page 1 a service for knowledge sharing wien, 2003-10-07 the universal consortium...

A Service for Knowledge Sharing

Wien, 2003-10-07

The Universal [email protected]

http://www.educanext.org/

The Vision of Sharing Knowledge

“The whole power of science is the power of shared ideas.”

(Paul Jones)

“Universities generate content every day through their courses and seminars. Then they throw it away.“

(Dennis Tsichritzis)

“Every knowledge-based organization – law firm, hospital, or professional services firm –

wastes time, money and human energy recreating intellectual assets.“

(Thomas H. Davenport)

- Some thoughts of distinguished professors -

EducaNext is a multilingual, academic exchange portal, where members of higher education, research organisations, and professional communities can go to share, retrieve, and reuse learning resources.

What is EducaNext?

The primary mission of EducaNext is:

to serve and support all individuals in the academic community

who are dedicated to increasing the excellence of higher education and research

through distributed collaboration

The Mission

• Sharing knowledge resources requires us to establish a “culture of share and re-use“ EducaNext Code of Behaviour

• Quality of content is a critical success factor Quality Management Processes

• Providers want to control the usage of their resources Community Management Features

• Providers want to stay informed about the usage of their resources Booking concept

• High usability of tools is important Open development, usability testing, …

Design Assumptions of the Service:

• Educational materials: electronic textbooks, recorded

lectures, presentations, lecture notes, case studies,

quizzes, etc

• Educational activities: distributed course, lectures,

tutoring sessions, etc.

• Additional Knowledge Resources (future): Collaborative

content production projects, forum, research papers,

integrated informal knowledge, etc.

Types of Knowledge Resources

Examples

EducaNext Exchange Environment

Providers can offer under the following licenses:1. Free distribution:

• Allows copy, distribution, modification, ...• Original author must be given credit

2. Free distribution for academic purposes:• Similar to “free distribution”, except that commercial

distribution is not allowed

3. Free distribution for academic purposes, modifications not allowed

4. Customised license• Defined by provider

EducaNext licences for distributing content:

Quality Management Processes have been incorporated in EducaNext

• Peer review

• Evaluation engine

• Quality content discussion forum

• Evaluation by portal management

Quality Management

Quality of content is a critical success factor

allowing the interworking with existing delivery systems, such as:

• Videoconferencing applications• LMS (Learning Management Systems)• Video servers• Web servers

EducaNext supports various delivery systems

EducaNext has an open architecture

UniversalBrokeragePlatformContent Delivery system

(e.g. Learning Management System)

Metadata

Learning resource

Any Content Delivery system (e.g. Web server, Streaming

Server, Video Conferencing Tool) Provider PC

Provider system

System interface

Open System Architecture for Material

4. ConsumptionDelivery system for

live educational activities

(e.gISABEL)

2. Provision

UNIVERSAL BrokeragePlatform

1. Announce- ment

3. Booking

4. Consumption

4. Consumption

Open System Architecture for Live Activities

Design goal: learning resource announcement and access control.

System Interface Framework

• IMS Vendors and IT Companies– Allweb (Greece)– Campus of Europe (France)– IMC (Germany)– BearingPoint Infonova, formerly KPMG Infonova (Austria)

• Consortia– IST project ELENA (12+2 institutions),

http://www.elena-project.org/ – Ten-A, http://www.ten-a.org/ – UNIVERSAL (17+1 institutions), http://www.ist-universal.org/

• Standardization Bodies– CEN/ISSS: Joint ARIADNE/UNIVERSAL proposal for work item

called “Interoperability of Repositories for Learning”– First contacts with “Digital Repository Interoperability” group of the

IMS

Supporters of System Interface Framework

EducaNext is a free and open service for– all members of the academic community

A member of the EducaNext communityEducaNext community– Must be a register userregister user– Accepts the “Code of BehaviourCode of Behaviour” of EducaNext– Commits to a fair exchange of knowledge

The EducaNext communityEducaNext community – Formed by all registered usersall registered users

– Only registered users can• Offer resources• Participate in sub-communities

The EducaNext User Community

EducaNext supports various types of – Knowledge communities

• Open communities• Closed communities

A community manager moderates each community– Any registered user can moderate a community

Knowledge communities allow experts– To exchange resources in a controlled environment

Knowledge Communities

EducaNext Community – Formed by all registered users

Steering Committee– Initially created by a group of promoters– Ellected by EducaNext Community after creation

Executive Board– Appointed by Steering Committee

EducaNext Organisation

Steering Committee– Prof. Juan Quemada (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, ES), chair

– Prof. Spyros Amourgis (Hellenic Open University, GR)

– Prof. Nicolas Balacheff (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, FR)

– Prof. Borka Jerman-Blazic (Jozef Stefan Institute, SI)

– Prof. Erik Duval (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BE)

– Prof. Ebba Thora Hvannberg (University of Iceland, IS)

– Prof. Michel Klein (Hautes Etudes Commerciales, FR)

– Prof. Wolfgang Nejdl (Learning Lab Lower Saxony, DE)

– Prof. Gustaf Neumann (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, AT)

– Prof. Bernhard Plattner (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, CH)

– Prof. Zbigniew Turowski (Warsaw University of Technology, PL)

Who is behind EducaNext?

