center promotes fundamental and applied research, continuing and advanced academic education, and the transfer of knowledge between those involved in the research side and application side of informatics. The key instruments for promoting research are the Dagstuhl Seminars and the Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshops, which bring together internationally renowned leading scientists for the purpose of exploring a cutting-edge informatics topic. The friendly and open climate at the conference center promotes a culture of communication and exchange among the seminar participants.

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SSSW 2011: Simply the Best

Friday 12 Aug 2011 | KMi News

The 8th European Summer School on Ontological Engineering and the Semantic Web (SSSW 2011) took place from 10 to 16 July in Cercedilla (Spain), confirming the SSSW series as the premiere educational event in the area of semantic technologies. Indeed, despite the plethora of educational events which have sprung up in the past few years and despite the attempts from other schools to replicate the SSSW approach, this was arguably the most successful SSSW event ever, attracting 140 applications (for 50 places) from 38 countries, as well as sponsorship from 16 different organizations, drawn from both academia and industry.
The groundbreaking SSSW series of summer schools started in 2003 and over the years has established a unique reputation for the quality of its teaching, which is based on an innovative pedagogical model, combining the practical with the theoretical, and adding teamwork and a competitive element to the mix. In addition, SSSW summer schools provide a stimulating environment in which participants benefit not only from the formal and practical sessions but also from informal and social interactions with both world-class researchers and the other participants to the school. To ensure such intensive interaction, a very high tutor-to-student ratio is implemented.
In conclusion, in an increasingly crowded landscape of educational events SSSW remains the ‘real thing’ and once again upheld its reputation as the leading educational event in the Semantic Web area. Eight years after its initial pioneering effort, SSSW continues to provide distinctive value and a unique experience to students from all over the world.

Related Links:

SSSW Homepage

Sky News Interview for the Webs 20th Anniversary

Wednesday 10 Aug 2011 | KMi News

On August the 6th the Web became 20 years old and in that time has come a long way from allowing physicists managing documents at CERN to now providing a platform for business, media and an ever-growing amount of human social activity. The event has been marked by a number of stories in the news and one recently appeared in the online edition of Sky News featuring an interview with KMi’s John Domingue. The article first gives a short history of the Web before including quotes from John on the fact that mobile devices will soon come to be the dominant Web access device and that privacy is currently an unsolved problem. Whatever happens you can be sure that the next 20 years will be even more exciting that the first 20.

Related Links:

Story picked up by Orange UK

First results of the TELeurope.eu interdisciplinarity survey in technology enhanced learning

Wednesday 27 Jul 2011 | KMi News

Last month an extensive questionnaire has been sent out to ~1.000 users of TELeurope.eu, a research community platform in technology-enhanced learning (TEL). 123 researchers from 25 different European countries replied and provided detailed information about their research backgrounds, practices and preferred methodology. The data is being combined with a network analysis of interpersonal platform connections.

First results indicate the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany to be core regions of TEL research in Europe. Among the respondents, Spanish researchers are more rooted in computer science, while the majority of German academics has a background in social science disciplines. UK, however, stands out as the center of cross-disciplinary research. Common TEL methodology includes design based research, user centered design, communities of practice and qualitative empirical methods. More results are to be published soon.

Related Links:

TELeurope website

First KMi Summit on Linked Data and the OU

Wednesday 27 Jul 2011 | KMi News

Linked Data, the sharing of data on the Web at large scale through the use of URIs, the HTTP protocol and RDF is gaining uptake at an ever increasing rate. As, commonly known, this technology is now supported by a number of large players including the UK Government, the BBC, Google, Yahoo and to some extent Facebook.

In addition to the relative simplicity of the principles and technologies underlying Linked Data a second major reason for its growing popularity is that it is supported by a number of high quality industrial-strength tools. Following, from this we now find ourselves in a situation where a number of KMi related projects are deploying Linked Data here at the OU. This first summit provided an opportunity for these projects to outline what has been achieved thus far and for KMi in general to discuss plans and priorities for future development and deployment.

Specifically, the event covered the following projects:

LUCERO – the project which setup data.open.ac.uk the first Linked Data site in the UK (and probably the world) for a higher education establishment.
RADAR – which supports the analysis and management of OU research data thus aiding with the OU REF submission.
CORE – connecting together disparate scientific repositories enabling them to be searched as a single resource.
Annomation and SugarTube – which enable, respectively, the annotation and semantic search over BBC archives. These tools aim to support OU course teams who wish to find relevant video segments related to a specific OU course topic.
UCIAD – which uses Linked Data to support the analysis of user activity across OU systems.

Overall the event was very successful, showcasing a number of innovations and also how useful Linked Data already is to the OU business. One of the main action points of the meeting is that KMi will support the creation of a new OU-wide Linked Data portal which will: act as a central repository for all relevant resources; document relevant activities; and act as an OU Linked Data showcase.

Related Links:

Why, why, why DELILA?

Wednesday 27 Jul 2011 | KMi News

Teresa Connolly, KMi, & Jo Parker, Head of Information Literacy, OU Library attended the JISC/HEA OMAC & CILIP joint meeting at Senate House, London 26th July. It was a DELILA disemination event for developers of information & digital literacy teaching & learning materials organised by the London School of Economics (LSE), Birmingham University & the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Information Litercy (IL) Group hosted by the University of London Centre for Distance Education.

Delivering Educators’ Learning and Information Literacy for Accreditation: DELILA is one of the JISC/Higher Education Academy (HEA) OER Phase II funded projects in the Open Materials for Accredited Courses: OMAC strand.

There were a series of talks & workshops to exchange ideas & good practice as well as an opportunity to experiment with existing information literacy & digital literacy Open Educational Resources (OER).

Teresa displayed her SCORE Teaching Fellowhship poster focused on the LabSpace unit “OER Academic Practice” alongside that of her fellow SCORE Teaching Fellow Jane Gay, Kingston University, whose poster featured her LabSpace unit “An Introduction to Learning & Teaching in Higher Education”.

There was much interest in both LabSpace units as they bring together not only an index of UK & international OER Academic Practice but also highlight specific OER materials and, as such, are unique contributions to this aspect of Post Graduate Certificates in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education.

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OpenScout and ROLE workshops in ED-MEDIA and ICALT

Monday 18 Jul 2011 | KMi News

Alexandra Okada and Alexander Mikroyannidis from KMi organised an international workshop at the ED-MEDIA conference on June 29th in Lisbon, Portugal. The workshop was entitled “Social networking for collaborative authoring, adapting and sharing of Open Educational Resources” and was related to the work currently being undertaken within the OpenScout project. The workshop organisers introduced participants to the notion of social networking for supporting the collaborative adaptation of open educational resources (OER) and showcased the OpenScout tool library as a proof of concept. The participants had a chance to discuss the challenges involved in localising, adapting and improving existing educational materials on the web, as well as share OER tools and repositories through the tool library. Alexandra and Alexander also delivered a demonstration of OpenScout technologies during the Poster/Demo session of ED-MEDIA.

Alexander Mikroyannidis represented KMi and the OU at the workshop organised by the ROLE project on July 7th in Athens, Georgia, USA in conjunction with ICALT 2011. The workshop’s topic was Self-Regulated Learning in Responsive Open Learning Environments (SRL-ROLE). Apart from paper presentations, the workshop featured group discussions between attendees regarding the main challenges around SRL, both from the teacher’s and the learner’s perspective.

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Web Science Summer School

Wednesday 13 Jul 2011 | KMi News

The second Web Science Summer School took place 6-13 July in Galway, Ireland. The school was organised by the Digital Enterprise Research Institute, NUI Galway, and was attended by over fifty international researchers.

Harith Alani from KMi, who is a fellow of the Web Science Trust, was one of the invited speakers at the school this year. Dr Alani’s keynote was on methods and tools for monitoring activities and behaviour in online communities. The talk emphasised the role of Web Science in determining and shaping new approaches for analysing online communities to reach a better understanding, management, and forecasting of their dynamics and evolution.

Dr Alani reported on some of the novel methods and results that his team have produced so far as part of the WeGov and ROBUST European projects.

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The 2011 STI Semantic Summit – Addressing current challenges of the semantic web

Tuesday 12 Jul 2011 | KMi News

Every two years the STI international holds a Semantic Summit aiming to discuss and address a number of open scientific and domain or industry challenges of strategic importance to STI and to the Semantic Technology Community. The third semantic summit was held last week in Riga and KMi representatives (John Domingue, Carlos Pedrinaci and Maria Maleshkova) were included among the 50 invitation-only participants.

The summit consisted of provocative and future-oriented sessions, dominated by short presentations and animated discussions. The main themes included:
-Linked Data: What Next? Or Future the Semantic Web
-Processing Linked Data for Applications: Requirements and Scenarios
— Strategic Future of LOD: making it work
— Semantic Web and LOD applications
— Services and semantics on mobile platforms
— Linked data services and applications: E-Government, social networking, …
-Computation, storage, and management aspects
— Data management at scale: storage, search, inference, data integration, …
— Reasoning / Problem Solving over LOD
— Role of services and semantics in LOD applications
Semantics in Cloud Computing

Related Links:

http://www.sti2.org/events/2011-sti-semantic-summit

Web Science 2011 Best Paper Award

Thursday 30 Jun 2011 | KMi News

Matthew Rowe and Harith Alani won the Best Paper Award at the Web Science Conference 2011, located in Koblenz, Germany, for their paper in collaboration with Marcel Karnstedt, Jeffrey Chan and Conor Hayes from National University of Ireland, Galway titled ‘The Effect of User Features on Churn in Social Networks’.

The paper explored how ‘churn’ in social networks can be predicted by assessing patterns in user behaviour within a community. Churn is the notion of the loss of users, a term borrowed from the telecommunications domain. A risk posed to online community managers and hosts is mass churning, where many users leave the community, and as a result the value of the community diminishes. Prior to this work there was no clear understanding of what behaviour leads a user to churn, thus rendering its prediction limited.

In the paper the authors presented a detailed correlation analysis of the relationship between behaviour patterns exhibited by users and their churn probabilities. The findings from such analyses over community message board data found that globally, users who participate more are less likely to leave. However distinct forums exhibited idiosyncratic behaviour where, in certain cases, the more central a user was to a network – i.e. the more information that flows through the user – then the more likely they are to leave the community, while for other forums the converse was the case. The paper also found significant network effects on a user’s likelihood to churn, where an increase in the number of neighbours or friends that leave a community influences the user in leaving also.

Such findings empower community managers and hosts in detecting the early signs of churning behaviour and allow them to act accordingly to retain users and maintain a valuable community.

Related Links:

Best Paper Award Information

KMi keynotes on knowledge discovery in the web

Tuesday 28 Jun 2011 | KMi News

Computer Science is a subject with rapid changes and always brimming with new ideas. One of the emerging hot topics is “knowledge discovery in the web”. Taking its roots in document understanding of single texts of early computer linguistics, knowledge discovery in the web goes far beyond looking up the odd article in wikipedia or analysing isolated text-only documents: it aims to distill knowledge, ideas and trends from databases, digitised books, videos and web-pages; from figures, tables and mathematical expressions in scientific papers; from the social web around us in form the likes of facebook, twitter and technorati; from individual and collective user behaviour through search terms used (that, for example, may indicate a pandemic in the making) to games with a purpose (that make explicit some of the hidden knowledge in the web).

KMi professor Stefan Rüger has been invited to address a number of communities with different independent keynotes about research in this hot new topic. The most recent invitation was for IKnow 2011, the 11th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies, which takes place at Graz’s exhibition hall in September. Rüger’s critical take on this new field examines the value and potential of social networks, interlinked open data, semantic web and data-mining and sheds some light on new research directions, which are only enabled by the sheer mass of data, sensors, facts, reports, opinions and inter-linkage of people. In May he gave an invited talk about this at a Dagstuhl seminar on Challenges in Document Mining and, later the same month, he delivered a keynote at a round-table discussion hosted by DFG, Germany’s largest research funding organisation. In June, he gave a keynote on multimedia understanding at CBMI 2011, a much-noted scientific event on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing.

Related Links:

KMi Releases Linked Services iPhone App

Thursday 23 Jun 2011 | KMi News

Last month saw the release of SOA4RealEstate in the iTunes App Store, an iPhone application that allows users to make informed decisions when looking for a property to buy in the UK. The app, which was demo-ed during John Domingue’s inaugural lecture held last week, allows users to combine on demand linked data coming from UK’s initiative towards exposing governmental data, together with added-value information provided by third-party Web APIs. In particular, the application currently mashes up data about properties coming from Nestoria’s Web API, together with linked data about train stations, bus stations, and schools available at data.gov.uk. SOA4RealEstate was developed during the last months of the SOA4All project jointly by TIE (NL), Hanival (AU) and our very own Carlos Pedrinaci, Ning Li and Dong Liu. The application explores and tries to leverage the complementarity between linked data and services on the Web. It builds upon KMi’s linked services infrastructure such as iServe in order to discover suitable Web APIs which are invoked on the fly and are mashed up with third-parties’ linked data, making the user experience as pleasant as possible by abstracting away the technical details related to this data and services integration. On the basis of these core technologies the application is ready for integrating new sources of data by simply publishing to our registry new service annotations in terms of the ontology that drives the App. This feature which is highly valuable for mobile devices demonstrates how, by means of our linked services technologies, applications can seamlessly evolve without requiring any code modification.

7th Joint European Summer School on Technology-Enhanced Learning

Tuesday 14 Jun 2011 | KMi News

The 7th Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning took place in Chania, Crete from the 30th of May to the 3rd of June. 68 participants, young researchers and senior researcher, came together for one week to “adopt a critical stance in thinking about the role of technologies in providing opportunities for learners and the potential of these opportunities in terms of learning”.

The multidisciplinary programme included lectures ranging from modelling the research of every participant to situate it within the TEL community, psychology-informed design of responsive open personal learning environments, learning analytics, business engagement, adaptive hypermedia, trends in game-based learning, augmented reality, open educational resources, to possibilities for publishing in the IJTEL journal.

Several parallel workshops provided an in-deep view of the lectures and introduced further emerging TEL topics.
Speakers included the TEL experts Evgheny Bogdanov, Paul De Bra, Michael Derntl, Erik Duval, Alan Fletcher, Denis Gillet, Marie Joubert, Vana Kamtsiou, Michael Kickmeier-Rust, Ralf Klamma, Peter Kraker, Milos Kravcik, Katherine Maillet, Nikos Manouselis, Elpida Makrigiannis, Ambjorn Naeve, Nikos Palavitsinis, Maria Perifanou, Dominik Renzel, Salvador Sanchez, Maren Scheffel, Carl Smith, Sofoklis Sotiriou, Fridolin Wild, and Martin Wolpers.

Lectures and workshops were balanced with sessions for doctoral students to present and discuss their research and to get feedback from senior researchers.

Among the funding projects and institutions, was the FP7 funded STELLAR Network of Excellence (which is led by KMi) and the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning, (founding president, Peter Scott).

For further information about this event take a look at the summer school page: http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/summer-school-2011 and to see the summer school video visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h33ymQSMYcM

To find out more about the upcoming events, join the doctoral community group on TELeurope: http://teleurope.eu/docop

Related Links:

ROLE meets in Shanghai

Monday 13 Jun 2011 | KMi News

The annual General Assembly of the ROLE (Responsive Open Learning Environments) project took place last week in Shanghai. The event was hosted by the School of Continuing Education at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). The attendees were toured to the distant education facilities of the SJTU and had a chance to talk with students and teachers about teaching methods and learning experiences in the Chinese culture.

