Web Service to Retrieve and Semantically Enrich Datasets for Theses From Open Educational Repositories

Abstract

The paper describes the design and implementation of a semantic web service that retrieves theses and extends the keyword based-search of a DSpace repository taking into account the roles of advisors and steering committee members formally represented into a custom-made ontology. The service uses SPARQL queries and the serialization module of RDF DSpace, this links the item submission process and the ontology, thus the more theses are added into a repository, the more instances are inserted into the ontology. The paper provides empirical insights about how to reuse theses metadata and includes the results of an exploratory and self-management survey of usability heuristic evaluation of a web site that enables to access the proposed service. Heuristics were estimated with a purposive sample of students, teachers, and managers, the results indicated a high satisfaction level and showed that the service increased theses accessibility in the web environment. The service also generates semantically enriched datasets that coexist with the repository, they are of utility and value to educational organizations as they give institutional visibility. INDEX TERMS Educational technology, semantic web, web services, information retrieval.

Integration of Open Educational Resources Using Semantic Platform

“…As mentioned in Section II, there are various works that propose strategies or frameworks to integrate semantic technologies to repositories, such as [7][8]; our approach is different, as it is comprised of the methodology, platform, and ontologies, as well as, the set of instruments developed (guidelines, questionnaires, and evaluation instruments). The MIIDAS Platform differs from works [10][11][12][13][14] since it was developed based on the needs of teachers and students of educational institutions (EMI and UAM-I), allowing the design and construction of an ad hoc platform to the requirements of the members of the institutions, until the evaluation of the platform, to allow its evaluation and maintenance.…”

“…The design and implementation of a semantic web service in presented in [14], which retrieves thesis and extends the search based on keywords of a repository. It also contains the results of a survey that allows us to empirically explore usability.…”

An Explanatory Study on User Behavior in Discovering Aggregated Multimedia Web Content

“…Most of the previous research performed usability analysis without user categorization and presented the results as a single unit [14]. A few of the most recent studies categorized the users into general groups, such as employees, undergrad and graduate students, and homemakers [11], [30], [66]. Therefore, we performed the user categorization to further measure the quality of user interaction by the three major holistic user categories (e.g., professionals, students, and homemakers) without creating excessive experimental complexity and providing group-wise insights about the results obtained [49].…”