forge: bringing fire and the e-learning spheres together

FORGE: BRINGING FIRE AND THE E-LEARNING SPHERES TOGETHER

John  Domingue  Knowledge  Media  Ins4tute  The  Open  University,  UK  

           Connec4ng  European  Innovators  to  ICT  Test  Facili4es,  27th  June,  2014,  Paris  

Agenda • Basic Facts • Motivation and Objectives • Concepts and Approach •  Interfacing with FIRE Facilities • Use of Linked Open Data • Courses • Summary

BASIC FACTS

Project Fiche • Name: Forging Online Education through FIRE • Dates: 1st October, 2013 – 30th September, 2016 • Duration (Months): 36 • Project Coordinator: John Domingue, OU •  Technical Project Manager: Christos Tranoris, UoP • Project website: http://ict-forge.eu/

Consor4um

MOTIVATION AND OBJECTIVES

Mo4va4on  (1/2)  

Mo4va4on  (2/2)  

Mooc Illustration: Adam Simpson

http://about.futurelearn.com/blog/

Launched September 2013

29 partners – 26 universities

Nearly 400,000 course sign-ups

Over 200,000 registered users

Up to 30,000 learners joining courses this year

FutureLearn Student Types

Overall Goal

FORGE Objectives • 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 usability and take-up of FIRE facilities through the layering of how-to-use resources over the FIRE platforms.

•  “Empower every person to get involved and take control” – increasing the accessibility of FIRE to disadvantaged users

CONCEPTS AND APPROACH

FORGE Approach

Self Regulated Learning

Flipped Classroom Paradigm

iTunes U

OU iTunes U Stats •  Open University on iTunes U was launched on

3rd June 2008 •  Now 58 iTunes U Courses •  65,138,000 downloads •  Over 9,015,700 visitors downloaded files •  Currently averaging 87,500 downloads a week •  449 collections containing 3,485 tracks (1,638

audio, 1,847 video) •  423 OpenLearn study units as eBooks (ePub),

representing over 5,000 hours of study •  Currently delivering an average of 0.3 TB of

data a week

iBook Interactive Demo (ict-forge.eu)

INTERFACING WITH FIRE FACILITIES

FORGE Core Architectural Entities

FIRE Courses Widgets FIRE Adapters

FORGEBox and FORGEStore •  Identified major challenges associated with courses • Need for

•  A middleware solution to support the hosting of widgets •  FIRE adapters

•  Identified actors and their support usage scenarios •  The need for a sharing repository

FORGEB x FORGESt re A middleware solution enabling FIRE courses

A marketplace for a FORGEBox installation

www.forgebox.eu www.forgestore.eu

FORGEBox

FORGEBox  

Fed4FIRE  Portal  LMS  

eBook  

Provide Interactive content (i.e. widgets)

Interface via FIRE APIs

FIRE  Testbed  FIRE  Testbed  FIRE  Testbed  

FORGE Widgets, Adapters and FIRE Resources

Lab  Course,    (LMS,  iBook)  

(3) Interactive Content (JSON/XML)

Resource FIRE Testbed

Control via specific FIRE

tools and APIS, e.g.

FRCP/SFA/SSH Adapter  

Adapter  Adapter  

(Implements  specific  API,  eg  OMF,  OML,  SFA/  RSpec,  FRCP)  

(2) Request Content (JSON/

XML)

web  container  

Widget  

(1) Get widget Content (HTML5/JS)

Widget  Widget  

Web browser

Example: Secure Shell/Logging

Remote machine

FORGEBox

Jetty JavaWebApp

Web resource

Java class

proxy

ssh widget (html/js)

Logviewer widget

(html/js)

Content / web sockets

• Hosted currently as prototype under www.forgestore.eu

•  The central point to share FORGE artifacts: •  Widgets •  FIRE adapters / FORGEBox Services •  Interactive courses

• Manages FORGE artifacts • Provides a single point for FORGEBox

developers • Provides an API for easy access by

FORGEBox installations

FORGESt re

FORGEStore

USE OF LINKED OPEN DATA

•  Vision:  well  connected  graph  of  open  Web  data  

•  W3C  standards  (RDF,  SPARQL)  to  expose  data,  URIs  to  interlink  datasets    

⇒  vast  cloud  of  interconnected  datasets  

•  Crossing  all  sorts  of  domains  

Domain Number of datasets Triples % (Out-)Links %

Media 25 1,841,852,061 5.82 % 50,440,705 10.01 %

Geographic 31 6,145,532,484 19.43 % 35,812,328 7.11 %

Government 49 13,315,009,400 42.09 % 19,343,519 3.84 %

Publications 87 2,950,720,693 9.33 % 139,925,218 27.76 %

Cross-domain 41 4,184,635,715 13.23 % 63,183,065 12.54 %

Life sciences 41 3,036,336,004 9.60 % 191,844,090 38.06 %

User-generated content

20 134,127,413 0.42 % 3,449,143 0.68 %

295 31,634,213,770 503,998,829 Source:  h[p://lod-­‐cloud.net/state,  September  2011  

Linked Open Data

Uses for Linked Data in FORGE • Courses and course components • Widgets • Experiments • Experimental results •  Learning Analytics

Linked Open Data and Courses •  The FORGE courses are described using Linked Data. •  The courses are described with the Resource Description

Framework (RDF) language and exposed via a SPARQL Query Language endpoint, allowing users to formulate and run custom SPARQL queries on the FORGE course descriptions.

•  The main vocabulary used is the MLO (Metadata for Learning Opportunities).

Learning Analytics

COURSES

First Deployment at Univ of Patras www.forgebox.eu/demo/courses/tcp_congestion.html

Cisco Networking Academy

Summary (1/2) •  FORGE aims to connect the

communities associated with FIRE and eLearning

• Approach is based upon •  New learning paradigms •  Rich multimedia interactive eBooks •  Widget Store •  FORGEBox architecture •  Linked Open Data

Summary (2/2) •  Benefits to FIRE include:

•  Higher take-up of FIRE facilities by learners

•  Sustainability through the use of educational (vs. research) budgets

•  Increasing the usability of FIRE through extensive how-to learning resources

•  Challenges •  New learning paradigms require

‘always on’ infrastructure •  Potentially new levels of demand

•  The right combination of FIRE and eLearning technologies could prove revolutionary to both spheres