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Analysis of programming process data has become popular in computing education research and educational data mining in the last decade. This type of data is quantitative, often of high temporal resolution, and it can be collected non-intrusively while the student is in a natural setting. Many levels of granularity can be obtained, such as submission, compilation, edit, and keystroke events, with keystroke-level logs being the most fine-grained of commonly used dataset types. However, the lack of open datasets, especially at the keystroke level, is notable. There are several reasons for this failing, with the most prominent being the challenges of deidentification that are peculiar to keystroke log data. In this paper, we present the public release of two fully deidentified keystroke datasets that are the first of their kind in terms of both event and metadata richness. We describe our collection technique and properties of the data along with deidentification techniques that, while not fully relieving researchers of significant effort, at least reduce and streamline manual work in hopes that researchers will release similar datasets in the future.

Hollywood blockbuster films have long attracted not only mass audiences but also scholarly attention. In line with contemporary applied linguistics interests in telecinematic discourse, the present study draws upon concepts and techniques in corpus linguistics to describe the language of American mainstream film scripts. The concept of lexical bundles was employed to identify linguistic patterns characteristic of scripts of American mainstream films produced by entertainment conglomerates, which are popular in the U.S. Results show that American mainstream film scripts are characterized mainly by spoken formulaic expressions. However, descriptive expressions, such as place-referential and action-related lexical bundles, also predominantly make up the given register. Further qualitative analysis reveals that these common multi-word expressions have functional contributions to film scripts in terms of creation of conflicts in plots, characterization, and building engagement with audiences.

The rapid increase and use of educational technologies have a significant impact on students' privacy, personal information and metadata in higher education. The past two decades have also witnessed the process where information about students is stored and handled outside premises and control of learning institutions. The personal information about students and their activity while they interact with learning management systems (LMS) and online learning tools is increasing and is stored in cloud computing platforms, software-as-a-service providers and other vendors. There are reported cases where students' personal data and information have been leaked, with possible privacy violations. Although this issue affects all students, it is important to understand the perspectives of culturally diverse students on the balancing of personal data/information and the use of technology integration in higher education. The purpose of this research was to investigate diverse students' perspectives on privacy, control of personal information, confidentiality and technology integration. The study also aimed to examine the challenges and experiences of loss of control over personal data and metadata encroachment, and protection of privacy in online education. Data were collected following a qualitative research design. Forty in-depth and semi-structured focus-group interviews (26 female and 24 male students) from four academic disciplines (Education, Social Sciences, Business, and Health Sciences) in a public university in the United States were obtained and analysed following a constant comparative analysis approach. Findings show evidence of fear and anxiety about data encroachment, challenges from bureaucratic procedures and lack of educational awareness, privacy concerns about LMS and social media. These results contribute to a new understanding regarding diverse students' knowledge, challenges and experiences on how to balance privacy, confidentiality and technology integration in higher education.

Advances in Information Technology (IT) and computer science have without a doubt had a significant impact on our daily lives. The past few decades have witnessed the advancement of IT enabled processes in generating actionable insights in various fields, encouraging research based applications of modern Data Science methods. Among many other fields, education research has also been adopting different analytical approaches to advance the state of education systems. Moreover, developments in software engineering and web-based applications have made collection of education data possible at large scales. This systematic review aims to explore the 21st century's state of the art applications of text mining methods used in the field of education. We analyse the metadata of all publications that use text mining or natural language processing in educational settings to report on the key themes of application of text mining methods in educational studies providing an overview of the current state of the art and the future directions for research and applications.

This bibliometric study aims to map the value education model research to provide direction for future research, especially in education and teaching. It is essential because value is the core of education. After all, in addition to opening the window of knowledge, education also has a role in transferring values for internalizing them in the education model. Therefore, conducting studies related to the concept and model of value education is essential for an educator. The focus of this study is to examine the bibliography related to the value education model based on the Scopus database in the period 2011-2020. This research took four stages; first: using Publish or Perish application to search articles from Scopus database. Second, performing filter by setting bibliographic criteria to be analyzed. Third, checking and completing articles' metadata through the EndNote reference manager application. Fourth, perform bibliometric analysis through the VOSviewer application. Through these four stages, seven analyses were explored; the trend of publications related to the value education model, analysis of the keywords used, collaboration of authors, citation patterns, institutions, and countries that were contributors to the study of the value education model, and abstract analysis. The results of this exploration conclude that there is a tendency for academics to pay less attention to the value education model when viewed from the number of publications related to the topic. The contribution of this research can be expected to provide direction for other researchers in conducting research and development related to educational models.