KMi was represented by Alexander Mikroyannidis, who is leading the work undertaken by the ROLE test-beds. The ROLE test-beds provide the platforms for trying out and evaluating ROLE learning technologies in a variety of settings, including formal education, informal e-learning, as well as learning in the workplace.

The discussions and decisions of the General Assembly were directed towards shaping the ROLE strategy for its 3rd year. This will happen through a series of mini-projects targeting the development and evaluation of learning technologies, as well as increasing outreach to communities of developers, researchers, and users.

Related Links:

ESWC Best Demo Award

Tuesday 07 Jun 2011 | KMi News

Mathieu d’Aquin, Fouad Zablith and Enrico Motta have won the best demo award at this year’s Extended Semantic Web Conference, which took place in Crete last week.

The demostration concerned wayOU, a mobile app based on Linked Data, which supports social location tracking at the Open University. wayOU enables Open University staff and students to declare their whereabouts at the OU campus, along with the purpose of their visits. This Android-based app is then able to create connections among the OU peers, to support collaboration and social networking across the organisation. An important feature of this app is that it allows end users both to make use of and also to contribute to the OU Linked Data accessible at http://data.open.ac.uk. Thus, OU staff and students can add personal information, such as their workplace address, visit history, etc., to the OU Linked Data cloud.

The application is part of the LUCERO project, and is available for download from http://lucero-project.info/lb/2011/05/wayou-mobile-location-tracking-app-using-linked-data/.

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The First ESWC Summer School

Monday 06 Jun 2011 | KMi News

Just under 50 students from twenty countries attended the first ESWC Summer School, which took place in Kalamaki, Crete during the last week of May. The event, directed by Prof John Domingue, and including Tutors who are leading researchers in the field, provided an opportunity for Masters and Ph.D. students in the area of the Semantic Web as well as researchers from academia and industry to learn about the latest hot topics in the area. Specifically, the school covered: advanced reasoning, Linked Open Data theory and practice, vocabulary construction and alignment, Semantic Web APIs and services, and Semantic Web front ends. Building on an extensive set of previous schools, the ESWC School followed the principles of mixing theory and practical hands-on sessions and emphasizing some of the soft skills that accomplished researchers require. The keynote speakers comprised of the following leaders in the area: Ian Horrocks (Univ. of Oxford, UK), Chris Bizer (Free Univ. Berlin, Germany), Mark Greaves (Vulcan Inc., USA), Chris Welty (IBM Watson Research Center, USA), and Fausto Giunchiglia (Univ. of Trento, Italy). Communication and networking between students, tutors and invited speakers ensured that the overall experience was engaging, fruitful and immense fun. The poster session of the summer school provided students with opportunities to present and discuss their research work with tutors as well as with fellow students. The student project allowed students to bring together and apply what they had learnt and we know of a number that are currently being written up for publication. Prizes were awarded to the best student poster and best student project at the end of the school. The school is aligned with the ESWC Conference with the aim of ensuring that the emerging and next generation of organizers and contributors to the conference continues to grow and become en-cultured in the general Semantic Web community.

Collaborate to compete

Monday 06 Jun 2011 | KMi News

Teresa Connolly recently represented KMi at the UNESCO International workshop “Open Educational Resources and Intellectual Property Rights” held at the Russian National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Her presentation “Collaborate to compete” included descriptions of numerous OER based projects, including ROLE, as examples of achieving best practice through collaboration. More than 50 participants attended the two day workshop from Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

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KMi at National Digital Leaders Conference 2011

Friday 20 May 2011 | KMi News

KMi’s Alan Fletcher was invited by LearnDirect to speak at the Skills and Learning workshop at GoOn ND11.
GoON:ND11: the 6th National Digital Conference on 11th & 12th May 2011 at Old Billingsgate was the largest gathering and online participation to date of partners across the UK who want to work together to inspire, encourage and support millions more people online.
The Learning and Skills workshop focussed on how the UK can leverage technology to develop a 21st century competitive skills base. It considered the power of technology to transform education and skills, looking at the impact of both formal and increasingly informal digital learning opportunities.
The theme reviewed how those working across the spectrum of ages to promote 21st Century learning and skills can better understand the role of technology to drive efficiencies, to engage with audiences and to develop better structures for personalised learning and more innovative and effective ways to enable transformation through learning.

Related Links:

ND11 – 6th National Digital Conference

LearningEmergence.net launches!

Friday 20 May 2011 | KMi News

KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum has co-founded LearningEmergence.net, a research and development website and international network, with the Systems Centre: Learning & Leadership, University of Bristol.

This collaborative venture exploits the complementary expertise of KMi’s work on social sensemaking knowledge media, with Ruth Deakin Crick’s work on 21st Century pedagogy, joining forces to drive forward our mutual interest in the future of learning in schools, universities and the workplace.

We only have modest ambitions of course… How do we weave coherently the research, practices, policies, technologies and enterprise needed to build the learning skills, habits of mind and dispositions needed for the 21st Century?

As the website explains, the approach that the network is fostering is wholistic — a critical convergence between pedagogies for deep learning, complexity theory/systems thinking, models for transformative leadership in turbulent times, and knowledge media.

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KMi at OER11

Monday 16 May 2011 | KMi News

The UK Open Educational Resources (OER11) conference took place in the Manchester Conference Centre 11th-13th May 2011. KMi was represented by Teresa Connolly, Alexander Mikroyannidis, and Alexandra Okada.

Teresa along with Elpida Makriyannis (IET), Tina Wilson (IET) and Andy Lane (MCT) ran a very successful workshop centred on the game OERopoly. Both the global version and the localised UK version of the game were available. Further requests to repurpose the game were also received from a variety of participants.

Alexander and Alexandra presented their work on enabling and supporting users in localising, adapting and improving educational materials. They demonstrated the OpenScout tool library, an open online environment for sharing OER adaptation practices and experiences.

In addition, Elpida and Teresa have written a chapter about the use of games as mediating artefacts for the forthcoming KMi edited book: “Collaborative Learning: Open Educational Resources” edited by Ale Okada, Teresa Connolly & Peter Scott due for publication this summer.

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SOA4All: Achieving a Paradigm Shift in Software Development

Thursday 12 May 2011 | KMi News

The three year 13M Euro SOA4All project has now come to an end with a very successful final review. The main aim of the project was to facilitate the creation of a "Service Web": a web where services exist in large numbers and are easily found, composed and invoked. In addition to the headline quote above other highlights in the feedback included praise for all the dissemination including tutorials and videos, our standardization work in W3C, our applications especially an iPhone App already available within the Apple’s App Store and an application for searching over online video content. We were also praised for our scientific leadership in the domains of services and Linked Data and in end-user web application development. KMi’s significant involvement in this large European project includes: filling the role of Scientific Director and membership of the Executive Board as well as leading the largest and the training workpackages. We have also extensively contributed to the 100+ project publications including authorship of the highest cited paper and producing a project white paper, which, although only a few months old, has already been downloaded over 700 times. As the Commission’s Project Officer stated in his final statement the KMi SOA4All team have along with our project partners "created something that we should all be proud of".

Related Links:

The SOA4All White Paper

The British are coming…

Wednesday 11 May 2011 | KMi News

KMi was recently represented at the OpenCourseWare Consortium’s (OCWC) 10th anniversary conference held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Teresa Connolly (KMi), Elpida Makriyannis (IET) and Andy Lane (MCT) ran a workshop centred on the OERopoly game. OERopoly was used as a mediating artefact to raise awareness about Open Educational Resources. The workshop was successful as well as fun (!) and as result of great interest in the OERopoly game it is now being repurposed for this week’s Open Michigan commemorative event (12th May) by Emily Plunkett, University of Michigan, who attended the OCWC workshop. The game has also been localised to reflect UK OER projects and will be presented in Manchester 11th May 2011 at the UK OER 11 conference.

In addition Elpida and Teresa have written a chapter for the forthcoming KMi publication: “Collaborative Learning: Open Educational Resources” edited by Ale Okada, Teresa Connolly & Peter Scott due for publication this summer.

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KMi Researchers among the Top Ten in AI

Wednesday 27 Apr 2011 | KMi News

Every two years, the IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine runs the “AI’s 10 to Watch” award, which aims to identify 10 of the most promising early career researchers in Artificial Intelligence. As Prof Fei-Yue Wang, Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Intelligent Systems, says in his editorial, the winners list provides a “glimpse of the future of AI” and recognizes “AI researchers who promise to be the leaders of the field”. The list of award winners for 2011 was published in the Jan/Feb issues of the magazine and includes both a current and a former member of KMi. In particular Dr Mathieu d’Aquin, currently a Research Associate in KMi, and Dr Tom Heath, formerly a Doctoral Student in KMi and now at Talis Ltd, are among this year’s award recipients.
The award to Mathieu and Tom follows from the one won by Dr Marta Sabou back in 2006 – see http://news.kmi.open.ac.uk/11/801, and confirms KMi as one of the strongest research centers anywhere in the world in the area of Intelligent Systems.
Congratulations to both Mathieu and Tom for winning such a prestigious award.

Related Links:

LTfLL project takes textmining technologies in e-learning further

Wednesday 13 Apr 2011 | KMi News

Last week’s final review of the EC-funded ‘language technologies for lifelong learning’ (LTfLL) project found that technology is mature and ripe for the market.

Over the course of three years, the collaborative project LTfLL has developed a set of interoperable services that use natural language processing techniques and semantic web technology to support all aspects of individual and collaborative knowledge building: positioning, monitoring conceptual development from writings, social retrieval of learning resources, summary writing with automated feedback, and learning analytics for chat & fora.

KMi has been leading the work package on learning and language technology infrastructure, thereby focusing on widget-based personal learning environments (for the learning technology) and a data management & processing infrastructure that brings together latent semantic analysis with network analysis (on the language technology side).

In close collaboration with the Vienna University of Economics and Business, the Open University of the Netherlands, and the Polytechnical University of Bukarest, the work has contributed to the further development of the Apache incubator project Wookie and has resulted in several new releases of the lsa and related packages for the statistical language and environment R. Amongst others, this included a sparse implementation and accompanying web services that support large corpora up to millions of documents.

The developed infrastructure tools and the PLE widgets (and their underlying services) are released on SourceForge under open source licenses.

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ICOPER: One of the best eContent projects

Tuesday 12 Apr 2011 | KMi News

Teresa Connolly gave a presentation at the Final Review of the Interoperable Content for Performance in a competency-driven society (ICOPER) project in Luxembourg 7th April 2011. The ICOPER project received an excellent review and was commended for its high quality and quantity of outputs. The reviewers also remarked that it was one of the best projects that they had ever assessed. Our collaborative effort has turned ICOPER into a real success story. The review was an extremely positive event.

Some of the remarks were that:

The Commission and the reviewers are highly satisfied with the quality of the results
The reviewers were not aware of any other project that has produced so many pages of text with the number of Person Months (PM) given – more than 2600 pages of text with approx. 1000 PMs
It was very much appreciated that the comments of the first review were taken seriously and implemented
Our presentations at the final review were really to the point
ICOPER: One of the best eContent+ projects since 2004

ICOPER is a Best Practice Network co-funded by the eContentplus programme of the European Community. The 30-months-project started in September 2008 and had the mission to collect and further develop best practices for higher education tackling matters like creating learning designs and teaching methods, authoring content for re-use, transferring knowledge in an outcome-oriented way and assessing it, or evaluating learning activities.
KMi was one of the 23 Partners from all over Europe who are key and leading experts in digital educational development and technology enhanced learning (TEL). As an Open Network Philosophy is followed everyone can get involved, contribute, and benefit.

Peter Scott, Alexandra Okada and Teresa Connolly of KMi carried out the research for ICOPER’s Work Package 4 (WP4) and focused on the recommendations for extending effective content development and reuse. During the course of the project the KMi team also produced three deliverables; a New Media Space demonstrating WP4 work as well as creating a wiki to record the best practices found in this broad area of reuse in addition to developing a series of bespoke learning units, about different aspects of standards and interoperability, in the LabSpace area of OpenLearn.

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KMi@PARC: Contested Collective Intelligence

Tuesday 05 Apr 2011 | KMi News

KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum & Anna De Liddo gave a seminar at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), renowned for its ground-breaking computing R&D in many fields, including Human-Computer Interaction, Hypertext and Sensemaking.

Their seminar at the Intelligent Systems Lab, hosted by Maarten Sierhuis (Knowledge, Language & Interaction Area Manager) and Gregorio Convertino (Augmented Social Cognition Area) was entitled Contested Collective Intelligence: Resilience, Complexity & Sensemaking (abstract below). The day was spent seeing several PARC researchers, including Mark Stefik, whose 1986 AI Magazine article “The Next Knowledge Medium” can be seen as anticipating many of the drivers for the creation of KMi a decade later.

ABSTRACT: To thrive, organizational entities (learning communities; teams of analysts; formal companies) must make sense of a complex, changing environment. Our interest is in how sociotechnical “collective intelligence” infrastructures may augment this capacity. We are seeking conceptual lenses that illuminate this challenge, and draw ideas from resilience thinking, sensemaking, and complexity science. We propose that these motivate the concept of Contested Collective Intelligence (CCI), and give examples of how the Cohere platform is being designed in response to these requirements. This is a social/semantic web annotation and knowledge mapping environment, with tools for monitoring networks of ideas and generating novel analytics. We also report experimental integration with the Xerox Incremental Parser, in order to evaluate human+machine annotation of knowledge-level claims expressed through rhetorical moves in documents.

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KMi in The Times

Wednesday 30 Mar 2011 | KMi News

On Wednesday 23rd March 2011, the Eurogene project lead by Dr Zdenek Zdrahal was featured in the printed version of The Times in the article entitled “Gene genie’s treasure trove.” by Mark Frary.

The article discusses, in an interview with Zdenek and Petr, the results and the mission of Eurogene to provide free multimedia learning resources in ten languages for statistical, medical and molecular genetics and to deliver them to students and professionals using KMI technology.

KMi and ROLE at widget bash in Bolton

Monday 28 Mar 2011 | KMi News

The JISC Centre For Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS) organised a two-day widget bash at the University of Bolton last week. The event was attended by representatives from JISC projects, such as DOULS (Distributed Open University Learning Systems), as well as European TEL projects, including ROLE and iTEC. The first day was dedicated to presentations by various projects and seminars on widget development, while the second day was dedicated to coding and group-work.

Alexander Mikroyannidis from KMi presented the latest advances in widget technologies developed by the ROLE project. He introduced the newly built ROLE widget store, where users can browse through a variety of learning widgets and download them or embed them in their favourite widget container. He also talked about the lessons learned so far from the OpenLearn test-bed and the challenges lying in the adoption of Personal Learning Environments.

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KMi shaping the future ePhD

Friday 25 Mar 2011 | KMi News

KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum was one of the keynote speakers at the Open University’s Research Methods Conference, describing how hypermedia tools such as Compendium & Cohere can be used to analyse data, dissect arguments, give multimedia presentations and craft narrative: the essence of scholarship. The webcast is now up…

The OU is opening its university-wide PhD training increasingly to the world as open educational resources, so this and other keynotes are all freely accessible. The Cloudscape from this event, which was live-blogged, is itself a great resource to mine (see also the Research Skills clouds).

