«What Brings Linked Data Web to OpenCourseWare (OCW) Repositories»

Abstract

OpenCourseWare (OCW) is one of the most successful emerging initiatives in the global promotion of free and unrestricted access to university knowledge. This initiative has had a major impact and has prompted many international prestigious universities have joined this movement, creating their own projects in coordination with OCW Consortium. The repository and the organization and internal structure of an OCW are diverse, and respond to the vision of each university. There is no standardized way to implement OCW initiatives, so that one of the greatest challenges facing OCW initiatives in general, as the OCW Universia in particular, is the heterogeneity of existing OCW repositories. The lack of interoperability makes the discovery, reuse and remix of OCWs.

The search and discovery of educational resources in OCW repositories have the same limitations as the search tools of Web Documents: wide range of results, similarity search based on words and not meanings, or problems of ambiguity in the results returned, etc. . This lecture shows how the principles of Linked Data have the ability to enhance the search and discovery of OCWs created and shared by the universities that are part of OCW-Universia.

Bios

Edmundo Tovar, Computer Engineering educator, has a Ph. D. (1994) and a Bachelor’s degree (1986) in Computer Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). He is Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) from the IEEE Computer Society. He is Associate Dean for Quality and Strategic Planning in the Computing School of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. From this last position he is in charge of the training for academic staff, the introduction of innovative solutions including new pedagogies; new approaches that improve student learning of technical skills and cultural skills, improved methods of blended learning and others. He works in the open educational resources area. Leader of an Innovation Group in Education in the UPM. He is Executive Director of OCW UPM Office and member elected of the Board of Directors of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Author of many papers in Engineering Education, he is member of the Steering Committee of and cochair for Europe of Frontiers Education Conference (FIE) and member of IEEE RITA Editorial Committee. He is IEEE Senior Member, Past Chairman of the Spanish Chapter and, as member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Education Society, he is currently chair of the Distinguished Lectures Program for the IEEE Education Society.

Nelson Piedra is a Full Professor of Computer Sciences at the Technical University of Loja (UTPL), Ecuador. He is currently the Director of the Computer Science Research Institute at UTPL. His current research focuses on various aspects of the semantic web, linked data, Internet of things, bigdata, social network analysis, personal recommender systems, and mobile computing. His work is based on both higher educational domain (Accessibility, Interoperability and Usability of OCW/OER, open educational content, distance learning systems) and technical (knowledge representation, computer science, artificial intelligence) foundations. He is a member of the UPM-GICAC (Grupo de Innovación en la Gestión de Calidad de Centros Universitarios). He currently leads the UTPL – OpenCourseWare Office.