John Domingue, The Open University, UK
Alexander Mikroyannidis, The Open University, UK
Mathieu d’Aquin, The Open University, UK
Stefan Dietze, L3S Research Center, Germany

This tutorial is co-organised by the EUCLID (http://www.euclid-project.eu/) and LinkedUp (http://linkedup-project.eu/) projects.

There is currently a revolution occurring in higher education, largely driven by the availability of high quality online materials and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) delivered via providers such as Udacity[1], Coursera[2] and edX[3]. These initiatives have led to widespread publicity and also strategic dialogue in the higher education sector. The consensus within higher education is that after the Internet-induced revolutions in communication, business, entertainment, media, amongst others, it is now the turn of universities. Exactly where this revolution will lead is not yet known but some radical predictions have been made including the end of the need for university campuses[4].

Linked Data has established itself as the de facto means for the publication of structured data over the Web, enjoying amazing growth in terms of the number of organizations committing to use its core principles for exposing and interlinking Big Data for seamless exchange, integration, and reuse. More and more ICT ventures offer innovative data management services on top of Linked (Open) Data, creating a demand for Data Scientists possessing skills and detailed knowledge in this area. Ensuring the availability of such expertise will prove crucial if businesses are to reap the full benefits of these advanced data management technologies, and the know-how accumulated over the past years by researchers, technology enthusiasts and early adopters.

Following these trends connecting online learning and Linked Data, the scope of this tutorial will be two-fold:

1. New online learning methods will be taught for supporting the teaching of Linked Data. In particular, different types of online learning methods will be presented, together with examples of how these methods have been used in the EUCLID project [5] to produce and deliver online learning resources about Linked Data. Participants will also be exposed to the learning resources produced so far by the EUCLID project and will have a chance to evaluate them within a group activity.

2. Ways in which Linked Data principles and technologies can be used to support online learning and create innovative educational services will be explained, based on the experience developed in the development of existing Linked Data applications for online learning. We will in particular rely on the data catalogue, use cases and applications considered by the LinkedUp project [6].

[1] http://www.udacity.com
[2] https://www.coursera.org
[3] https://www.edx.org
[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/11/online-freelearning-end-of-university
[5] http://www.euclid-project.eu
[6] http://linkedup-project.eu

Ways in which Linked Data principles and technologies can be used to support online learning and create innovative educational services will be explained, based on the experience developed in the development of existing Linked Data applications for online learning. We will in particular rely on the data catalogue, use cases and applications considered by the LinkedUp project.

Slides: http://www.euclid-project.eu/events/online-learning-and-linked-data-tutorial