Abstract: In this talk I will introduce the work of the Hypermedia Discourse Group at the Knowledge Media Institute, which is focusing on how software tools may shape the future of scholarship. Our particular interest is in how new forms of narrative can emerge through the use of hypertext tools that treat ideas, problems and arguments as coherent networks of nodes. This enables us to reframe qualitative data analysis, and scientific publishing, as the construction of narrative networks, grounded in primary sources. I will illustrate this with examples from projects including the NASA Mobile Agents project, the Hewlett Foundation OLnet project, and the AHRC+EPRSC+JISC e-Dance project.

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WeGov passes its 1st review with flying colours

Friday 25 Mar 2011 | KMi News

The review took place in Brussels on March 22 and was attended from KMi by Harith Alani and Sofia Angeletou. The reviewers showed a great interest in Sofia’s WeGov work on modeling the activities of users on social networks and analysing their online behaviour.

Related Links:

http://wegov-project.eu/

KMi in the BBC Headlines

Wednesday 23 Mar 2011 | KMi News

On Tuesday 21st March 2011, KMi Director Dr Peter Scott was featured in the BBC Business News article “Going to Harvard from your own bedroom”, by Merlin John, featured on the home page of bbc.co.uk. Peter is quoted as stating “in the online world you don’t need to fill buildings or lecture theatres with people and you don’t need to be trapped into a lecture timetable”.

The article discusses the potential growth of online degrees of which the Open University is an “international pioneer” with particular reference to iTunesU where there have been 31 million global downloads of free OU materials.

The advent of mobile platforms delivering rich multimedia including significant developments in ePublishing of educational books makes learning more accessible, removing the intrinsic need to be confined to the physical confines of a university campus. Technology Enhanced Learning delivers greater choice to more people, allowing universities to truly explore global markets through innovative channels.

To see the article in full, please follow this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12766562

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Over 100,000 views for Future Internet Video

Tuesday 15 Mar 2011 | KMi News

This week saw the Future Internet video produced within the Service Web 3.0 project reach over 100,000 views on YouTube, making it by far the top YouTube hit for the search term ‘Future Internet’. The popularity of the video is in part due to the fact that it has been embedded in a number of portals and referenced in a range of places. For example, the Minister of Economy of Armenia embedded the video on their website for Armnet Awards which recognizes the development of web technologies. The video has also been embedded within a major Chinese video portal site and was for some time up at a startup website in the US. In August, 2010, the video was rated as one of the top 10 YouTube videos about the Internet of Things by ReadWriteWeb. The video regularly appears on exhibition stands at large ICT events and has also been used to support internal staff training within the EU Commission. As well as being part of the Service Web 3.0 project KMi also supplied one of the video presenters.

KMi and OU a major player in Learning Analytics

Wednesday 09 Mar 2011 | KMi News

Last week saw KMi and OU colleagues out in strength at the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, held at the outstanding Banff Centre in the Rocky Mountains outside Calgary. Learning Analytics is highlighted as a very hot topic in the EDUCAUSE/NMC Horizons 2011 report, reflecting the growing amounts of data that can be gathered about a learner’s history and likely intentions, across multiple platforms in their institution and the cloud.

The Horizons 2011 report introduces learning analytics as follows:

“Learning analytics loosely joins a variety of data-gathering tools and analytic techniques to study student engagement, performance, and progress in practice, with the goal of using what is learned to revise curricula, teaching, and assessment in real time. Building on the kinds of information generated by Google Analytics and other similar tools, learning analytics aims to mobilize the power of data-mining tools in the service of learning, and embracing the complexity, diversity, and abundance of information that dynamic learning environments can generate.”

The conference frames it thus:

“The growth of data surpasses the ability of organizations to make sense of it. This concern is particularly pronounced in relation to knowledge, teaching, and learning. Learning institutions and corporations make little use of the data learners “throw off” in the process of accessing learning materials, interacting with educators and peers, and creating new content. In an age where educational institutions are under growing pressure to reduce costs and increase efficiency, analytics promises to be an important lens through which to
view and plan for change at course and institutions levels. Corporations face pressure for increased competitiveness and productivity, a challenge that requires important contributions in organizational capacity building from work place and informal learning. Learning analytics can play a role in highlighting the development of employees through their learning activities.

In enterprise settings, information flow and social interactions can yield novel insights into organizational effectiveness and capacity to address new challenges or adapt rapidly when unanticipated event arise.

Thirdly, as we witness the expansion of learning and knowledge work beyond formal institutional boundaries, myriad platforms in the cloud hosting the activity of individuals will be providing/exchanging analytics.”

Myself and three OU colleagues on the Steering Cttee helped design the conference (Tony Hirst, Gráinne Conole and Martin Weller), and the conference saw Tony Hirst (Faculty Maths, Computing & Technology) keynoting on linked data mashups and social network analysis, Doug Clow (Inst. Educ. Technology) speaking on iSpot analytics on expertise, KMi’s Anna De Liddo and myself on discourse centric analytics, and KMi’s Rebecca Ferguson and myself on identifying exploratory dialogue in textchat.

I also contributed to the pre-conference workshop of about 50, on theory-based learning analytics, and to the pre-conference MOOC (Massive, Online Open Course) with the closing invited address on the future of learning analytics.

Plans are already underway for next year’s conference, EDUCAUSE are focusing on the topic in their forthcoming ELI webinar series, and there is activity within and between many universities, and the learning platform vendors, to develop the field.

As highlighted on many occasions including my talk (“Notes on the future”), there is a significant ethical dimension to designing meaningful analytics that do not reduce the richness of learning to an over-simplistic quantitative/semantic activity profile, simply because that is all the technology is capable of. Our challenge as researchers is to shape the field such that meaningful, authentic learning and sensemaking are the focus of analytics, moving beyond simple counting of low-level system events.

Related Links:

The RETAIN project has started

Thursday 03 Mar 2011 | KMi News

The JISC funded RETAIN project has started on the 1st March. This 18 month project aims to extend the Open University’s existing Business Intelligence systems, with a particular focus on improving student retention. RETAIN will make it possible to integrate additional data sources, such as data from VLE’s, with existing statistical methods and to further extend the functionality by using predictive modelling to identify students who are at risk of non-completion of their courses. This will allow for better targeted interventions towards these students. A demonstrator will be developed, for visualising retention data that allows viewing of both aggregated and individual student data on selected dimensions. This will be usable by tutors and programme managers for determining strategy in both the short-term and long-term, on individual, course and faculty levels. The developed tools and methods will be trialled with a view to longer term uptake and further extensions to Business Intelligence functionality. The predicted benefits are improved retention and progression, leading to a financial cost savings for the OU and a better student experience.

OpenScout meets in Sofia

Wednesday 02 Mar 2011 | KMi News

The annual general assembly of the OpenScout project was held last week in Sofia. OpenScout is an eContentPlus project, entitled “Skill based scouting of open user-generated and community-improved content for management education and training”. The project aims in providing an online education service enabling users to easily find, use and share open content for management education and training.

Peter Scott and Alexander Mikroyannidis attended the general assembly and presented the team’s latest work on tools and services for adapting and repurposing open educational resources. These tools and services are provided by the OpenScout tool library, the purpose of which is to bring together people that are developing or using learning resources and provide them with the ability to share their resources and case studies.

Related Links:

The OpenScout project

eBook Futures: the publisher’s dilemma

Tuesday 01 Mar 2011 | KMi News

On the 17/18th February 2011 in Brussels, Belgium, the EU Aspect Project ran a very well attended strategic seminar on ‘Educational Publishing Futures’ as a platform where Ministries of Education, publishers and ICT vendors could discuss the future of educational publishing and digital content for schools.

KMi Director Peter Scott presented our work on ‘eBook open learning vision. The Open University experience’. In this talk, recent OU work was connected with the wider perspective of EU initiatives such as STELLAR, OpenScout and iCoper.

Peter was supported at the event by Apple Inc. who were able to showcase the 277 Open University eBooks that are currently available via the Open University in iTunes U. The dilemma for the Educational publisher is that organizations like the OU and now many more have very powerful publishing tools, like ePub now at their fingertips – presenting some huge new market opportunities (and threats) to the conventional and traditional educational publishing business models.

Exciting times!

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Centre Point VIP Event Adds Resonance Momentum

Friday 25 Feb 2011 | KMi News

Last Friday saw a VIP installation event and networking party at Centre Point for the Resonance project. This invitation-only party had a number of prominent attendees from the Media and Broadcasing industry including: Chris Fry the Producer of Spooks, Foz Allen the Executive Producer of Robin Hood, Matthew Bouch the Producer of Being Human, Colin Teague the Director of Dr Who and the actor Charles Dance. Other attendees included high level representatives from the Imperial War Museum, the BBC and Bletchley Park.

Resonance is a multi-platform broadcasting project which aims to create a new Sci-Fi series to be broadcast on TV, published as a graphic novel and also facilitate ambitious forms audience engagement – allowing the audience to create new characters and plot lines.

KMi’s involvement in Resonance is centred around the outcomes of the SOA4All and NoTube projects where we are exploring how Linked Data and Web Services can enable a “semantic data track” for broadcast media to complement the existing video and audio tracks. It is envisaged that the creation of this new layer will enable the connection of disparate heterogeneous resources and support audience engagement.

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Young learners’ innovative uses of technology

Saturday 19 Feb 2011 | KMi News

For the third time running, Rebecca Ferguson has taken a team of young learners to the national finals of the Y-Factor competition. The conference is run as part of Learning Without Frontiers (formerly the Handheld Learning conference) and is open to children and young people who are making innovative uses of technology to support their learning.

This year, members of a Robot Club that formed at Loughton School, where Rebecca is a governor, were successful in reaching the competition’s national final. They explained to the judges how they had continued their club informally after leaving junior school, and had recently built a Rubik-cube-solving robot, with the help of instructions they had found on YouTube.

Last year Rebecca accompanied a local team of ten-year-old Scratch programmers to the finals, and the year before she was there with a group of teenagers who had set up a history and archaeology group in SecondLife while working with Rebecca on The Open University’s Schome project.

This year the competition finalists presented their work in front of a large audience at the conference before being interviewed by the judges and being presented with a Nintendo DS each by The Gadget Show’s Jason Bradbury.

Rebecca’s work in KMi includes EnquiryBlogger, a Paul-Hamlyn-funded project that helps young learners to collaborate with each other online.

Related Links:

Robot Club entry on YouTube

The CORE project started!

Friday 18 Feb 2011 | KMi News

The COnnecting REpositories (CORE) project has been officially started today by a kick-off meeting in the presence of representatives from JISC, OpenDOAR, UKOLN, OU Library and KMi.

The CORE project aims to facilitate the access and navigation across relevant scientific papers stored in Open Access repositories. The project will create a new open metadata repository available in the Linked Data format describing the semantic relatedness between research articles stored across a selection of UK repositories, including the Open University Open Research Online (ORO). This will be achieved by harvesting and processing full-text content using NLP techniques for automatic link discovery.

The CORE project will also develop a web-service and a demonstrator client which will allow UK repositories to easily navigate their users to relevant full-text Open Access content stored elsewhere. The usability of this service will be demonstrated on the ORO repository by automatically recommending links to related content in other repositories. CORE will also focus on the development of good practice for the service reuse and uptake in collaboration with UKOLN and OpenDOAR.

Related Links:

CORE project website

DECIPHER Project is Launched

Monday 24 Jan 2011 | KMi News

Last week saw the kick-off meeting in Dublin for DECIPHER, a 4.2 million, 3 year research project supported by the European Union.

The aim of DECIPHER is to develop and test technology that can be used by visitors and curators to present digital heritage objects as part of a coherent narrative. This will allow the user interactively to assemble, visualise and explore not just collections of objects, but the knowledge structures that connect and give them meaning.

Over the past decade we have seen a significant shift in how digital cultural objects are accessed and used. This has taken us from handcrafted web presentations, and their textual search, to new ways of querying, exploring and recommending cultural media objects. Although we have new ways of accessing cultural objects, the narrative structures and arguments that could be found in a handcrafted presentation are often lost. The problem is that cultural meaning does not reside in individual objects but in the patterns of knowledge and events, belief and thought that link them to each other and to the observer.

This is why story is so important to the communication of, and meaningful understanding of culture. DECIPHER is developing new solutions to the whole range of narrative construction, knowledge visualisation and display problems. This will draw on work in data mining, semantic web technologies, language technologies, multimodal interfaces and digital heritage applications. The resulting DECIPHER tools will help change the way people access digital heritage by combining much richer, event-based metadata with causal reasoning models.

Our project partners are Dublin Institute of Technology, National Gallery of Ireland, Irish Museum of Modern Art, System Simulation, Brno University of Technology and Alinari 24 Ore.

KMi to explore the User Centric Integration of Activity Data in a new JISC-funded project

Friday 21 Jan 2011 | KMi News

UCIAD (User Centric Integration of Activity Data) is a new 6 month JISC-funded project addressing the integration of activity data spread across various systems in an organization, and exploring how this integration can both benefit users and improve transparency in an organization.

Both research and commercial developments in the area of user activity data analysis have until now mostly focused on logging user visits to specific websites and systems, primarily in order to support recommendation, or to gather feedback data from users. However, data concerning a single user are generally fragmented across many different systems and logs, from website access logs to search data in different departments and as a result organizations typically are not able to maintain an integrated overview of the various activities of a given user, thus affecting their ability to provide optimal service to their users. Hence, a key tenet of the UCIAD project is that developing a coherent picture of the interactions between the user and the organization would be beneficial both to an organization and to its users.

Specifically, the objective of UCIAD is to provide the conceptual and computational foundations to support user-centric analyses of activity data, with the aim of producing results which can be customized for and deployed in different organizations. Ontologies represent semantic models of a particular domain, and can be used to annotate and integrate data from heterogeneous sources. The project will therefore investigate ontological models for the integration of user activity data, how such models can be used as a basis for a pluggable data framework aggregating user activity data, and how such an infrastructure can be used for the benefit of the users, providing meaningful (and exportable) overviews of their interaction with the organization.

The project, led and managed by Mathieu d’Aquin, will contribute to the current strand of research in KMi, which focuses on the use of semantic technologies to support online personal information management and is carried out by Dr d’Aquin and Salman Elahi. The solutions developed in the project will be tested on a number of Open University systems, in collaboration with the Open University’s communication services.

KMi Shows Mobile Projects

Wednesday 19 Jan 2011 | KMi News

Members of KMi were invited to show their work in the field of mobile technologies in education at the Mobile Learning Winter Festival hosted, by IET.

Professor Agnes Kukulska-Hulme invited staff from various departments around the University to talk informally about their experiences of using and developing mobile applications for teaching, learning and student support.

Dr Kevin Quick, Paul Hogan and Katja Bulow showed applications developed for iOS and Android devices; Chris Valentine showed the photo and video blog developed for the Spanish Language course L204.

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KMi lectures with Goethe

Monday 20 Dec 2010 | KMi News

The chair of information systems engineering of the Goethe University Frankfurt Prof. Holten invited KMi’s Fridolin Wild to tell the inside story of the latent semantic analysis research done in the EC-funded language technologies for lifelong learning (LTfLL) project.

Background is research on competence and performance of consulting professionals done at Prof. Holten’s institute — which is very closely related to the research on monitoring of conceptual development done by KMi within the LTfLL project.

The guest lecture focused on latent semantics and social interaction.