Systematic reviews are vital instruments for researchers to understand broad trends in a field and synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of interventions in addressing specific issues. The quality of a systematic review depends critically on having comprehensively surveyed all relevant literature on the review topic. In addition to database searching, handsearching is an important supplementary technique that helps increase the likelihood of identifying all relevant studies in a literature search. Traditional handsearching requires reviewers to manually browse through a curated list of field-specific journals and conference proceedings to find articles relevant to the review topic. This manual process is not only time-consuming, laborious, costly, and error-prone due to human fatigue, but it also lacks replicability due to its cumbersome manual nature. To address these issues, this paper presents a free and open-source Python package and an accompanying web-app, "Paperfetcher," to automate the retrieval of article metadata for handsearching. With "Paperfetcher's" assistance, researchers can retrieve article metadata from designated journals within a specified time frame in just a few clicks. In addition to handsearching, it also incorporates a beta version of citation searching in both forward and backward directions. "Paperfetcher" has an easy-to-use interface, which allows researchers to download the metadata of retrieved studies as a list of DOIs or as an RIS file to facilitate seamless import into systematic review screening software. To the best of our knowledge, "Paperfetcher" is the first tool to automate handsearching with high usability and a multi-disciplinary focus.

In recent years, smart learning environments have become central to modern education and support students and instructors through tools based on prediction and recommendation models. These methods often use learning material metadata, such as the knowledge contained in an exercise which is usually labeled by domain experts and is costly and difficult to scale. It recognizes that automated labeling eases the workload on experts, as seen in previous studies using automatic classification algorithms for research papers and Japanese mathematical exercises. However, these studies didn't delve into fine-grained labeling. In addition to that, as the use of materials in the system becomes more widespread, paper materials are transformed into PDF formats, which can lead to incomplete extraction. However, there is less emphasis on labeling incomplete mathematical sentences to tackle this problem in the previous research. This study aims to achieve precise automated classification even from incomplete text inputs. To tackle these challenges, we propose a mathematical exercise labeling algorithm that can handle detailed labels, even for incomplete sentences, using word n-grams, compared to the state-of-the-art word embedding method. The results of the experiment show that mono-gram features with Random Forest models achieved the best performance with a macro F-measure of 92.50%, 61.28% for 24-class labeling and 297-class labeling tasks, respectively. The contribution of this research is showing that the proposed method based on traditional simple n-grams has the ability to find context-independent similarities in incomplete sentences and outperforms state-of-the-art word embedding methods in specific tasks like classifying short and incomplete texts.

Nowadays, teaching and learning activity employing the flipped classroom model has an important position in the process of providing education. This research aimed at identifying and analyzing articles examining the flipped classroom model that has been published in several reputable international journals issued in the 2010-2019 timeframe, which was conducted using bibliometric studies. The research was conducted using a 4-stages systematic mapping method: (1) searching for articles using the Publish or Perish application in the Scopus database, (2) classifying the articles for the bibliometric analysis, (3) checking and completing the metadata of those articles, and (4) conducting bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer application. The bibliometric analysis produced seven findings, as follows: (1) the trend of flipped classroom publications continued to increase from 2013-2019; (2) the ten most contributive journals has published 88 articles by 2019; (3) the ten most cited articles has produced 1,155 citations; (4) the three highest order of author keywords most widely used in flipped classroom articles were flipped classroom, active learning, and blended learning; (5) author collaboration with strong links only occurred in 21 authors through one document; (6) institutional collaboration with strong links formed through 28 collaborating institutions; and (7) state statistics were formed into three clusters and spread across various countries through contributions from authors who were in charge of 456 institutions. The flipped classroom model can be concluded as an educational model that is currently popular among researchers.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has put into high relief the need for better remote communication and collaboration tools, but also serves as an opportunity to focus on building community capacity and promoting greater community agency in the language documentation process. This paper describes a method for remotely supporting and monitoring a language documentation project conducted by speakers, community activists, and/or academic researchers, through the use of a free and open-source data collection platform called KoBoToolbox. Rather than relying on access to audiovisual data, which are typically large and can be difficult to share remotely, the system is based on the creation of digital linguistic metadata with mobile devices linked to a secure central server, giving project leaders the ability to immediately access metadata as it is submitted, quickly generate summary reports and visualizations, and export metadata for further processing and archiving. The system is suitable for anyone who would like to integrate mobile metadata into a new or ongoing project and is able to provide the necessary training either remotely or in person.

