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Libraries@Cambridge 2009. Ensemble Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning Patrick Carmichael, Project Director. About the Project. 3 years 2008-2011 £1.5 Million FEC
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Libraries@Cambridge 2009 Ensemble Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning Patrick Carmichael, Project Director http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
About the Project • 3 years 2008-2011 • £1.5 Million FEC • Five UK Universities (Cambridge, City, UEA, Stirling, Essex) and two international partners (MIT and UT Sydney) • Engaging with c.6-8 disciplinary settings across UG and PG courses at Cambridge and City • Team includes education researchers, cognitive scientists, computer scientists and disciplinary specialists http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
The Project’s Starting Points • Complexity, Controversy and Change • The Expert Learner • Experts in the field • Experts at learning • “Cases as Curriculum” • The emerging “Semantic Web” as a potential means of supporting and enhancing case-based teaching and learning http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
What is the Semantic Web? • Web 3.0? • The ‘next generation’ of the WWW? • An extension to the existing world wide web which allows reasoning across diverse data • A set of standards • A set of services, data sources, ‘reasoning engines’ and user interfaces • A means of constructing areas of ‘high density’ of data linked in diverse ways, within the existing ‘sparse’ network of WWW resources http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
Semantic Web or Semantic Technologies? • The Semantic Web ‘vision’ of 2001 was of personalised and ‘just-in-time’ services from across a unified, machine-readable WWW • But what has emerged since then is: • A set of useful standards • Guidance as to how resources could be made more accessible • And hence also improved search tools and ‘portals’ • And some interesting demonstrations of ‘closed worlds’ • Lots of applications could be made ‘a bit more semantic’ by selective use of Semantic Technologies http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
Semantic Technologies for Education • Three areas for potential development: • Personal Educational Administration • Management of Learning Networks (People, Data, Services …) • Collaboration and Knowledge Construction • These last two in particular make Semantic Technologies potentially useful in the management and representation of complex data and the elaboration of complex arguments - such as those characteristic of case-based learning. http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
Which Semantic Technologies? Databases Multimedia Collections Published Materials Thesauri, Ontologies etc Conversion Services Aggregators and Reasoning Engines Services and APIs Collaborative Environments Devices Visualisations http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
Some Early Work from the Project • Summer 2008 - Present: • Exploring semantic technologies for teaching & learning • Not explicitly case based as yet • UROP Students as ‘expert learners’ http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
The Edwardians • An existing qualitative data set from the UK Data Archive. • Faceted browser built using the SIMILE toolkit http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
Maths for Engineers • Diverse resources to support learners • Aggregated and presented through faceted browser http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
Plant Evolution Timeline • Links to datasets, publications, course materials and images • Presented using an interactive timeline visualisation http://www.ensemble.ac.uk
Contact Details • Project Website • http://www.ensemble.ac.uk • RSS Feed • Newsletter • TEL Programme Website • http://www.tlrp.org/tel/ • CARET Contacts • Patrick Carmichael: wpc22@cam.ac.uk • Katy Jordan: klj33@cam.ac.uk http://www.ensemble.ac.uk