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New social semantic theory revealed at guest lecture in Shanghai

Monday 20 Dec 2010 | KMi News

One of China’s most prominent universities, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has featured KMi’s Fridolin Wild in a guest lecture, giving him the opportunity to present his new theory on how meaning is created and how machines can exploit this algorithmically.

The new technique is called meaningful interaction analysis (MIA) and combines the semantic vector mathemagics of latent semantic analysis (LSA) with the analytical instruments of a social network analysis (SNA).

The theory and its application exploit the given that humans tend to build professional language communities of shared understanding: this allows in return to automatically extract those semantic structures from a large number of written texts, that are characteristic of the community investigated.

Related Links:

Slides
SJTU

Sir Tim Berners-Lee on Linked Data and the Future Internet

Monday 20 Dec 2010 | KMi News

Today saw the closing ceremony for the latest Future Internet Assembly held in Ghent (FIA Ghent). KMi’s was strongly represented in the Future Internet work via by two projects: SOA4All and SOFI, and most significantly through our leadership of the Future Internet Working Group for the Software and Services Unit. The Future Internet Assemblies are 6-monthly gatherings of the leaders of 150 EU projects with a combined budget approaching 1 billion Euros to discuss issues related to the design of a new global communications network. One of the most interesting cross-domain sessions was on the relationship between Linked Data and the Future Internet which featured a keynote from Sir Tim Berners-Lee. In his presentation he covered how semantics allows one to choose an appropriate scale-of-consensus in sharing viewpoints across audiences of different sizes and future work on a read/write Web of Data. Other presentations of note included current and future use of Linked Data from Google and also Peter Mika and Ricardo Baeza-Yates of Yahoo! on Linked Data and next generation search based on wisdom of the crowds. It is also important to note that John Domingue is chief editor of the next Future Internet Assembly book to be published by Springer; and will be helping to frame up the direction of this work through 2011.

KMi Mobile Apps Showcased

Friday 17 Dec 2010 | KMi News

KMi present both its mobile prototype applications and work on the iTunes U system at the Mobile Technologies Special Interest Group showcase in the Library yesterday, despite the team being seriously depleted by illness.

The Chinese Characters and Virtual Microscope applications have both proved popular on the Apple downloads site and are currently being expanded by developer Paul Hogan. We are expected to produce Android versions of these applications shortly too.

The OU’s iTunes U content continues to be immensely popular with downloads of our material now approaching the 30 million mark. Joining our podcasts are 100 books in the eBook store, shortly to be expanded to 300 titles.

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NoTube Future TV research goes Seoul

Wednesday 15 Dec 2010 | KMi News

Last week saw the first Open Workshop on Future Television held by the NoTube consortium in Seoul, Korea. During this very successful, public half-day event, the NoTube team members – KMI represented by Stefan Dietze – showcased their innovative solutions centred around the topics Linked Data, Semantic Services and Future Television. The talks were met with outstanding interest by more than 200 attendees from academia and major global technology companies. The success of the event can also be attributed to the exceptional organisation by Korean Telecom (KT) – one of the affiliated NoTube partners – who provided simultaneous translators as well as pre-translated workshop proceedings and handouts to make sure language boundaries proved no obstacle during the lively discussions. An additional 2-day project meeting at the premises of KT was also used to discuss the input from the workshop and its future impact on the overall project roadmap.

Virtual Microscope features at NHM Natures Treasures

Monday 13 Dec 2010 | KMi News

Members of the OUs virtual microscope team were invited to exhibit at the event and took the opportunity to showcase their latest work – an Apollo moon rock virtual microscope. This was prepared in partnership with NASA and is now freely available via the VM website. The team have previously worked on terrestrial rocks and have produced two virtual microscopes for new Earth Science courses S276 Geology and S339 Understanding the Continents. Next on the agenda is a Voyage of the Beagle virtual microscope using samples collected by Charles Darwin – a project partnered with the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge.

KMi have been involved in the Virtual Microscope project for some years; in recent years we moved from Flash-based animation to web-based system using the Google Maps API and HTML5, and devised the routines for making mosaics and rotations. The team have also produced a virtual microscope for the iPhone, freely available from the Apple App. Store and are now working on virtual microscopes for other mobile devices such as the Apple iPad.

Nature’s Treasures is one-day meeting, co-organized by Gem-A the Gemmological Association of Great Britain, the Russell Society, the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain, and this year for the first time, Rockwatch, in association with the Natural History Museum, London. The event brings together amateur and professional mineralogists for a series of talks on diverse geological and mineralogical topics.

Between 1969 and 1972 six Apollo missions brought back 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface. The six space flights returned 2200 separate samples from six different exploration sites on the Moon. The lunar sample building at Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas is the chief repository for the Apollo samples and is where pristine lunar samples are prepared for shipment to scientists and educators. Nearly 400 samples are distributed each year for research and teaching projects. The VM team are fortunate to have been allowed access to this fine collection.

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eBooks launch into iTunes U

Thursday 09 Dec 2010 | KMi News

The Open University is one of the first universities worldwide to make eBooks available on iTunes U, adding 100 free, interactive titles today with a further 200 to come by the end of 2010. OU eBook content comes from the OUs OpenLearn website which contains over 6,600 hours of free, current course materials and has had 14 million visits to date. Todays 100 eBooks continue the OUs success on iTunes U in June 2010 it became the first University in the world to reach 20 million global downloads on iTunes U, and now has over 27 million downloads to date. By adding eBooks to the existing 330 OU collections on iTunes U, students can choose the formats that work best for them. The content is derived from current OU courses so students can use these materials to explore a topic before signing up to formal learning. OU eBooks will also soon be available on the OpenLearn site, which gives anyone in the world free access to OU course materials.KMi is now working hard with LTS, the Open University Learning and Teaching Solutions division, to produce interactive eBook materials as part of routine future course production. This work is part of the wider strategic mobile futures project running in the Learning, Teaching and Quality portfolio between KMi, LTS and IET.

Next Generation Personal Learning Environments at Online Educa

Tuesday 07 Dec 2010 | KMi News

The annual Online Educa conference took place in frozen Berlin last week. Despite the weather conditions, the conference was attended by key people in the e-learning industry and academia. Alexander Mikroyannidis from KMi was there and gave a talk at the Next Generation Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) workshop organised by the British Institute for Learning and Development (BILD).

Karen Velasco from the BILD talked about what constitutes a PLE, its benefits as well as drawbacks, and introduced the vision of the ROLE project on responsive and user-centred learning environments. Alexander Mikroyannidis then talked about the transition of traditional Learning Management Systems towards the PLE paradigm and what this transition means for the Open University. Alexander described the technological advances being made within ROLE and the benefits that these bring to the Open University student.

The second half of the workshop featured a discussion between participants about the potential of PLEs, and particularly:
What is the potential for the lifelong learner?
What is the potential for workplace learning?
What is the potential for the eLearning market?
What are your/your organisation’s specific needs from PLEs?

The discussion brought up some interesting issues regarding the portability of PLEs, the opportunities they offer for networking, as well as privacy and other organisational restrictions. The discussion was carried on after the end of the workshop over beer and chips at the BILD pavilion.

Related Links:

ROLE
BILD

EU funds VPH-Share project to advance medical informatics

Monday 06 Dec 2010 | KMi News

KMi is a partner in the newly funded VPH-Share project (Virtual Physiological Human: Sharing for Healthcare – A Research Environment), an EU Framework 7 integrating project. VPH-Share will begin in March 2011 and run for four years, with total funding from the EU of ï¿½10.7 million. The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is a vision for the integration of scientific models for understanding the human body, with researchers and clinicians able to draw on diverse data sets and simulation processes to describe and predict the health of individuals and populations. VPH-Share will provide the essential services and the computational infrastructure necessary for the sharing of clinical and research data and tools, facilitating the construction and operation of new VPH workflows, and collaborations between the members of the VPH community. It builds on prior projects including Living Human Digital Library (in which KMi was a partner), @neurIST, euHeart, VPHOP, and Virolab. Data sources include clinical data from individual patients, such as medical images or biomedical signals, and population information. The VPH-Share infrastructure will provide operations on this data ranging from secure access and storage through annotation, data inference and assimilation, to complex image processing and physics-based mathematical modelling, data reduction and representation. VPH-Share brings together twenty-one partners, led by the University of Sheffield. Other members include the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, the universities of Auckland, Vienna, and Amsterdam, University College London and King’s College London, and the Technical University of Eindhoven, and major technology companies such as Atos Origin, Philips Electronics, and IBM. KMi will lead the semantic Web services work within the project.

Keynote at NFPSLAM-SOC’10

Monday 06 Dec 2010 | KMi News

Last week KMi’s Carlos Pedrinaci gave a keynote at the 4th Workshop on Non-Functional Properties and SLA Management in Service-Oriented Computing collocated with the 8th IEEE European Conference on Web Services in Ayia Napa, Cyprus. In his talk, Carlos revisited some of the existing issues limiting the uptake of services on the Web, and highlighted how the research he is carrying out can help overcome these limitations.

In particular, Dr. Pedrinaci presented some of the main results on Linked Services coming out the EU project SOA4All. He introduced a set of principles and tools anchored on the integration of Linked Data and Services as a means for better supporting the development of complex service-based applications on the Web. The talk concluded with an example on service recommendation developed in collaboration with iSOCO and CEFRIEL illustrating the benefits of Linked Services.

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Hall Play website launch

Wednesday 01 Dec 2010 | KMi News

Today, the Hallé – Manchester’s multi-award-winning international symphony orchestra – launches a brand new way for everyone to interact with its music, musicians and projects. Hallé Play sits alongside the Hallé website, and provides a dedicated area to view audio/visual material relating to the Hallé’s work, both on and off stage. Hallé Play will provide a regularly updated stream of new content throughout the season. The site can be accessed via links from the Hallé website or directly at www.halleplay.co.uk.

Hallé Play is designed as part of a KTP project with KMi to enable everyone to engage more with the Orchestra, and understand more about the Hallé’s family of ensembles and the wide range of concerts and projects they undertake. Much of the content on Hallé Play will relate directly to concerts and HALLÉ CD releases throughout the season.

The site will allow users to share the information via social networks including Facebook and Twitter. It will also enable users to subscribe to content in iTunes, which allows users to sync their iPod/iPhone/iPad and receive new content as it becomes available.

Hallé Play has been developed as part of an innovative relationship with The Open University, as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership project. This has allowed a developer to be based on-site as a full member of the Hallé team, specifically to assess the organisation’s digital needs and to find the best solutions to the Hallé’s digital challenges.

David McKeith, Chairman of the Hallé said: “I am delighted that our partnership with the Open University has led to the launch of Halle Play today. This is an important step in our development. It will give us a new way of sharing the Halle’s inspiring music with our current and future audience, here and overseas, and with all those involved in our education and ensemble work.”

Related Links:

The Hallé Play Website

KMi Raise 500UKP for Movember

Tuesday 30 Nov 2010 | KMi News

Various members of KMi grew moustaches in aid of The Prostate Cancer Charity via Movember. This is the second year KMi have taken up the challenge and 2010 saw double the number of participants and double the total contributions. Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days. The Movember moustache has grown year on year since inception in Australia in 2003, expanding to the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, The Netherlands and Finland. Last year global participation of over one million donors raised ï¿½26 Million for Movember’s beneficiary partners.

Knowledge Media and Thai Cyber Learning

Monday 22 Nov 2010 | KMi News

KMi Director, Peter Scott spent this week visiting with the Thai Cyber University Project courtesy of the Office of Higher Education Commission, Thailand. The visit involved a number of University visits, talks and meetings, and an excellent opportunity to experience some of the unique culture and heritage of this wonderful country.

Monday 22nd November 2010 opened the formal week of the visit with a marathon full day workshop for the Thai Cyber University in historic Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand – north of Bangkok. The workshop sessions included the work of the Open University in Learning, Teaching and Quality; open learning with mobile technology and learning analytics; and then jointly creating the future of technology enhanced learning with hot current research projects like STELLAR, TELMAP, OpenScout and iCoper.

In the afternoon research project workshop session participants were asked to contribute to the Grand Challenge thinking of the STELLARNet community, and it was very useful to get an asian perspective on the future of Technology Enhanced Learning & encourage this new community to share this thinking further with the http://teleurope.eu/ platform.

Peter was a guest of the President of the Phranakhon Si Ayutthaya Rajabhat University at the opening of the new Historical Centre exhibition. In addition, the visit included a number of strategic discussions with University executives and colleagues such as at the Learning Innovation Centre, at Thailand’s oldest tertiary institution, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

During the week Peter was able to experience the Loi Krathong Festival in historic Ayutthaya city, visit the Winter Palace there, and the Grand Palace in Bangkok – and see many ancient and current temples. These look very different from the back of an Elephant, certainly!

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ROBUST is launched

Thursday 18 Nov 2010 | KMi News

On November 14th, Harith Alani, Yulan He, and Matthew Rowe, travelled to Koblenz in Germany to attend the kick-off meeting of the new ROBUST project. ROBUST is a 3 year, 6.8M EU project with a consortium of 10 partners from 6 countries.

Online communities have emerged in all areas of society, and their use is now widespread in social, business, scientific and public service domains. They enable the community members to collaborate through shared ideas, knowledge and opinion. Thus, online communities generate major economic value to business and can form pivotal parts of corporate expertise management, corporate marketing, product support, customer relationship management, product innovation and targeted advertising.

The objective of ROBUST is to analyze, manage and care for online communities, in order support their well being, to provide access to the created values and to exploit the knowledge and information contained within. This requires the development of metrics, models and algorithms in several fields.

ROBUST is led by the University of Koblenz-Landau, and involves the companies of IBM, SAP, Polecat, Temis, and SoftwareMind, as well as the academic institutions of OU KMi, University of Southampton, National University of Ireland, and the Technical University of Berlin.

Related Links:

ROBUST

Keynote at SDoW 2011 workshop

Thursday 18 Nov 2010 | KMi News

KMi Senior Lecturer Harith Alani gave a keynote at the 3rd Social Data on the Web workshop which was collocated with the 9th International Semantic Web Conference in Shanghai last week. In his talk, Dr Alani highlighted the rapidly expanding market for integrating social and sensor data networks, and described the latest results of his collaborative work on tracking and comparing offline and online social networking at conference events.

The talk showcased the value of Web Science for reaching a better understanding of the behaviour and dynamics of these interlinked social networks.

Related Links:

KMi steals the show at EKAW 2010

Monday 01 Nov 2010 | KMi News

KMi members were very much in evidence at the 17th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2010), which took place in Lisbon on 11-15 October. First held in 1987, EKAW represents the main European forum for research in knowledge technologies.

In particular, two prestigious awards were brought home by KMi members. The first one, the prize for best student paper, was won by Fouad Zablith for his paper on “Using Ontological Contexts to Assess the Relevance of Statements in Ontology Evolution”, which was written in collaboration with Mathieu D’Aquin, Marta Sabou, and Enrico Motta. Another KMi member, Miriam Fernandez, won the award for Best Poster for her work on “Predicting the quality of semantic relations by applying Machine Learning classifiers”, in collaboration with Marta Sabou, Petr Knoth, and Enrico Motta.

The influential role of KMi in this research community was also confirmed by the three keynotes given by KMi members in both the main conference and associated workshops. Enrico Motta gave a keynote at the main conference on “Realizing Smart Products” and was also invited speaker at the workshop on Context, Information and Ontologies, while Mathieu d’Aquin gave a keynote at the Personal Semantic Data workshop. Finally papers/posters/demos were also presented by Ning Li, Vanessa Lopez and Stefan Dietze.