Educational activities using microblogging co-located with face-to-face communication might promote productive classroom interactions. However, much depends on how teachers design those activities. This article explores how the educational design of an activity that uses microblogging engages lower secondary school students in classroom interactions that are productive for learning. It presents a study of one teacher's educational design in which students (aged 12-13) in a Norwegian classroom use microblogging to explore distinctions between facts and opinions. Moreover, the authors consider how the students pick up on the educational design. The findings show that an educational design involving microblogging can provide new possibilities to facilitate peer interactions by systematically enabling students to access more of their peers' ideas, produce and discuss collective ideas and participate in exploratory talk. In particular, the use of hashtags proves suitable for facilitating peer interactions with the aim to develop students' critical thinking.

An Educational CAD Model Library (CAD Library) is being developed by collaborating educational associations affiliated with the National Technology Leadership Summit coalition. The CAD Library's Curators' Council has developed descriptive metadata fields that will be associated with each educational object published in the library. These fields are designed to facilitate search and discovery of objects by teachers who are increasingly well positioned to use these objects in their instruction due to the increasing presence of school-based makerspaces and the 3D printers, digital die cutters, and other fabrication tools. The publication of these metadata standards makes them available to the members of the educational associations participating in the development of the CAD Library and to other relevant stakeholders for feedback to inform ongoing revisions.

Chemical substances from theses are not widely accessible as searchable machine-readable formats. In this article, we describe our workflow for extracting, registering, and sharing chemical substances from the University of Alabama theses to enhance discovery. In total, 73 theses were selected for the project, resulting in about 3,000 substances registered using the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier and deposited in PubChem as either structure-data files or Simplified Molecular-Input Line-Entry System notations. In addition to substances being deposited in PubChem, an archive copy was also deposited in the University of Alabama Institutional Repository. The PubChem records for the substance depositions include the full bibliographic reference and link to the thesis full text or thesis metadata when the full text is not yet available. Excluding mixtures, we found that 40% of the shared substances were new to PubChem at the time of deposition. We conclude this article with a detailed discussion about our experiences, challenges, and recommendations for librarians and curators engaged in sharing chemical substance data from theses and similar documents.

We present an analysis of 50 repositories for educational content conducted through an "audit system" that helped us classify these repositories, their software systems, promoters, and how they communicated their licensing practices. We randomly accessed five resources from each repository to investigate the alignment of licensing information between the resources themselves, metadata pages and overall site policies. We identified a high level of incongruity that could lead to a limited impact in OER use and reuse. We discuss the lack of guidance in implementation of such repositories, particularly to those who do not have wide institutional support to implement such systems. We finalize with a critical discussion on the emphasis given to licensing in the OER movement, and how it may be an evidence of a clash between the social and legal commons.

Using assignments drawn from a first-year composition course that centers the Southern Life Histories Collection, part of the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project, this paper argues for a pedagogical approach that teaches students digital literacy through archival rhetorics by converting archival texts into data.

With the expansion of e-learning, the understanding and evaluation of already created e-learning environments is becoming an extremely important issue. One way to dealing with the problem is analysis of case studies, i.e. already created environments, from the reuse perspective. The paper presents a general framework and model to assess UNITE, the unified e-learning environment for schools, from the reuse perspective. UNITE is the e-learning environment of the ongoing EU project (FP6 IST-26964, 2006-2008, http://www.unite-ist.org/). UNITE assets are described using feature diagrams (FDs) telling us about the internal structure of UNITE; representing relationships among the compound and atomic features, thus enhancing better transparency of UNITE and in this way empowering reuse. The factors of UNITE influential to reuse with some concrete results are also presented. We provide analysis aiming to extract from the model the relevant information of two kinds: (1) which is influential to reuse in a positive sense, i.e., enhancing reuse (e.g., application of meta-design methodology for the scenarios description, classification of subjects in metadata, use of content management tools (e.g., Course editor, Metadata editor), multi-linguistic approach, international and local collaboration between teachers and students in e-learning scenario implementation and delivery, and methodological support, etc.) and (2) which is hindering reuse (e. g., age of the students, differences in national syllabus and national educational programmes, language, cultural and communication problems). Despite of some limitations of FDs, we found this notation useful because it allows the explicit representation of various aspects of the complex system (i.e., UNITE) focusing on variability of features and possible relationships and constraints. We focus on the aspects such as evaluation of the UNITE platform including tools, scenarios and content variability. (Contains 3 figures and 6 tables.)

IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) is a promising technology aimed at supporting learning processes. IMS-LD packages contain the learning process metadata as well as the learning resources. However, the allocation of resources--whether data or services--within the learning design is done manually at design-time on the basis of the subjective appraisals of a learning designer. Since the actual learning context is known at runtime only, IMS-LD applications cannot adapt to a specific context or learner. Therefore, the reusability is limited and high development costs have to be taken into account to support a variety of contexts. To overcome these issues, we propose a highly dynamic approach based on Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology. Our aim is moving from the current data- and metadata-based to a context-adaptive service-oriented paradigm. We introduce semantic descriptions of a learning process in terms of user objectives (learning goals) to abstract from any specific metadata standards and used learning resources. At runtime, learning goals are accomplished by automatically selecting and invoking the services that fit the actual user needs and process contexts. As a result, we obtain a dynamic adaptation to different contexts at runtime. Semantic mappings from our standard-independent process models will enable the automatic development of versatile, reusable IMS-LD applications as well as the reusability across multiple metadata standards. To illustrate our approach, we describe a prototype application based on our principles. (Contains 11 figures and 5 footnotes.)

Introduction: Specialised subject gateways have become an essential tool for locating and accessing digital information resources, with the added value of organisation and previous evaluation catering for the needs of the varying communities using these. Within the framework of a research project on the subject, a software tool has been developed that enables subject gateways to be developed and managed. Method: General guidelines for the work were established which set out the main principles for the technical aspects of the application, on one hand, and on aspects of the treatment and management of information, on the other. All this has been integrated into a prototype model for developing software tools. Analysis: The needs analysis established the conditions to be fulfilled by the application. A detailed study of the available options for the treatment of information on metadata proved that the best option was to use the Dublin Core, and that the metadata set should be included, in turn, in RDF tags, or in tags based on XML. Results: The project has resulted in the development of two versions of an application called Potnia (versions 1 and 2), which fulfil the requirements set out in the main principles, and which have been tested by users in real application environments. Conclusion: The tagging layout found to be the best, and the one used by the writers, is based on integrating the Dublin Core metadata set within the Topic Maps paradigm, formatted in XTM.

The support of technological resources in teaching and learning has contributed to make them more efficient and enjoyable. Through this support has become quite common to use media resources before explored only for entertainment for educational purposes, among them the TV. The interactive Digital TV (iDTV) provides resources that make possible the development of a plethora of educational applications. However, since TV is a mass distribution device, an aggravating factor in the use of this media for education is the presentation of contents (learning objects) inadequate according to both the users' previous knowledge and the subject of courses in which they are enrolled. This paper tries to fill this gap by proposing an educational environment for iDTV, supported by an adequate standard for classification of learning objects for t-learning, in order to deliver educational contents for iDTV, according to users' knowledge level and suitability of contents to ongoing course.

The electronic conversion of scanned image files to readable text using optical character recognition (OCR) software and the subsequent migration of raw OCR text to e-book text file formats are key remediation or media conversion technologies used in digital repository e-book production. Despite real progress, the OCR problem of reliability and accuracy in OCR-derived e-book text and metadata persists. This paper examines a selection of digitized e-books in several prominent digital repositories and discusses the impact of OCR technology on e-book text file formats, metadata, and the online reading experience.

The Pangloss Collection is a language archive developed since 1994 at the Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale (LACITO) research group of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). It contributes to the documentation and study of the world's languages by providing free access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, mostly in endangered or under-resourced languages, recorded in their cultural context and transcribed in consultation with native speakers. The Collection is an Open Archive containing media files (recordings), text annotations, and metadata; it currently contains over 1,400 recordings in 70 languages, including more than 400 transcribed and annotated documents. The annotations consist of transcription, free translation in English, French and/or other languages, and, in many cases, word or morpheme glosses; they are time-aligned with the recordings, usually at the utterance level. A web interface makes these annotations accessible online in an interlinear display format, in synchrony with the sound, using any standard browser. The structure of the XML documents makes them accessible to searching and indexing, always preserving the links to the recordings. Long-term preservation is guaranteed through a partnership with a digital archive. A guiding principle of the Pangloss Collection is that a close association between documentation and research is highly profitable to both. This article presents the collections currently available; it also aims to convey a sense of the range of possibilities they offer to the scientific and speaker communities and to the general public.