• Service Management / Internal Coordination Juan Q., Bernd S., Christian K., Tapio K.

• Portal Administration: Management of Portal Olivier C., Oleg V.,

• Quality Control (of Content, Communities, and Communication): Effie L., Tomaz K., Lampros S., Sigrun G.

• Communication, Image, Dissemination: Katherine M., Gregoire B., Vana K., Michel K.,

• Software Development: Stefan B., Thomas Z., Reinhold L.,

New Collaborators?

Steering Committee

Executive Board

Status Quo of Executive Board

• Usability & proper functionality is critical for success– EducaNext service– Delivery systems and tools– Collaboration tools

• Software must be maintained and evolved– To correct bugs, malfunction– Improve usability, functionality– Demanded new state of the art components must be added

• Today’s software production/maintenance– Collaborative Software Project between EducaNext members

• Future: Open software project?

Software Management

Universal Brokerage Platform @ Austrian Education Portal

Universal Brokerage Platform @ CEMS

Additional Slides

Universal Brokerage Platform @ EducaNext

• Registered members should follow the mission of EducaNext

• Registered members should make good use of EducaNext– Accurate information about knowledge resource (e.g., availability)

should be provided

– Members should only offer resources, which they have the legal right to offer

– Proper acknowledgements of the original authors should be made, whenever resources acquired are reused

– EducaNext should not be used for promoting political or religious ideas and interests

“Code of Behaviour”

Portalmanagement

Registrationauthority

CommunityManager

Authenticateduser

Anonymoususer

Management

Creation ofcommunities

Managementof community

Members ofcommunity

Member of knowledge

society

Registration of users

Provision and/or Consumption of

Learning Resources

Access to public Learning Resources;Catalogue browsing

Find funding &manage services

(business and technical)

Monitor communities;enforce Code of Behaviour

Monitor users;enforce Code of Behaviour

Follow the rules of the community and Code of Behaviour

No misuse

Title Role Rights Responsibilities

Creation ofRegistrationAuthorities

Creation of Comm.Registration of users

Roles, Rights and Responsibilities

The Universal Brokerage Platform is a distributed web-application supporting the exchange of knowledge resources

IT Challenge successfully tackled: Business model neutralTo interface with heterogeneous contentdelivery systems such as

Web servers, Streaming media servers, Videoconference systems, andLearning Management Systems

The Tool: Universal Brokerage Platform

System Type Service

Broker Holds descriptions of learning resources, provides booking exchange functionality via user interface

Basic Delivery System Provides learning resources

Learning Resource Repository (Advanced Delivery System)

Provides text- and image-based educational material

Streaming Media Server (Advanced Delivery System)

Provides audio/video-based educational material

Video Conferencing System (Advanced Delivery System)

Provides educational activities via synchronous communication channels. Broker holds metadata of the educational activities provided

Learning Management System (Advanced Delivery System)

Provides educational material and educational activities via metadata replication, retrieves educational material from dispersed delivery systems

User Registration Program Registers users at the broker

Interoperability with various systems

• Funding Period: April 2000 - July 2003• Who is involved?

• RWTH Aachen (De)

• BearingPoint Infonova (At)

• BIT: Bureau for International Research

and Technology Cooperation (At)

• Eidgenössische

Technische Hochschule (Ch)

• Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Fr)

• Hellenic Open University (Gr)

• Helsinki University of Technology (Fi)

• Iceland Telecom (Is)

• Institut Jozef Stefan (Si)

• Institut National des

Télécommunications (INT, Fr)

• NCSR Demokritos (Gr)

• T-Nova Deutsche Telekom

Innovationsgesellschaft mbH (De)

• Universidad Politecnica

de Madrid (Es)

• Université Libre de Bruxelles (Be)

• University of Cyprus (Cy)

• University of Lancaster (Uk)

• Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (At)

• Warsaw University of Technology (Pl)

The UNIVERSAL IST Project

• EducaNext: The Service for sharing learning resources among faculty members in higher education and research institutions

• Universal Brokerage Platform (UBP): The Technology for building infrastructures for knowledge sharing.

Contributions of Universal

• Long tradition of knowledge sharing via academic journals and conferences („gift culture“)

• Knowledge sharing limited to research artefacts(no teaching artefacts)

• Increased demands for „professional“ teaching services in higher education (competition, evaluation, …)

• Transfer knowledge sharing efficiency from research to teaching

• In Europe appropriate infrastructures still in an infancy stage

Status Quo of Knowledge Sharing

in Higher Education and Research

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