In sum, EKAW 2010 turned out to be yet another exciting and high profile event which confirmed KMi’s international status at the forefront of research and development in knowledge technologies.

Related Links:

EKAW 2010

PHAROS project receives award

Tuesday 26 Oct 2010 | KMi News

In June 2010 the PHAROS project was awarded the Italian Prize for “ICMT Innovation” in the category “Best practises in IT-driven convergence”. KMi was a key part of the EU-funded project that finished at the end of 2009. Members of the MMiS group provided image/video analysis, annotation and content-based search facilities for the audiovisual search platform. The project was also selected by the Italian Ministry of Innovation for participation in the Shanghai Expo 2010.

Related Links:

PHAROS Project

SOA4All M30 Review: Maria was impressive

Sunday 24 Oct 2010 | KMi News

Last week saw the SOA4All project have a highly successful month 30 review in Brussels. The reviewers complemented the high standard of the presentations and deliverables. In addition, positive feedback was given on the quality of all the software deliverables and software prototypes. The improved scientific impact in the form of papers and publications was also acknowledged. For the review KMi was in charge of organising a half-day training session for the reviewers and external participants, demonstrating the usability and effectiveness of SOA4All tools, including SWEET and iServe, and also for presenting the main technical achievements of the project. This hands-on session played a key role for the success of the review and was very well accepted, saying it to be well-prepared and useful. In particular, the contribution of one of our PhD students Maria Maleshkova to the training session was singled out for praise by the reviewers for being "impressive". SOA4All will finishing in February 2011 with hopefully an even more successful last review.

Best papers in Technology-Enhanced Learning awarded

Tuesday 19 Oct 2010 | KMi News

The open network of excellence STELLAR and the European Association for Technology-Enhanced Learning EA-TEL e.V. have prized the best papers in the field at the 5th European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning.

EA-TEL president and KMi director Peter Scott awarded the best paper presented at the conference to first author Myroslava Dzikovska. She won the prize for the paper ‘Content, Social, and Metacognitive Statements: An Empirical Study Comparing Human-Human and Human-Computer Tutorial Dialogue’ together with her co-authors Natalie Steinhauser, Johanna Moore, Gwendolyn Campbell, Katherine Harrison, and Leanne Taylor.

The additional best student paper was awarded by conference chair Martin Wolpers (Fraunhofer FIT) to Celso Goncalves, Marie-Caroline Croset, Muriel Ney, Nicolas Balacheff, and Jean-Luc Bosson.

Muriel Ney accepted the prize on behalf of her student for the paper ‘Authenticity in learning game: how it is designed and perceived’.

The Stakeholder Advisory Board of open network of excellence STELLAR selected its stakeholders’ distinct award, which was won by Son Do-Lenh, Patrick Jermann, Sebastien Cuendet, Guillaume Zufferey, and Pierre Dillenbourg for their paper ‘Task Performance vs. Learning Outcomes: A Study of Tangible User Interface in Classroom Setting’. The award is handed over by Carlos Delgado Kloos (UC3M), member of the advisory board, and Fridolin Wild (KMi), general scientific manager of STELLAR.

An additional special mention was given by the advisory board to the paper on ‘Knowledge Maturing Activities and Practices Fostering Organisational Learning: Results of an Empirical Study’ written by Andreas Kaschig, Ronald Maier, Alexander Sandow, Mariangela Lazoi, Sally-Anne Barnes, Jenny Bimrose, Claire Bradley, Alan Brown, Christine Kunzmann, Athanasios Mazarakis, and Andreas Schmidt. The award was presented by STELLAR coordinator Peter Scott and Carlos Delgado Kloos.

Related Links:

Photomarathon at the Roman Baths

Friday 15 Oct 2010 | KMi News

Seventy pupils from Farmborough Primary School in Bath took part in three photomarathons during their trip to the Roman Baths today. Photomarathons are a timed competition in which a group of photographers are given a set of themes to take photos on. At the end of the available time the photographers submit a set of photos, one photo for each theme in the given order. The judges then choose the best photos and award prizes.

As a school trip activity, we modified the competition so it could be completed within an hour (including the judging and prize giving). For 15 to 20 minutes the pupils took photos on three themes around the museum. Photo galleries for each theme were then generated and made available on a website for the pupils. The intention is that by using themes provided by the teacher the pupils’ photos will form a personal collection of resources, which they can use after their trip.

The school trip photomarathon is a collaboration between Trevor Collins in KMI, Richard Joiner and Alice White at the University of Bath, and Lindsey Braidley at the Roman Baths. We are interested to see if aligning the competition themes with the curriculum topics encourages pupils to think about the topics during their trip, and helps them to relate what they learn during the trip to the work they do afterwards in class.

Next week we’ll be visiting the school to see how they are making use of their photo galleries.

Related Links:

KMi @ British Library "Growing Knowledge" Exhibition

Tuesday 12 Oct 2010 | KMi News

Today sees the launch of the British Library’s major new exhibition on how digital tools are already transforming how we do research, including KMi’s e-Dance Project.

Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research, runs from 12 October 2010 – 16 July 2011. We’re delighted to say that the e-Dance Project (in collaboration with Univ. Bedfordshire, Leeds & Manchester) was selected as one of the examples, showcasing how close collaboration between technology researchers (originally developing Access Grid video-conferencing/collaboration tools, and Compendium hypermedia mapping, in an e-Science context) enables arts and humanities researchers, in this case Choreographic researchers/practitioners, to break new ground playing with time and space in their discipline.

The e-Dance exhibit presents video material introducing the project, with examples of the technologies in action. Follow the links below to learn more about the project, Compendium e-Dance Edition, and how it fits into the new media research and practice requirements of choreographers working with digital media.

e-Dance was funded by the joint AHRC+EPSRC+JISC e-Science Initiative.

Related Links:

ESF-COST High-Level Research Conference

Monday 11 Oct 2010 | KMi News

Dr Harith Alani from KMi gave an invited talk at the European Science Foundation conference (ESF-COST) on Future Internet and Society: A Complex Systems Perspective. The conference took place on 1-7 October, Acquafredda di Maratea, Italy.

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is one of the longest-running European instruments supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe.

The conference was attended by more than 70 people from various disciplines, including economists, physicists, computer scientists, and sociologists.

ICT 2010 and a Prize for SOA4All

Sunday 03 Oct 2010 | KMi News

Last week saw the premier event for EU funded research ICT 2010 which was held in Brussels, had over 4000 participants and covered the multi-billion Euro ICT Programme. The 3-day conference was opened by Mr. Yves Leterme, the Belgian Prime Minister, Vice-President Silvana Koch-Mehrin of the European Parliament, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda and Christian Reinaudo, CEO of Agfa-Gervaert. The majority of the technical discussion at ICT events takes place within networking sessions and KMi’s was involvement in these included invited talks at: "Middleware Services for Context Prediction and Proactive Adaptation" and "Future Internet Standardisation"; and chairing a panel on "International Cooperation on Future Internet: Perspectives and a Roadmap" from John Domingue. The personal highlight of the conference though was SOA4All getting the runner-up prize for Best Stand. No mean feat given that that over 200 research stands were present at the event.

From Russia with love…

Thursday 23 Sep 2010 | KMi News

KMi Professor Stefan Rüger lectured on Multimedia Information Retrieval during a one-week Summer School at Voronezh State University, Russia. RuSSIR 2010 brought together postgraduate students from all over Russia and employees in the search engine industry.

Rüger’s course on multimedia information retrieval — spread over 5 days — discussed in detail the process of searching for and finding multimedia documents and how to build the best possible multimedia search engines. The intriguing bit with multimedia retrieval is that the query itself can be a multimedia excerpt, say, a picture. The Multimedia Information Retrieval course examined the full matrix of a variety of query modes versus document types. The interactive lectures discussed techniques and common approaches to facilitate multimedia search engines: metadata driven retrieval; piggyback text retrieval where automated processes create text surrogates for multimedia; automated image annotation; and content-based retrieval. The latter was studied in great depth looking at features and distances, and how to effectively combine them for retrieval. The last part of the course studied interactive ways of engaging with repositories through browsing and relevance feedback, roping in geographical context, and providing visual summaries for videos. The course emphasised state-of-the-art research in the area of multimedia information retrieval, which gives an indication of the research and development trends and, thereby, a glimpse of the future world.

Other lecture series were given during the RuSSIR 2010 week on Web Data Mining (Professor Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo Research), XML Information Retrieval (Professor Mounia Lalmas, University of Glasgow), Graph-based Methods for Social Search (Dr Alexander Troussov, IBM Ireland) and Distributed Information Retrieval (Professor Fabio Crestani and Dr Ilya Markov, University of Lugano) making the programme diverse and dense for every participant.

Sponsorship by Yandex, Google, HP, Microsoft Research, SKB Kontur and Rambler ensured that participants did not have to pay a fee for the summer school.

Related Links:

Russian Summer School in Information Retrieval (RuSSIR 2010)

KMi Continues its Close Relationship with AIMSA

Thursday 16 Sep 2010 | KMi News

The AIMSA conference series has provided a biennial forum for the presentation of AI research and development since 1984, and is the premier event of its kind in the Balkan Region. The conference, which is always held in Bulgaria, covers a wide variety of topics in Artificial Intelligence and related disciplines and also provides conduit for the exchange of scientific ideas between Central/Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. Previously, AIMSA Keynotes and Conference Chairs have come from the KMi senior team. For this year the Opening Keynote "Semantic Web Services as a Core Component of the Future Internet" was given by John Domingue. In the talk he covered the research carried out in the SOA4All project which contributes to the European Union’s Billion Euro Future Internet research programme. Other Keynotes included Atanas Kiryakov who covered the principles underlying his semantic company’s software which was responsible for driving the BBC 2010 World Cup’s website. AIMSA 2010 was sponsored by ECCAI, the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence.

Related Links:

A BBC Blog on the use of Semantic Technology to support the 2010 World Cup website

W3C Acknowledges WSMO-Lite, a Submission Led By KMi

Tuesday 14 Sep 2010 | KMi News

The W3C, the Web’s standardization consortium with a mission to lead the Web to its full potential, has today acknowledged WSMO-Lite, a technology submission led by KMi. Developed within the EU project SOA4All, WSMO-Lite is a lightweight set of terms for describing the semantics of Web services that builds on the W3C standard SAWSDL. According to the W3C’s own Team comment, WSMO-Lite "is a useful addition to SAWSDL for annotations of existing services and the combination of both techniques can certainly be applied to a large number of semantic Web services use cases."

KMi Celebrates Ortenz’ Significant Birthday

Tuesday 31 Aug 2010 | KMi News

KMi today gathered to celebrate a “significant” birthday for long-term secretary Ortenz Rose. Ortenz has served at the OU since before KMi was formed in 1995 and joined the institute together with KMi co-founder Marc Eisenstadt.

Ortenz started her celebrations earlier this year with a South Caribbean cruise, but confesses that she had spent the last week on leave at home in rainy Milton Keynes.

KMi delivers key workshops at E2bN 2010

Friday 27 Aug 2010 | KMi News

KMi has long been associated with the East of England Broadband Network, helping E2bN deliver FlashMeeting videoconferencing and the Making the News schools’ journalism portal to all of the primary and secondary education providers in the E2bN area.

As part of this ongoing relationship KMi’s Dr Peter Scott and Alan Fletcher delivered key workshops at this year’s E2bN conference.

Learning Tools of the Future ran as a two-hour workshop to draw on the experience of the audience, as mainly teachers and Local Education Authority employees, in the use of ICT to support learning across the curriculum. Showcasing key developments and encouraging debate on the use of embedded ICT in teaching, the workshop was lively and well attended.

The FlashMeeting Workshop ran as a live interactive FlashMeeting for attendees to the conference, allowing them to experience first hand the ease of FM technology and debate the use of FM in a learning environment, as well as gain a sneak preview of some key developments in Flashmeeting surrounding the building of groups and further analysis of meeting content.

Related Links:

New iTunes U site showcases the Open University

Wednesday 25 Aug 2010 | KMi News

As it hits 300M downloads in its 3 years of life, iTunes U has now upgraded the site manager to allow a number of new features including comments, ratings and genius. For the Open University on iTunes U this means that we have had the chance to seriously upgrade our site, with a much stronger graphical impact; and a much better experience for iPad, iPhone and iPod users.

In a complement to our efforts, the Open University on iTunes U is the top most showcase in the launch banner of this new look site.

Technically, the new template provides a common structural framework for all sites, through the use of iTunes U subject categories. Collections – (formally called Albums) now support comments and ratings, which are managed by Apple. Whilst previously Collections could only appear in one place within the structure of an iTunes U site, this meant duplicating the Collection if we wanted it to appear in two places, this led to confusion and dilution of popularity rankings. Tagging of Collections now allows us to editorially create new pages of content and a Collection can feature in all the tagged pages as well as the standard iTunes U subject categories. Bespoke Tag Pages thus allow us to create structure outside of the standard iTunes U subject category pages. Examples of such pages are Darwin Now or OU in Africa.

Revised templates for Pages and Collections that bring the look and feel of iTunes U in line with the rest of the iTunes Store experience and iTunes Genius recommendations will be enabled once enough Collections have been rated and comparative download data collected. You can also now preview tracks and click on links however you require iTunes installed to download any content.

Altogether this new release for this channel looks and feels like a significant jump in quality, for what was already a very high quality vehicle for our work. Well done to the whole team!

Related Links:

Guest lecture at the CISCO telepresence labs

Friday 20 Aug 2010 | KMi News

Anna De Liddo, Sofia Angeletou, and Fridolin Wild have been giving a guest lecture on KMi social networking tools at the CISCO telepresence labs in London. The guest lecture was held for students of the MODUL university in Vienna, as part of a course on online collaboration and virtual communities.

Related Links:

CISCO PR material

ROLE @ ICALT 2010

Tuesday 10 Aug 2010 | KMi News

The European project ROLE was at the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT) last month in exotic Tunisia. Alexander Mikroyannidis from KMi presented a semantic architecture for Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). This work is about layering and integration of learning ontologies, which are modelling various aspects of the learning process and facilitating the production of recommendations to learners.

Another ROLE partner, Maren Scheffel from Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, presented the latest work on contextualised attention metadata for studying learners’ behaviour. This technology has been applied in ROLE for gathering usage data out of learning tools and services.

Related Links:

GravPad demo at WikiSym 2010

Thursday 22 Jul 2010 | KMi News

Joe Corneli gave a demo of GravPad at WikiSym 2010 in Gdansk, Poland. GravPad uses the Firefox Greasemonkey extension to attach an Etherpad to every page on the web.

This mashup of web-plus-Etherpad, together with a “real-time recent changes page”, facilitates the discovery of interesting content and conversations. If you have Greasemonkey installed, you can try GravPad now!

WikiSym’s proceedings are available in the ACM Digital Library – pay special attention to Best Paper Award winner Annalisa Pelizza’s paper on “Opennes as an asset”.

You can also find some nice slides on WikiSym’s wiki, including Piotr Konieczny’s awesome presentation on “Teaching with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation Wikis”.

ODET 2010: Online Deliberation Emerging Tools Workshop

Thursday 08 Jul 2010 | KMi News

At the Fourth International Conference on Online Deliberation (OD2010) this year, Simon Buckingham Shum and the Hypermedia Discourse Team from KMi organized a workshop on Online Deliberation Emerging Tools.
This invitational workshop brought together many of the leading researchers and practitioners in computer-supported dialogue, deliberation and argumentation – modes of discourse central to activities including social learning, collective sensemaking, debate analysis and participatory democracy.