Mobile assisted language learning (MALL) and open access repositories for language learning resources are both topics that have attracted the interest of researchers and practitioners in technology enhanced learning (TeL). Yet, there is limited experimental evidence about possible factors that can influence and potentially enhance reuse of MALL resources stored in open access repositories. In this paper the Mobile2Learn Framework is proposed, which aims at supporting sharing and reuse of MALL resources within the context of MALL courses development. Moreover, a quantitative analysis of the reuse of MALL resources developed with the proposed Mobile2Learn Framework is conducted. The results of this analysis provided with evidence that completeness of metadata fields related with educational objectives based on Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) can strongly influence reuse taking place among Mobile2Learn Framework users.

Electronic learning objects (LOs) are commonly conceived of as digital units of information used for teaching and learning. To facilitate their classification for pedagogical planning and retrieval purposes, LOs are complemented with metadata (e.g., the author). These metadata are usually restricted by a set of predetermined tags to which the classification schema must conform (e.g., IEEE LOM). In our experience, certain complex LOs need to be complemented with different types of domain-dependent information for their pedagogical planning and retrieval: (i) classification metadata for enhancing contextualisation, search and retrieval (e.g., the tagged structure of an archaeological site where an archaeological object has been found) and (ii) additional data that can enrich the LO (e.g., the weight and other dimensions of an archaeological artifact described in a podcast). We refer to LOs enhanced with domain-dependent information as hybrid learning objects (HLOs). However, most learning object repositories (LORs) only permit a predetermined, fixed set of metadata attributes to be used in the classification of LOs. This rigidity is inappropriate when domain-dependent information schemas are used for the browsing, retrieval, and domain-specific pedagogical sequencing of HLOs. Thus, custom software applications are needed to manage LOs that must be tagged with information belonging to specific domains. This paper presents a theoretical approach that permits the use of a single LOR for classifying and enriching LOs according to domain-dependent information schemas, which can be dynamically changed after their definition. The key issue in our approach is the presence of a meta-relational model for the dynamic definition of specific domain-dependent relational database schemas used for classifying and enriching LOs. (Contains 2 tables and 15 figures.)

Social and mobile technologies offer users unprecedented opportunities for communicating, interacting, sharing, meaning-making, content and context generation. And, these affordances are in constant flux driven by a powerful interplay between technological innovation and emerging cultural practices. Significantly, also, they are starting to transcend the everyday lifeworlds of users and permeate the workplace and its practices. However, given the emergent nature of this area, the literature on the use of social and mobile technologies in workplace practices is still small. Indeed, social media are increasingly being accessed via mobile devices. Our main focus, therefore, here is on the question of what, if any, potential there is for the use of social media in informal, professional, work-based learning. The paper provides a critical overview of key issues from the literature on work-based learning, face-to-face and technology-supported, as well as social (mobile) networking services, with particular attention being paid to people tagging. It then introduces an initial typology of informal workplace learning in order to provide a frame for understanding social (mobile) network(ing) services in work-based learning. Finally, a case study (taken from the literature) of People Tagging tool use in digital social networks in the European Commission-funded MATURE project is used to illustrate aspects of our typology. (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)

This article discusses integrated approaches to the management and preservation of born digital photography. It examines the changing practices among photographers, and the needed relationships between the photographers using digital technology and the archivists responsible for acquiring their born digital images. Special consideration is given to technical issues surrounding preservation and access of image formats. It explores how integrated policies can enhance the success of managing born digital photographs in an academic setting and illustrates the benefits and challenges to acquisition, description, and dissemination of born digital photographs. It advocates for the archivist's active involvement in the photographer's image management practices to improve the acquisition and preservation of images. (Contains 39 notes.)

