Invitation to participate in COST Action on Linked Data for Education

Dear all,

We would like to invite you – all members of the W3C OpenEd Community Group – to participate in a COST Action Proposal on Linked Data in Education/Learning, i.e on a topic of particular relevance for this group. While COST networks are open to all individuals/organisations working in the area, we would see this as a particular opportunity, to support the activities of this W3C community group with some (limited) funds, for instance, to organise joint events or support research visits and exchanges.

This action proposal is led by one of our group members, Mari Carmen Suárez-Figueroa, and targets the current call (deadline is 24th March; see here). The main goal of this type of project is to create a long-term network on a focused topic. The provisional title is “Educational Linked Data for all (EduLD4All)” and the main objectives are summarized in the text copied below. Proposals for COST actions are reasonably lightweight, so you should not expect this to require major efforts on your part.

If successful, this action could become a good umbrella to facilitate group-related activities, collaborations and related initiatives.

We would be glad about seeing many members of this group participating. If you decide to be on board, Mari-Carmen will share the proposal document and would be looking forward to your feedback and comments. In order to avoid spamming the list, please feel free to contact Mari Carmen directly, rather than responding to this list.

Looking forward to receive your response.

Mari Carmen Suárez-Figueroa, Stefan Dietze, Mathieu d’Aquin

ProposalSummary

Educational Linked Data (EduLD) are becoming more and more useful for different levels and stakeholders in the educational community (teachers, students, families, and  management personnel) and for different purposes (e.g., to help teachers to find and create educational materials, to assist students and families in their educational decisions throughout their life, to improve management systems used in educative organizations). However, for such usages to reach their potential impact, a coordinate initiative is needed to ensure high quality data is available that covers the wide range of relevant area, and that applications are developed that demonstrates their benefits. This action will promote educational linked data creation and usage across the EU through the so-called EduLD Feedback Loop:

1. Evidence Stage – to gather requirements and critical aspects for educational linked data: which data are useful to have in the LD cloud? and which key applications would we need to use such data? The idea here is to involve different educational communities (universities, schools, colleges, educational companies, etc.) and different user and skill levels in educational organizations (teachers, technical people, management people, students, etc.)

2. Connection Stage – to obtain the current picture of existing datasets and applications and how they are related each other. The main objective here is to have a map/observatory that helps us to analyze the gap: what is missing with respect to the requirements gathered

3. Relevance Stage – to create a collection of datasets and applications that covers at some point the identified gap. The idea here is to prioritize the requirements and the gaps and to focus on a limited set of needs. in the previous stage and to build a map between datasets and applications (existing ones or news in both cases)

4. Outcome Stage – to propose and observe the use of both datasets and applications in diverse educational communities and by different levels in such communities

5. Testimonial Stage – to collect evidences of the efficacy and effectiveness of using Linked Data datasets and applications for different aims (to improve educational skills of students and professional skills of teachers, to help people to take right decisions in their educational life, etc.). These findings will be gather by means of practical evaluation (using questionnaires). The findings are measured and the feedback loop can start again.

In summary, the objective of this action is to gather a community around educational linked data, including education, linked data and technology enhance learning practitioner to effectively implement the EduLD feedback loop across dozens of organisations and initiatives in Europe.