Drawing on experiences spanning business, mass media, education, government and many other public sectors, the workshop considered the state of the art in tools that are emerging from the labs, reflecting on the lessons that are being learnt around the effective usage and deployment of these tools.

The workshop was chaired by Simon Buckingham Shum (KMi, Open U. UK)
Workshop participants, in order of presentation:

Tim van Gelder (Austhink Consulting, AUS) – bCisive Online & ShowCase

Nikos Karacapilidis (U. Patras, GR) – CoPe_it!

Anna De Liddo & Simon Buckingham Shum (KMi, Open U., UK) – Compendium/Cohere

Mark Snaith & Chris Reed (U. Dundee, UK) – OVA & Arvina

David Price (Debategraph, UK) – Debategraph

Sanjay Modgil (U. Liverpool, UK) – Parmenides

Ann Macintosh (U. Leeds, UK) and Tom Gordon (Fraunhofer FOKUS, DE) – Impact Project

Mark Klein (MIT, USA) – Deliberatorium

Rob Ennals (Intel Labs, USA) – DisputeFinder

To know more about the workshop and for links to presentations and tools please visit the workshop website here below.

As a following on to the workshop Simon Buckingham Shum also chaired a panel in the main OD2010 conference on Emerging Technologies for Online Deliberation.

Within the panel Anna De Liddo presented Cohere as Web Annotation Tool for Collective Inquiry and Online Deliberationthe, and the new Social Semantic Network visualization function supported by Cohere (see links to the demo videos below).

Related Links:

JISC funds project to expose linked data at the OU: LUCERO

Monday 05 Jul 2010 | KMi News

LUCERO (Linking University Content for Education and Research Online) is a new 1 year JISC-funded project at the Open University. Led by KMi, LUCERO (which means ‘Bright Star’ in Spanish) is a collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and the Open University Library, working in partnership with many other parts of the OU, in order to apply linked data technologies and principles to education and research practices.

To realise this ambitious goal, LUCERO will have to create a new technical infrastructure to store, give access, manipulate and, of course, link data from several institutional repositories (such as Open Research Online, the library catalogue and staff databases).
A major goal is to develop the practice and processes to create expose research and educational information as part of the Web of Data. Knowing which sources can be exposed under which conditions and at what cost is currently a problem faced by any organization wishing to follow the linked open data route. The goal of LUCERO is to generate reusable experience based on making linked University data happen at the OU.

Moreover, LUCERO is not only about exposing data for others to use and explore. One of the major objectives of the project is to concretely demonstrate the benefits of linked data in a University environment, especially to researchers and students. The project works in direct collaboration with six research projects from the Faculty of Arts, which are producing data in various forms. Exposing this data and linking it to both institutional sources and external datasets should make such research results richer and more accessible. As part of the project, we will develop a set of applications showing how students and researchers can take benefit from such enhanced data, to explore the underlying information sources and possibly discover unexpected connections.

For more information about the project go to the project blog, which will be updated regularly with the progress of the project.

KMi @ Apple WWDC, San Francisco

Monday 05 Jul 2010 | KMi News

The week of June 7, 2010 saw over 5000 developers and 1000 Apple engineers converge on San Fransisco for the Apple World Wide Developers Conference. The Open University team from LTS and KMi was lead by KMi Director Peter Scott.

Amongst the new things announced at the event by Steve Jobs in his keynote speech on Monday is a new iPhone 4 phone. The queue for the keynote event is notorious for stretching around the whole city block of the Moscone centre in San Fransisco… and the OU team were in that line up early – to get some face time with Apple development teams as soon as the announcement were public.

Most interesting to note that the company are going “open” for some of their key developments – such as the emphasis on HTML-5 now in their devices and the new “FaceTime” videoconferencing platform.

Live Social Semantics at ESWC2010

Friday 18 Jun 2010 | KMi News

Following the successful deployment of the Live Social Semantics application at ESWC 2009 and at HyperText 2009, Dr Harith Alani from KMi, along with collaborators from SocioPatterns and City University, were invited to relaunch the Live Social Semantics application at the Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2010) which took place in Crete, May 31-June 3, 2010.

The Live Social Semantics application seamlessly gathers and integrates information from the social web, the semantic web, and from active RFID sensors that detects face-to-face contacts. The application aims to support conference attendees to network, to learn about each other, and to log their real-world social contacts in real time.

The application was very well received at ESWC 2010, and it was used by more than 130 of the conference delegates.

KMi at HRD 2010

Friday 11 Jun 2010 | KMi News

The annual HRD Conference of the CIPD at Olympia, London is the largest UK Training and Development event of its kind and KMi’s Alan Fletcher hosted the ‘Learning Technologies of the Future’ presentation

The conference, which included over 30 sessions across two days invited industry and education experts and HR professionals to share their knowledge in training, learning and organisation development.

Alan’s presentation ‘Learning Technologies of the Future’ delivered a comprehensive tour of KMi’s work in current web 2.0 environments and gave an insight into the future internet and semantic exploration of learning objects.

Showcasing Kmi technologies such as FlashMeeting, the Virtual Microscope, Magpie and Flor, along with practical examples of the power of itunesU and Open Learn, the presentation was aimed at giving a broad sense of current capabilities and trends along with outlining the challenges of the semantic web.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is Europe’s largest HR development professional body. A globally recognised brand with over 135,000 members, who pride themselves on supporting and developing those responsible for the management and development of people within organisations.

KMi glimpses the future at BILD 2010

Friday 11 Jun 2010 | KMi News

KMi ‘s Alan Fletcher was one of the speakers at this years British Institute for Learning and Development conference which focussed on ‘Learning and Development: the next five years’

The conference, which included speakers form BT, Serious Games Institute and Rolls Royce aimed to provide the opportunity for Learning & Development professionals to update their knowledge of a range of initiatives to better equip and engage learners and increase the impact of learning.

Alan’s presentation ‘Learning Technologies of the Future’ ran a whistle stop tour of KMi’s work in current web 2.0 environments and gave an insight into the future internet and semantic exploration of learning objects.

Showcasing Kmi technologies such as FlashMeeting, the Virtual Microscope, Magpie and Flor, along with practical examples of the power of itunesU and Open Learn, the presentation was aimed at giving a broad sense of current capabilities and trends along with outlining the challenges of the semantic web.

The British Institute for Learning and Development addresses the needs and raises the status of all those involved in learning and development (both organisations and individuals). With a focus on professionalism and performance improvement, it provides coherence to a sector that embraces corporate, work based and lifelong learning and vocational training.

Related Links:

BILD

KMI at the ESWC 2010 (30 May – 3 June)

Wednesday 09 Jun 2010 | KMi News

This year’s Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) took place last week in Heraklion, Greece. ESWC2010 builds on the success of the former European Semantic Web Conference series, but seeks to extend its focus by engaging with other communities within and outside ICT, in which semantics can play an important role. It is one of the major conferences in Semantic Web field featuring invited talks by Aldo Gangemi, Noshir Contractor, Sean Bechhofer and Wolfgang Wahlster, over 50 research paper presentations, a PhD-symposium, a tutorial and workshop day, and a poster and demo session. KMI members were actively involved both as organizers and participants. Liliana Cabral chaired the Demos/Posters session, Harith Alani was a Semantic Web Technologies Co-ordinator and Carlos Pedrinaci chaired the conference panel. We are all looking forward to the upcoming International Semantic Web Conference, which will be held during the beginning of November in Shanghai.

SOA4All: Leading the Future Internet of Services

Monday 10 May 2010 | KMi News

Last week saw SOA4All’s second year review in Barcelona. Driven by the success of previous reviews, this time the evaluation focused on exploitation of project results which shows the high expectations the European Commission has of this project. As on previous occasions, KMi’s involvement was crucial for yet another successful review. KMi’s John Domingue and Carlos Pedrinaci presented the outstanding work of KMi’s team composed of Pierre Grenon, Jacek Kopecky, Dave Lambert, Dong Liu and Maria Maleshkova. John, scientific director of the project, gave a seminal presentation on the main scientific contributions of SOA4All and introduced the main conclusions and predictions drawn by the project with regards to the Future Internet of Services. The presentation, which was very well received, led to one of the main recommendations from the reviewers which is that "SOA4All is one of the most advanced projects on services in Europe and should as such lead the Future Internet of Services". Thus, with renewed strength and motivation, the project enters the last of three years of research and development, in which it is expected to establish a key milestone in the evolution of services on the Web.

NoTube – on the way to future television

Monday 10 May 2010 | KMi News

NoTube – this is future television. This claim was once again underlined by the very successful 1st year project review of NoTube, which took place last week at the VU Intertain Lab in Amsterdam, which proved to be a more than worthy venue for NoTube. NoTube did set off to create a new, user-driven television experience by combining digital television with the latest Semantic Web technology and the diverse social network and user data spread around the Web. During the successful review – reviewers rated the project as excellent – use case partners such as the BBC, RAI or Stoneroos showcased a first set of prototypes which took advantage from, amongst other things, latest Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology developed by the OU team (John Domingue, Stefan Dietze, Neil Benn, Harry Yu & Bassem Makni) to integrate a range of TV-related services from the Web. The reviewers were very impressed with the 1st year results and we are looking forward to an even more interesting and ambitious second year of NoTube. Meanwhile, up-to-date information on recent developments within NoTube are regularly updated at http://blog.notu.be where a first demo video and a brief introduction to the OU’s work within NoTube can be found as well.

Times coverage of Technology @ The Open University

Tuesday 04 May 2010 | KMi News

A very neat set of pieces from the UK’s Times Newspaper was published recently, and gives a rounded view of some things happening at the Open University. The Knowledge Media Institute’s work features in a number of these articles in the paper. (The pieces are in the STUDENT section of the Times Online http://www.timesonline.co.uk but of course the top level piece may have changed by the time you read this, so direct links to stories are listed below, and these should not change 😉

Evidently, The KMi Director said something along the lines of : tutors released from the time-consuming lecture grind will be able to spend more time face to face with their students. “The best teachers have always been mentors, helping students to reflect on what they have read.” Which definitely sounds right 😉

The rest of the piece does sound a little more heavy on the “new face of AI” angle than we ould typically have stressed… but it aint a million miles away from KMi semantic web future thinking, and does highlight some very cool new media recommender things we are doing … and very nice to see this public impact of our work.

Related Links:

Compendium 2.0 Beta 1 Released!

Tuesday 04 May 2010 | KMi News

Compendium 2.0 (beta 1) contains many exciting new features that expand the boundaries of what you can do with the software, as well as enhance its existing capabilities.

Movie Maps: You can bring videos directly into a new kind of Compendium view, called a "Movie Map". With this you can add nodes and links on top of a movie, having these annotations appear and disappear wherever you want over the length of the video. You can even animate maps without a video, so that you can add movement to your maps, (see link below).

Curvy, thick links! and other kinds of link formatting: Links can now be curved, or squared as well as straight. They can also be dashed. Link labels can now be formatted in the same way as node labels, with different font sizes, styles, and colours.

Enhanced customization: Compendium now lets you customize many aspects of its appearance to match the needs of your organization, project, or personal preferences. You can specify what maps get automatically created with new projects, as well as aspects of the splash image and text when Compendium starts, the About screen, and the graphics and links that display for a new project.

Performance improvements for sharing Compendium over the Internet: Compendium 2.0 contains many speed and processing improvements that greatly speed remote access and manipulation of shared Compendium projects.

Email integration: You can enable Compendium to send "real" email when a new item has been added to your Compendium inbox.

Internationalization: Compendium’s menus, controls, and other features can now appear in any language through externalized interface strings.

Improved management of Linked Files: Compendium lets you attach any sort of files to Reference nodes. Moving Compendium projects between machines often means taking care of many linked file locations. A new Linked Files browser now lets you sort your linked reference files. This is especially useful when using Compendium for shared projects over the net. You can see what external files are being referenced in a project, which nodes they are belong to, and where they are located (indicating also if they are lost, or long longer exist at the stored location).

Template improvements: We have added some default templates for people to try. We have also extended the way the Templates folders are processed so Help information can be added in the form of HTML files. They will be displayed in the Templates menu (see the Compendium Help system for full details).

Related Links:

SAP Says Future Internet: Right Here, Right Now

Thursday 29 Apr 2010 | KMi News

Yesterday saw the end to the highly stimulating day and a half International Research Forum (IRF) hosted by SAP at the Lindner Hotel & Sporting Club Wiesensee. The annual invitation-only forum brings together the leading thinkers from academia and industry around a preselected topic and the theme of this year’s event was "Future Internet: Right Here, Right Now". The event was led by Lutz Heuser SAP Vice President for Research and was structured around visionary and challenge talks, panels and break out sessions. A significant SAP support team for the event incorporated several reporters, a press photographer, a film crew, live concept/mind mappers, sound recordists and professional moderators. Besides Lutz other notable attendees included: Claudia Alsdorf CEO of Original1 (a new cloud computing company created by SAP, Nokia and Giesecke & Devrient), Mario Campolargo Director of the Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures, Directorate of DG-INFSO, Martin Curley Director of Intel Labs Europe, Claudia Funke a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, Matthias Kaiserswerth Head of IBM Research Strategy in Systems Management and Compliance, Peter Kukrpick Chief Product Officer and Executive Board Member Software AG, Latif Ladid President of the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Forum, Maximilian Metzger Director of Information and Communication Technologies, New Services at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Joachim Schaper Vice President at SAP Research and Wolfgang Wahlster head of DFKI (and also now head on the winning European Institute of Innovation and Technology Knowledge Innovation Community). For my part I was involved on a panel as a rapporteur on the topic of the technological foundations of the Future Internet which complemented the other forum topics of business models and possible inhibitors. IRF results are published in a book and we expect an associated Future Internet book to be published early in 2011. KMi will continue to work with SAP on their Unified Service Description Language which forms part of their vision for an Internet of Services.

A STELLAR first year

Thursday 22 Apr 2010 | KMi News

The STELLAR project has been commended in its first annual performance evaluation by the European Commission for starting so strongly in its goal of strengthening scientific and technological excellence in Technology-Enhanced Learning.

A panel of four international experts, from the US, China, Norway, and the UK, chaired by the EC project officer Marco Marsella assessed the project recently in Luxembourg, and indicated that it has built good foundations for de-fragmenting Technology-Enhanced Learning in Europe. In year one, STELLAR has particularly emphasized the definition of a first round of “Grand Challenges” for research in the TEL field. The STELLAR Network consortium consists of 16 outstanding European partner organizations and is managed by Peter Scott (Coordinator), Fridolin Wild (General Manager), and Alan Fletcher (Administrative Manager) of the Open University’s KMi.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that the KMi FM technology was used extensively in the first year of this project work, with over 150 virtual working FM events!

KMi’s FM service (now hosted by the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning) provides a range of good metric tools that help to put some of this work into context. Using “FM Metrics” we can say that this year, using FM virtual meetings alone, STELLAR work saved over 160,000 Kg of CO2 being produced (had these meetings been conducted face-to-face instead of virtually); that the 150 meetings involved over 220 “meeting hours” of work; with 73 ‘active registered participants’ and 140 unregistered meeting ‘guests’. FM Metrics also provide this community, as others, with interesting visualizations of this work. In the example pictured above, we can see a ‘word cloud visualization’ of the topics in the last 10 FM events before this review meeting. Clearly, it is no surprise that the words ‘please’ and ‘sorry’ feature prominently, at that time!