A number of international initiatives, such as the Open Educational Resources initiative, have recognized the potential value of sharing and reusing digital resources among educational communities. As a result, organizing, offering, and accessing these resources over the web have been key issues for both the research and the educational community. Within this framework, a popular way for describing digital educational resources is the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) Standard. On the other hand, it has been also recognized that it is not possible for a generic standard such as IEEE LOM to fully meet the specific requirements and accommodate the particular needs of different educational communities. Therefore, the practice of generating Application Profiles (APs) of the IEEE LOM has emerged and a number of different APs have been developed worldwide. However, despite the widespread development of APs it seems that only a limited number of software tools exist, to support the process of LOM Application Profiling. Within this context, in this paper we target addressing this problem by introducing a new web-based tool (ASK-LOM-AP) that aims to overcome the identified limitations of existing tools and facilitate its users to easily develop and manage LOM APs for different educational communities. (Contains 6 tables, 1 footnote and 11 figures.)

Purpose: Presently, searching the internet for learning material relevant to ones own interest continues to be a time-consuming task. Systems that can suggest learning material (learning objects) to a learner would reduce time spent searching for material, and enable the learner to spend more time for actual learning. The purpose of this paper is to present a system of "hybrid search and delivery of learning objects to learners". Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents a system of "hybrid search and delivery of learning objects to learners" that combines the use of WordNet for semantic query expansion and an approach to personalized learning object delivery by suggesting relevant learning objects based on attributes specified in the learner's profile. The learning objects are related to the learner's attributes using the IEEE LOM and IMS LIP standards. The system includes a web crawler to collect learning objects from existing learning object repositories, such as NEEDS or SMETE. Findings: The presented HSDLO system has the ability to accurately search and deliver learning objects of interest to a learner as well as adjust the learner's profile over time by evaluating the learner's preferences implicitly through the learning object selections. Research limitations/implications: Since real LOM's from SMETE are not much populated, the system is tested with a limited set of attributes. The system is evaluated using a test bench rather than real learners. Originality/value: The paper proposes a combination of three search techniques in one system as well an architectural solution which can be used for other types of online search engines. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

Purpose: Learning Chinese is unquestionably very important and popular worldwide with the fast economic growth of China. To most foreigners and also local students, one of the major challenges in learning Chinese is to write Chinese characters in correct stroke sequences that are considered as significant in the Chinese culture. However, due to the potentially complicated structures of Chinese characters together with their stroke sequences, there are very few character recognition techniques that can effectively tackle the involved training task in an efficient and flexible manner. The purpose of this paper is to propose an intelligent and flexible e-learning software based on learning objects to facilitate the learning of writing Chinese characters in correct stroke sequences. Design/methodology/approach: The paper adopts an incremental approach in designing the overall system architecture to emphasize on extendibility of the system. The basic features of the system including the evolution and pronunciation of each Chinese character can be embedded as a part of the learning object metadata to enhance students' understanding of Chinese characters. To demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, a prototype of the proposed e-learning software was built on smartphones such that students can learn anytime and anywhere. Findings: From the empirical evaluation of the e-learning prototype for learning to write correct Chinese characters on mobile devices, it was found that foreign students can learn and practise the writing more effectively anytime and anywhere on their mobile devices after classes. Some initial positive feedback was collected. Furthermore, a more careful and thorough evaluation is planned to be conducted in relevant courses for foreign students in the upcoming Fall semester. Originality/value: This proposal represents the first attempt to reduce the complexity while increasing the extendibility of the e-learning software to learn Chinese through learning objects running on smartphones or mobile devices in general. More importantly, it opens up numerous opportunities for further investigations including possible integrations with other existing Chinese e-learning systems. (Contains 8 figures and 2 tables.)

Large-sized repositories of learning objects (LOs) are difficult to create and also to maintain. In this paper we propose a way to reduce this drawback by improving the classification mechanisms of the LO repositories. Specifically, we present a solution to automate the LO classification of the Universia repository, a collection of more than 15 million of LOs represented according to the IEEE LOM standard. Although a small part of these LOs is correctly classified, most are unclassified and therefore searching and accessing information is difficult. Our solution makes use of the categories provided by DBpedia, a linked data repository, to automatically improve its classification through a graph-based filtering algorithm, which selects the most suitable categories for describing a LO. Once selected, these categories will classify the LO, linking its classification metadata with a set of DBpedia categories. (Contains 6 tables and 6 figures.)