Related Links:

STELLAR

KMi’s real-time visualizations of Election TV Debate

Monday 19 Apr 2010 | KMi News

One of KMi’s teams has been generating live, interactive visualizations, revealing the structure of the first televised UK election debate between the three main party leaders.

The Hypermedia Discourse group’s Compendium and Cohere tools have been used to generate the maps, which are then open to anyone to support/challenge the leaders’ claims, make new connections to other resources, or add new evidence. The maps are now being analysed to see what they reveal about the way in which the debate is conducted, with some preliminary results being published on the blog.

More details and coverage from other Open University channels in the links below…

Related Links:

The Ever-growing Future Internet Contributes to a 2500 Event in Valencia

Sunday 18 Apr 2010 | KMi News

This week saw over 2500 participants attend a large EU meeting: "From Economic Recovery to Sustainability". This large meeting combined large public-private partnerships in the areas of: Factories of the Future, Energy Efficient Buildings, Green Cars and the Future Internet. Each of these areas is associated with a significant pool of funding and at the event a 300M Euro public-private initiative related to the Future Internet was announced. The main meeting was kicked-off with speeches from a number of prominent members of the European Commission and the Spanish Government including the Vice President of the European Commission, the Commissioner for the European Digital Agenda, the Spanish State Secretary of Telecomunications and Information Society and the Spanish Minister of Science and Innovation. The meeting also had heavy involvement from the major European network, mobile and software industries. This included keynote talks from: the CTO of the Thales Group, Vice President of SAP, the Executive Director of Telef�nica and the CEO of ATOS Origin. KMi was involved in the week in a number of ways. John Domingue and Carlos Pedrinaci gave invited talks at the NESSI Projects Summit at the start of the week on "The Service Layer" and "SOA, Semantics & Web 2.0: Towards a Web of Billions of Services". NESSI is a European Technology Platform which brings together the main industrial players in Europe related to Software and Services. The Executive Board of NESSI includes: Alcatel Lucent, ATOS Origin, BT, IBM, HP, Nokia, SAP, Siemens, Software AG, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, and Thales. In his role as a co-ordinator for the Future Internet Assembly John Domingue also co-Chaired a session on Search and Discovery in the Future Internet which also included presentations from Siemens, Exalead and SAP. He was also invited onto the final panel in the closing plenary. In addition to the excitement attached to the launch of the 300M initiative associated with the Future Internet there has, as one can imagine, been a lot of discussion on the technical, social and business principles that a new global infrastructure should follow. From a technical point of view it is evident that interoperability is a key issue at the network and service levels and also for a number of key vertical sectors. For example, Smart Grids, enabling the more efficient generation and use of electrical power by companies and end-users has interoperability as a major technological hurdle to be crossed. A second technical highlight was that SAP, the world’s third largest software provider, will now base its development of the "Internet of Services" on USDL a rich service description model influenced by previous research in KMi on a Web Services Modelling Ontology. We will continue to work with SAP on this through our SOA4All project which was highlighted by the SAP Vice President in his Keynote talk. The only downside of the meeting was related to the volcanic eruptions in Iceland and the related travel problems. A significant number of conference attendees were stranded by the flight cancellations and at the time of writing this remains an issue for the author of this article.

Final PHAROS review

Thursday 15 Apr 2010 | KMi News

The final project review for PHAROS took place in Lannion, France on March 18. Three years of hard work and detailed review preparation was very evident and the initial comments from the reviewers were highly positive.

The PHAROS (Platform for searcHing of Audiovisual Resources across Online Spaces) project developed an integrated audiovisual search platform incorporating media analysis tools and content-based search engines. The demonstration platform used key KMi technology to analyse, segment and annotate video and to perform content-based search across video collections. The outcomes from PHAROS can been seen at the project website or via demonstration videos hosted on the PHAROS YouTube channel. The tools and technologies developed for PHAROS and the contacts made throughout the PHAROS federation are continuing to be used in future projects.

The project finished with a social dinner on Thursday evening which included a walk to a nearby lighthouse – the symbol of the PHAROS project.

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Rocky the Robot takes to the Waves

Wednesday 14 Apr 2010 | KMi News

KMi’s first ‘robot’ for Google Wave has started surfing. It isn’t very smart, and can’t do much as yet but still demonstrates the exciting potential of Google Wave to transform the online aspects of distance education. Rocky is designed to offer information about the microscope slides used in Earth Sciences courses such as S276, and can even take over control of the online virtual microscope to demonstrate ideas presented in the course texts.

The Google Wave version of the virtual microscope and its associated robot has been developed by KMi consultant Tammo Freese and KMi researcher Dr Peter Whalley, in conjunction with Prof. Simon Kelley, Dr Mahesh Anand and Dr Andy Tindle of the Earth Sciences department.

For further information on this project contact Dr Peter Whalley p.c.whalley@open.ac.uk

ECIR 2010 hosted by KMi

Tuesday 06 Apr 2010 | KMi News

KMi hosted the European Conference on Information Retrieval from March 28th to 31st 2010. This was the 32nd such conference and included both a tutorial/workshop day before the main event and a very successful industry the following it.

Keynote speakers, including Barry Smyth and Hinrich Shütze, as well as this year’s winner of the Karen Spärk Jones award, Mirella Lapata, addressed over 160 attendees.

The industry day welcomed speakers from companies such as Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and funnelback.

The event banquet was held at Bletchley Park which also gave delegates the opportunity to explore the park and museum.

For further information, contact Dr Suzanne Little (Local Organisational Chair) s.little@open.ac.uk

Related Links:

Conference website (with photos from during the week)

From Maps to Microscopes

Tuesday 06 Apr 2010 | KMi News

KMi researchers Chris Valentine and Dr Kevin Quick have discovered that the well known Google Maps software can also be used to develop microscopes. They have found that by adapting a technique developed by UCL’s mapping department it is possible to display and manipulate the large images used by the on-line microscopes recently developed at the OU.

The Google Map technology is far more powerful and flexible than the current Flash based software used on many OU internet-based courses, e.g. those for Earth Sciences and Biology. It could also be ‘shared’ as part of a Google Wave, allowing students to collaborate with each other on course activities or receive tutorial advice.

For further information on this project contact Dr Peter Whalley [p.c.whalley@open.ac.uk]

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webCEF Bags an EU ‘Excellent’

Friday 26 Mar 2010 | KMi News

The webCEF project has received an overall ‘excellent’ rating from the EU in its final report. The assessor stated that webCEF showed “high quality of project outcomes and products; good functioning of the consortium and efficient project management [with a] large dissemination of results and a user-friendly website”.

webCEF provided a web-based assessment tool that allowed students and teachers to grade spoken language samples against the Common European Framework scales, originally an initiative of the Council of Europe. Running on a KMi server, and authored by Kevin Quick and Chris Valentine, webCEF built on our experience with the Macromedia Flash Communication Server to allow students to record their samples directly into the website (FlashVlog) as well as uploading pre-recorded media.

Both the assessment scales and web interface were translated into a number of European languages. The assessment tool is still operational and currently contains over 600 user accounts, 650 samples and 2700 assessments.

Carrying on from webCEF, the new CEFcult project takes on-line assessment into the field of intercultural professional competence.

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KMi Researchers accept Mozilla ‘Jetpack for Learning’ special award

Monday 22 Mar 2010 | KMi News

March 14th 2010 saw the Mozilla Foundation’s “Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge” awards presented at the international South by South West interactive technology festival in Austin, Texas, USA. The international community of web learning project teams started work on Firefox prototypes in December 2009. The Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge sought international project ideas that could turn the open web into a rich social learning environment. The Jetpack SDK aims to help designers to build powerful Firefox add-ons and is part of Mozilla’s new Drumbeat initiative. In February, Mozilla announced that ten projects were selected as Design Challenge winners and invited to participate in a Mozilla Jetpack design camp. KMi was already a double winner in this work, as two of this international top ten were KMi Projects: MUPPLE-II and COHERE.

Three of the top ten winning projects were also chosen for special awards: ClozeFox was selected as “best use case”; Expression Widgets was chosen as the “best web hack” and our own ROLE Mupple-II web recorder received the prize for “sharing knowledge with others”.

The MUPPLE II system, which is now part of the EU ROLE project, implements an end-user friendly toolkit for learning environment design and best practice sharing. MUPPLE-II helps to record activities such as ‘getting to know each other’, share, and replay them. It combines the latest Web 2.0 semantic web technologies to enable personal and collaborative learning on the Web.

Accepting the award on behalf of the KMi team in Texas, was Laurian Gridinoc. “Winning this Jetpack for Learning award is only the first of our of MUPPLE II milestones”, he joked. The MUPPLE-II implementation will be further developed as part of the Responsive and open learning environments ROLE, research work. In this EU FP7 funded research, ROLE will offer adaptivity and personalization in terms of content and navigation and the entire learning environment.

Related Links:

European Consumers and Web 3.0: Fair Consumer Services supported by the Future Internet and Semantics

Friday 19 Mar 2010 | KMi News

Yesterday was the first day of an EU Commission lead Consumer Summit which incorporated extensive content on Web 3.0. The overall focus of the Summit, opened by Mr. John Dalli, European Commissioner for Health and Consumers, was on services for consumers and in particular on access, fairness and choice. Specifically, the Summit aimed to develop input to European Policy on services examining the area from different angles, by bringing together consumers, consumer advocates, business, and policy makers. The event, attended by 450 participants from industry and policy bodies, was split into six workshops one of which was "Web 3.0 – Challenges and Opportunities for Consumers in the Internet of the Future". This stream was chaired by Mr. Ken Ducatel, Head of Unit "Lisbon Strategy and i2010" in DG Information Society and Mr. Thomas Kramler, Deputy Head of Unit "Antitrust: IT, Internet and Consumer Electronics" in DG Competition. Participants in the workshop covered a diverse set of organizations including: Microsoft (who talked about their "long-term relationship" with the EU Commission), Google, Nokia, the Ministries of Economy and Social Affairs for a number of European States, the European Parliament, National Representatives to the EU, and consumer council representatives from Denmark, Germany, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. KMi’s role for the event included the opening Keynote talk for the Web 3.0 stream given by John Domingue and the use of our Future Internet video (produced within the Service Web 3.0 project) within the main plenary after John Dalli’s opening speech.

Stefan Rueger named PC co-chair for IEEE/WIC/ACM conference WI 2010

Wednesday 17 Mar 2010 | KMi News

Prof Stefan Rueger of KMi has been named as one of three Programme Co-chairs of the IEEE/WIC/ACM Web Intelligence conference to be held later this year in Toronto.

Web Intelligence (WI) has emerged as a new direction for scientific research and development to explore the fundamental roles as well as practical impacts of Artificial Intelligence and advanced Information Technology on the next generation of Web-empowered products, systems, services, and activities.

In this sense, the Web Intelligence scientific conference WI 2010, brings together research fields such as knowledge representation, knowledge discovery and data mining, intelligent agents, social network intelligence against the background of hardware infrastructure changes in the area of wireless networks, ubiquitous devices and data/knowledge grids. The WI 2010 conference will be jointly held with a conference on Intelligent Agent Technology.

Web Intelligence may turn out to be one of the most important as well as promising IT research fields in the booming era of the Web. It is a good recognition of the research standing of the Knowledge Media Institute to be involved at the forefront of this research sector in a leading role.

Related Links:

WI 2010 website

Compendium for mapping group dynamics

Tuesday 16 Mar 2010 | KMi News

In recent work with psychotherapists, we’ve been using Compendium to convert their usual notes from analytic group sessions, into maps that reflect key aspects of the group dynamics.
The Compendium design team has always envisaged the tool as analogous to spreadsheets for ideas: “Excel for Knowledge” if you will. Instead of handy tools for working with numbers, the vision is for an intuitive tool providing scaffolding for rendering, linking, structuring, categorising and debating ideas, with a customisable user experience, without knowing in advance what the domain of application will be.

We could map participant interactions in any drawing package, of course, but Compendium has a full database behind it: nodes and links are hypertext elements, not just dumb graphical objects. Compendium’s ability to design and assign combinations of tags (keywords, equivalent to qualitative data analysis codes), coupled with node embedding (rendering a given node in the network in multiple views), offers the prospect of conducting longitudinal comparative analyses across sessions, at both the individual and group levels.

The blog post below provides more details and examples, with commentary on how we used Compendium’s different elements to create this vertical application

Related Links:

NeOn project concludes

Friday 12 Mar 2010 | KMi News

The Final Review of the NeOn Project took place on February 26th-27th in Luxembourg. The Reviewers’ immediate feedback was very positive and the Project Officer, Stefano Bertolo, subsequently wrote on Twitter “I spent a couple of days looking at the latest release of www.neon-toolkit.org and really liked what I saw: give it a spin”.

The project’s legacy is a robust new ontology engineering platform (the NeOn Toolkit), which is compliant with the new OWL 2 standard, plus a variety of leading-edge methods and tools covering a wide spectrum of tasks in ontology engineering, including managing networks of ontologies, reusing best practices in ontology engineering, and locating, accessing and reusing content from the Semantic Web. In addition, there is a comprehensive set of methodological guidelines for ontology engineering, which will be published as a book in the Autumn.

The project website provides a gateway to the NeOn application and tools and to the communities using them, for example, the Ontology Metadata Vocabulary (OMV), the Cupboard ontology repository, the Ontology Design Patterns repository (ODP) and the Fisheries and Pharmaceutical case studies.

So what next? Well, founding partners anticipate increased community take up of NeOn and aim to continue to support and develop the technology further, so watch this space for future announcements or subscribe to the NeOn user mailing list.

Related Links:

ERA live link to Masaya Volcano Nicaragua

Thursday 18 Feb 2010 | KMi News

Yesterday afternoon Paul Hogan called KMi using the ERA Portable WLAN Toolkit. Paul’s visiting Masaya volcano in Nicaragua, where he has been carrying out a number of field tests for his iPhone applications and backhaul trials for the JANET funded Portable WLAN project.

Paul connected up with us using a BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) terminal, and sent us some live photographs and streaming video while talking to us using his VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone. All of the kit is battery powered and fits in a small rucksack, which we can use anywhere to create a temporary network to connect to and broadcast on the Internet.

The toolkit comprises of one or more WiFi routers which provide a local network for Paul’s Web server, VoIP server and wireless IP video camera to connect to, from his network Paul can broadcast:

Live photos: Using a WiFi camera Paul takes photos and sends them to his local web server which we can access over the BGAN satellite link.
Live voice: Using a VoIP client on his iPhone or Netbook, Paul dials into his local VoIP server which links up with a similar server on the OU network, so that anyone at the OU can talk to Paul using a standard VoIP client.
Live video: The wireless IP video camera provides a live video stream of Paul’s activities which again we can access over the satellite link.

Developed through the ERA (Enabling Remote Activity) project, in collaboration with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the toolkit provides a portable telecommunications network that could be used in any mobile learning context. It delivers a robust high-speed local area network. Connecting the local network to a backhaul link, such as a BGAN terminal, can be used to offer Internet access to remote locations or serve live photos, video, VoIP or other data.

Using the toolkit anyone on the Internet could get live access to remote field sites like volcanoes.

Related Links:

KMi succeeds in Mozilla Competition

Tuesday 16 Feb 2010 | KMi News

Two teams from KMi participated in the ‘Jetpack for Learning Design’ challenge run by the Mozilla Foundation to revolutionize learning. And two teams from KMi made their way through to the finals.

MUPPLE-II implements an end-user friendly toolkit for learning environment design and best practice sharing. MUPPLE-II helps to record activities such as ‘getting to know each other’, share, and replay them.

COHERE implements facilities to collaboratively annotate the web, semantically link the annotations, and engage the user in online scholarly discussion.

The finals culminate in a design camp organised from March 10-12 by the Foundation in Austin, Texas, preceding the South by SouthWest Interactive (SXSWi) Conference. After 38 international teams were selected in the previous round, the jury now filtered out the ten most competitive ones to go, meet face-to-face on their expenses.

The KMi teams guided by Simon Buckingham Shum and Fridolin Wild are sending their lead developers Michelle Bachler and Laurian Gridinoc as representatives to the finals of the competition.

Jetpack is the recently released flagship of the Mozilla labs that explores new ways to extend and personalize the web. The ‘Jetpack for Learning Design’ challenge is organised by the Mozilla Foundation with support from the MacArthur Foundation.

Related Links:

ERA Workshop at the Rewiring Inclusion Conference

Friday 12 Feb 2010 | KMi News

Trevor Collins from KMI and Jessica Bartlett from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences ran a workshop on inclusive fieldwork at the Rewiring Inclusion conference in Nottingham on Tuesday. The conference, organised by the UK’s Association of Learning Technology (ALT) and the Joint Information Systems Committee’s (JISC) TechDis service, sought to highlight the importance of inclusion and encourage technology developers and policy leaders to ensure their technology is suitable for everyone to use.

Over 130 delegates attended the conference, and we ran our short workshop twice. We explained the work we’ve been doing at the OU in the Enabling Remote Activity (ERA) Project, where we have developed a portable Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) that can be used in fieldwork locations to provide a WiFi communications network for students and tutors. In our geology fieldwork courses we use the network to help mobility impaired students who cannot get to some of our field locations to access them remotely using live video streaming and VoIP telephony. Although developed in the context of geology fieldwork, the workshop attendees could see that the system could be used by anyone in any mobile learning context.

As well as highlighting the importance of inclusion when considering the design and delivery of learning technologies, the conference showed how technologies originally designed to support disabled people (such as text to speech synthesis and scanning systems) could be of benefit to everyone. As with other tools we do not always foresee the potential uses of our technologies when developing them, but we can certainly benefit from making them accessible to everyone in order to see how they are appropriated.

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KMi iPhone apps and ERA go to Nicaragua

Wednesday 03 Feb 2010 | KMi News

Paul Hogan from KMi will be heading off on Saturday for two weeks of fieldwork on a volcano in Nicaragua. Paul has developed several iPhone applications (as part of the iTunes U project) for use by the geophysicists and environmental scientists whilst on the volcano and he is going out to experience their use first hand. He will also be investigating remote access to field sites as part of ERA’s Portable WLAN backhaul trials.

iPhone apps

Recently Paul’s work on the iPhone has been looking at developing location based applications that make use of the iPhone’s location services and build on the OpenGIS KML geographic data schema.

One app uses Google maps to help field scientists locate points of interest in a field site (a bit like a SatNav system). It then provides a data entry form for recording data that is automatically date-stamped and geo-tagged. Each day’s collected data can be downloaded from the iPhone as an easy to access database file.

The second app Paul will be developing provides similar functionality, but uses an augmented reality representation rather than a map. Again we’re building on the standard KML data scheme, but this time instead of showing points in a map the points overlayed on the iPhone’s camera view. As the camera is pointed at an item of interest, the item on screen is literally annotated with a label saying what it is, how far away it is and offering a link to further information.

ERA – Portable WLAN Backhaul Trial

Paul’s second application is tied to the Enabling Remote Activity project where, as part of JANET’s Portable WLAN Programme, we are looking at ways to access remote fieldwork locations via the internet. Paul will be trying an ADSL broadband link, a 3G mobile broadband dongle, and a BGAN satellite terminal, to establish a ‘back-haul’ connection from Nicaragua to the OU.

The goal here is not simply to get a connection to access the internet, but to set up a mobile servers that anyone in a remote field site can use to send data, photos, live video broadcasts and two-way audio to anyone on the web. Investigating the three different connection methods will help us identify the types of services supported by each one and the resources involved to set them up.

To see how Paul’s getting, on have a look at the Portable WLAN blog (link listed below), where Paul and the rest of the ERA team will be posting their findings during the trials.

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Stefan Rueger named PC chair for IRFC 2010

Thursday 07 Jan 2010 | KMi News

The Information Retrieval Facility (IRF) in Vienna will be hosting its first international conference in May 2010 for which a member of KMi, Professor Stefan Rueger, has been appointed the Programme Chair. The IRF is an open, not-for-profit Information Retrieval science institution, which is managed by international experts in the field. The mission of IRF is to promote and facilitate cutting-edge industry-related research in Informat ion Retrieval by fostering dialogue between academia and industry, and by providing super-computing infrastructure for large-scale experimentation and housing real-world relevant document collections.

The 1st IRF Conference tackles 4 complementary research areas:

– Information retrieval
– Semantic web technologies for IR
– Natural language processing for IR
– Large-scale or distributed computing for the above areas

The proceedings of IRFC 2010 will be published by Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, a clear endorsement of the conference by the publisher.

Related Links:

IRFC 2010 Conference website

KMi scoops ASWC Best Paper Award for the second year running

Monday 21 Dec 2009 | KMi News

KMi members have done it again! For the second year running a paper authored by KMi folks has won the best paper award at the Asian Semantic Web Conference, which was held in Shanghai on 6-9 December 2009. In 2008 the winner was a paper by Silvio Peroni, Enrico Motta, and Mathieu dAquin – see http://news.kmi.open.ac.uk/11/1059. This year the award has gone to Vanessa Lopez, Andriy Nikolov, Miriam Fernandez, Marta Sabou, Victoria Uren and Enrico Motta for their paper entitled "Merging and Ranking Answers on the Semantic Web: The Wisdom of Crowds". The paper focuses on the PowerAqua system and presents innovative algorithms for locating, combining and ranking answers to questions expressed in natural language, which are retrieved from the large number of data, which are now available on the Semantic Web. This work has been carried in the context of the EU-funded projects OpenKnowledge and XMedia.

In addition to winning the best paper award, KMi had a very strong presence at this conference with Vanessa Lopez, Miriam Fernandez, Andriy Nikolov, Stefan Dietze, and Sofia Angeletou presenting research papers. This strong KMi presence made the award party particularly enjoyable, as the KMi contingent celebrated with plenty of exotic chinese food and traditional Chinese dances.

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KMi delivers book to publisher

Monday 21 Dec 2009 | KMi News

KMi professor Stefan Rüger has delivered a text book on Multimedia Information Retrieval (bibtex) for Morgan & Claypool‘s series of synthesis lectures on information concepts, retrieval and services.

Quoting from the book’s preface Rüger said: ”I am not easily convinced to write a book. The main reason why I got fascinated by this assignment is that it gave me a unique opportunity to write up tricks of the trade that are relevant for a number of multimedia search projects (and that I have had to endlessly repeat, again and again, during the supervision of around 65 undergraduate, master and PhD projects over the last decade). The Morgan & Claypool format of this lecture series is great too, as I can go to considerably more detail than in a book chapter without having to deliver a 700 page opus.”

At its very core Rüger’s multimedia information retrieval book is about the process of searching for and finding multimedia documents. The corresponding research field is concerned with building the best possible multimedia search engines. The intriguing bit here is that the query itself can be a multimedia excerpt: For example, when you walk around in an unknown place and stumble across an interesting landmark, would it not be great if you could just take a picture with your mobile phone and send it to a service that finds a similar picture in a database and tells you more about the building — and about its significance for that matter?

The book goes further by examining the full matrix of a variety of query modes versus document types. How do you retrieve a music piece by humming? What if you want to find news video clips on forest fires using a still image? The text discusses underlying techniques and common approaches to facilitate multimedia search engines from metadata driven retrieval, via piggy-back text retrieval where automated processes create text surrogates for multimedia, automated image annotation and content-based retrieval. The latter is studied in great depth looking at features and distances, and how to effectively combine them for efficient retrieval, to a point where the readers have the ingredients and recipe in their hands for building their own multimedia search engines.

The book recognises that supporting users in their resource discovery mission when hunting for multimedia material is not a technological indexing problem alone. It looks at interactive ways of engaging with repositories through browsing and relevance feedback, roping in geographical context, and providing visual summaries for videos. The last chapter concludes with an overview of state-of-the-art research projects in the area of multimedia information retrieval, giving an indication of the research and development trends and, thereby, a glimpse of the future world.

Rüger’s book contains 74 illustrations, 4 videos and one soundfile to support the mathematical and research-oriented treatment of the area of Multimedia Information Retrieval. One of the videos, a SciFi trailer, has been shot in KMi and directed by former KMi PhD student Vlad Tanasescu. The illustrations can be downloaded and re-used by readers. Each chapter concludes with a set of reflective exercises, which can be used as supplemental assignments for university courses or as suggestions for further independent exploration by interested readers.

The writing was partially supported by UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through their grant Video Digital Libraries (EP/G036187/1), while collaborating with KMi Affiliate David Bainbridge at the University of Waikato from Nov 2008 to Apr 2009. Another EPSRC grant, Multimedia Knowledge Management Network (GR/T02690/01, 2004-2008), has enabled Rüger to interact with colleagues and learn about their respective fields and perspectives.

The president and CEO of Morgan & Claypool publishers, Michael Morgan, founded and ran Morgan Kaufmann until it was sold to Elsevier (via Academic Press/Harcourt) in 2002, started the new publishing company in 2005. Its unique synthesis lecture format of a electronic searchable linkable pdf books is meant to enable users to more efficiently find information specific to their interest while allowing for a high level of authoritativeness, as authors focus on their area of active research. Electronic versions of the final book are published within days, print versions within weeks of delivering the final version.

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KMi gets a gadget for Christmas

Monday 21 Dec 2009 | KMi News

KMi consultant Tammo Freese has developed our first Google Wave ‘gadget’, a version of the virtual microscope due to be used with S276 in 2010. The prototype gadget allows wave participants to jointly rotate the slide image and position a marker on it, future work will involve the development of a ‘robot’ that can be attached to the wave and offer advice.

Google Wave has considerable potential for enhancing distance education, allowing students to collaboratively use maps and virtual science environments such as the OU’s virtual microscope. It would also allow tutors to run online tutorials using the same virtual environments.

For more information on KMi’s gadget project contact Dr Peter Whalley, p.c.whalley@open.ac.uk

For more information about Google Wave click here.

Related Links:

Google Wave

The first handbook of research on Moodle launched today!

Thursday 17 Dec 2009 | KMi News

Today, the National University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil launches the first handbook of research on Moodle pedagogical strategies and case studies.

This book, published in Portuguese, was edited by Dr. Lynn Alves from the UNEB University (Brazil), Dr. Daniela Melare from UNED (Spain) and UALG (Portugal) and Dr. Alexandra Okada from the Open University, UK (KMi). Its fifteen chapters, from 26 authors focuses on theoretical background and practice, collaborative environments and media tools for teaching and learning with Moodle.

This wide-ranging book makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on online learning using open source educational technologies. This is the first book to have assembled the work of internationally renowned practitioners and scholars who combine theory with practice to provide Moodle users with significant applications and effective methodologies. The Moodle community has been growing rapidly in the world with 30,176,528 users in 2,770,832 courses in more than 200 countries (Moodle.org, 2009)

In the first chapter, Martin Dougiamas – the creator of Moodle – with Peter Taylor, outlines the methodology used to construct Moodle – a Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. He summarizes his doctoral research project, and describes the theoretical approach in which Moodle is grounded, based on social constructivism, constructionism and collaborative discourse.

The following chapters cover a wide-range of topics such as:
Key issues for designing collaborative environments
Continuous professional development of teachers
Argumentative maps and webconferencing for online learning
Learning styles in virtual learning environments
Multiple pedagogical intermediation with new media tools integrated in Moodle
Learning objects, SCORM, and interactive interfaces
Virtual lab in Moodle
Synchronous and asynchronous tools in Moodle for e-learning and b-learning
EASY interface in Moodle for special needs learners
Meaningful learning and Self-learning management
Interactive contents

Case studies also describe the integrated use of Moodle with knowledge media tools, for instance, Compendium and FlashMeeting developed by the Knowledge Media Institute. Two chapters analyze elearning projects using these tools with Moodle in the UK by Ale Okada and in Brazil by Saburo Okada.

"The book is dedicated to one of its authors, my father, who passed away three weeks before its launch".

10 Million downloads for the OU on iTunes U

Wednesday 16 Dec 2009 | KMi News

So… it may only be a big number, but 10 million downloads is a pretty neat boundary to cross! The 10 Millionth Open University track on iTunes U, a dedicated area within the Apple iTunes Store was downloaded this week. According to our logs, the 10 Millionth track was ‘A French Breakfast’ from the popular "Bon départ: beginners’ French" album downloaded by someone in Dillion, Colorado, USA.

This news story was picked up by the International press, including the New York Times. Apple highlighted this success on the front page of the education part of this site, with a major feature that at one point saw over 45 of our albums showcased!

This also entails a pretty large set of ‘cloud’ transactions for us – for something like a Terabyte of data is shipped through the Amazon Cloud, each week; never mind the huge amount of data trapped in Akamai’s caches!

The OU’s joint KMi and LTS team responsible for this huge success will certainly be celebrating!

Related Links:

KMi straps its Jetpacks on

Tuesday 15 Dec 2009 | KMi News

The Mozilla foundation announced the winners of the first round of the "Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge" and two teams from KMi won through to the second phase. Jetpack is one of the Mozilla Labs new flagship projects to explore new ways to extend and personalize the Web. Together with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation the Mozilla foundation started the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge to revolutionize learning.

The MUPPLE and the COHERE concepts of KMi competed with 38 teams from all over the world in this challenge. The excited Jetpack jury stated that the contributions of the winning teams were of exceptional quality.

Both KMi teams are now entitled to a six-week Jetpack tutorial that combines presentations by experts on design/UX aspects and the technical background to Firefox add-ons. At the end of phase two the Jetpack for Learning team will again select the most promising concepts and invite up to ten eligible participants to a face-to-face Jetpack for Learning Design Camp that will take place just before SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas.

MMIS at final PHAROS meeting

Friday 11 Dec 2009 | KMi News

Barcelona, 9-11 Dec 2009. Half of KMi’s Multimedia and Information Systems group attended the final meeting of KMi’s audiovisual search engine project PHAROS, which is a large FP 6 integrated project in its last month.

The meeting had a definite vibrant feel of achievements looking back at the three-year-long research and development of an industry strength audiovisual search engine, the creation of a community of 32 federation members, who have signed up as stakeholders in relevant industries such as broadcasting or libraries. Besides these stakeholders there are now 450 indviduals who form part of PHAROS’s ecosystem of users. KMi’s role in the PHAROS project was contributing visual content-based search technology (you provide an example image and receive visually similar video shots), content-based visual indexing and the technologically challenging task of automated visual annotation from pixels.

The meeting reviewed the final deliverables, which are all on time, and planned the final review of the project at France Telecom in March.

Related Links:

Pharos project page