This article discusses how the idea of higher education students as producers of knowledge rather than consumers can be operationalised by means of student research projects, in which processes of research archiving and analysis are enabled through the use of semantic technologies. It discusses how existing digital repository frameworks can be extended, and processes of data ingest, description and annotation made easier. It describes a set of easy-to-use self-archiving tools that have been developed to complement and extend the Fedora digital repository, with semantic web approaches being used not only to structure personal archives but to allow these to be shared and reused. Preliminary outcomes of research with undergraduate education studies students are presented, showing how their emerging research, writing and archiving practices might be supported and developed by the availability of such tools. (Contains 15 notes, 1 table and 4 figures.)

Purpose: This paper aims to elaborate the library data migration process from LAMP (Library Automation Management Program) to the open source software Koha's (2.2.8 Windows based) Pakistani flavour PakLAG-Koha in six legislative assembly libraries of Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach: The paper explains different steps of the data migration from one ILM (integrated library management system) to a new ILM in six libraries over the course of three months. Qualitative research methods, i.e. direct observation and interviews, were adopted for finding the problems and solutions of the delayed project. Training and support was offered by a local volunteer group (PakLAG). One of the authors of the paper presented first-hand experience of being a consultant of this project. The study and results are the author's own reflections and first-hand experiences, and hence results are based on direct observations. Findings: The paper identifies several critical issues and their solutions concerning data migration within a local scenario as well as how local consultants and support groups are coping with these issues. It was noticed that the data migration can be done quickly if any support group is properly involved with the library staff. Originality/value: This paper provides first-hand experience and success story of library data migration from DOS-based ILM to open source software. Process, tools and findings discussed in this paper are valuable for the libraries planning to convert non-MARC data to open source MARC-based software Koha. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

Learning objects (LOs) are digital or non-digital entities used for learning, education or training commonly stored in repositories searchable by their associated metadata. Unfortunately, based on the current standards, such metadata is often missing or incorrectly entered making search difficult or impossible. In this paper, we investigate automating metadata generation for SCORM-complaint LOs based on user interactions with the LO and static information about LOs and users. Our framework, called the Intelligent Learning Object Guide (iLOG), involves real-time tracking of each user sessions (an LO Wrapper), offline data mining to identify key attributes or patterns on how the LOs have been used as well as characteristics of the users (MetaGen), and the selection of these findings as metadata. Mechanisms used in the data mining include data imputation via clustering, association rule mining, and feature selection ensemble. This paper describes the methodology of automatic annotation, presents the results on the evaluation and validation of the algorithms, and discusses the resulting metadata. We have deployed our iLOG implementation for five LOs in introductory computer science topics and collected data for over 1400 sessions. We demonstrate that iLOG successfully tracks user interactions that can be used to automate the generation of meaningful empirical usage metadata for different stakeholder groups including learners and instructors, LO developers, and researchers. (Contains 2 figures and 5 tables.)

The concept of learning objects has been applied in the e-learning field to promote the accessibility, reusability, and interoperability of learning content. Learning Object Metadata (LOM) was developed to achieve these goals by describing learning objects in order to provide meaningful metadata. Unfortunately, the conventional LOM lacks the computer interpretability needed to support knowledge representation when searching for finding relevant learning objects. This study addresses this issue by defining a Multi-layered Semantic LOM Framework (MSLF) for integrating Semantic Web technologies into LOM. The proposed MSLF is used to develop LOFinder, an intelligent LOM shell that provides an alternative approach to enhancing the knowledge representations. To test its feasibility, this study implemented a java-based prototype of LOFinder that enables intelligent discovery of learning objects. (Contains 4 tables and 10 figures.)

This paper aims to investigate the current XML-related courses available in 96 LIS schools in South East Asia and Taiwan's 9 LIS schools. Also, this study investigates the linkage of library school graduates in Taiwan who took different levels of XML-related education (that is XML arranged as an individual course or XML arranged as a section unit in courses) and their professional qualification. Research questions include what is the availability of XML-related courses in countries in Taiwan and South East Asia? What are Taiwan LIS graduates' views on degree of XML-related courses satisfaction, cognition of learning XML technology, and views of XML-related courses? What is the linkage of Taiwan LIS graduates who studied different levels of XML-related education and their professional qualifications? This study applies 3 research methodologies: information gathering from the internet; questionnaire surveys; in-depth interviews. Results of the analysis show that LIS schools should provide optional XML-related courses with practical sessions, and library associations should provide regular XML-related continuing education to enhance LIS students' professional qualifications. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)