Large universities tend to spread their services across several departments to serve their substantial student base. It is very common for this to result in developing different systems, which end up in creating many disconnected data silos within the organization. Data isolation is one of the main bottlenecks that prevent unlocking the full potential behind exploiting such data, to provide a better experience at the level of application deployment and data analysis. The Open University is in the process of connecting their data silos by relying on the Linked Data principles within the LUCERO project. We present three use-cases through which we consume Linked Data produced at the Open University: (1) a student services use-case showing how we exploit data connections to deliver learning material related to courses through the university's main course information website; (2) a mobile course application that enables students to easily explore courses by subject, qualification or research topic; and (3) a Leanback TV service that provides students the ability to watch, with a degree of control, a set of podcasts grouped in different channels. Through these use cases, we highlight in this presentation the advantages and effects of consuming Linked Data within an organization.

1. Consuming Linked Data within a Large
Educational Organization
Fouad Zablith, Mathieu d’Aquin, Stuart Brown, Liam Green-Hughes
@fzablith, @mdaquin, @stuartbrown, @liamgh
Knowledge Media Institute (KMi), Communications and IT
The Open University, UK

2. Scenario
Student Services Library
Qualifications Books
Courses Course
OpenLearn Material
Arts The Open University has
Buildings
several systems and data
Events Estate
sources spread across
OU Events
various departments
Research
iTunesU Projects
Media
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

3. Scenario
Student Services Wow! Developing an Library
application for Arts students,
Qualifications to see what courses are Books
relevant to an upcoming
exhibition would be fantastic! Course
Courses
OpenLearn Material
Arts
Developer Buildings
Events Estate
OU Events
Research
iTunesU Projects
Media
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

4. Problem Hi, can you give me access to
the courses data?
Student Services Library
Qualifications Books
Courses Course
OpenLearn Material
Arts System Admin
Buildings
Events Estate
OU Events
Research
iTunesU Projects
Media
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

5. To access Planet through
Problem CIRCE-MI you need AACS to
validate your OUCU
Student Services Library
Qualifications Books
Courses Course
OpenLearn Material
Arts
Buildings
Events Estate
OU Events
Research
iTunesU Projects
Media
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

6. What is he
To access Planet through about?!
talking
Problem CIRCE-MI you need AACS to
validate your OUCU
Student Services Library
Qualifications Books
Courses Course
OpenLearn Material
Arts
Buildings
Events Estate
OU Events
Research
iTunesU Projects
Media
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

7. Problem
Student Services Library
Qualifications Books
Courses Course
OpenLearn Material
Arts
Buildings
Events Estate
OU Events
Research
iTunesU Projects
Media
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

8. Solution: Linked Data
Student Services Library
Qualifications Books
Courses Course
OpenLearn Material
Arts
Buildings
Events Estate
OU Events
Research
iTunesU Projects
Media
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

9. Solution: Linked Data
Linked Data Platform
Qualifications Books
Course
Courses Material
OpenLearn
Buildings
Events
OU Events Projects
iTunesU
People
Podcasts
YouTube Publications

10. External Links

11. Linked Data at the OU
• The Open University is connecting its data repositories
following the Linked Data principles.
• The LUCERO project has put in place a workflow to
extract, integrate and expose the university data from
existing repositories.

12. The LUCERO Workflow

13. Data Transformation Process
- Identify data
Lucero - Get sample data
Initial
Core Team
Meeting with - Identify Copyright Issues
Data Owner Data Owner - Identify possible links
- Identify users and usage
Lucero - Find reusable ontologies Lucero
KMi Team Data Data
- Map onto the data Core Team
Modeling Modeling
Lucero - Identify uncovered parts
sessions Validation Data Owner
members - Define URI Scheme
URI
Lucero Development Creation
KMi Team
Deployment
of Extractor Rules
Definition

14. data.open.ac.uk

15. Querying the Data

16. Use Cases

17. Use Cases
iTunesU Podcasts YouTube
OpenLearn Qualifications Courses

18. Use Case 1: Student Services
• Study at the OU website is currently being enhanced with
courses related material e.g. podcasts, YouTube and
OpenLearn
• Finding the connections between courses and other
material was a very costly process
• Linked Data made it easier to discover links between
courses and related material
• This website is the main page of the OU business. The
value of Linked Data here is not at the technical level, but
at the business level of the organization

19. Use Case 1: Student Services

20. Use Case 2: Mobile Course Application
• This mobile application enables students to easily browse
courses by qualification or subject of interests, with the
ability to play related podcasts, YouTube or access
related OpenLearn courses
• As in the previous case, identifying the relations between
courses and other material maintained by different
departments was expensive before Linked Data
• This use case shows how Linked Data can create new
entry points for students to enroll in OU courses

21. Use Case 2: Mobile Course Application

22. Use Case 3: Leanback TV Webapp
• This application provides students the ability to watch
automatically selected set of podcasts
• A fine grained selection of podcasts is hard to do through
RSS feeds, without a high degree of customization
• Linked Data provided a very flexible way to generate the
podcasts needed for the channels
• The value of Linked Data here is that it enables
innovation. Developers can easily implement their ideas,
without worrying about how to reach the data

23. Use Case 3: Leanback TV Webapp

24. Even More Applications

25. Conclusion
• Linked Data maximizes the value of your contributed data
within an organization
• It is not about finding the killer app, but more about small
improvements introduced by Linked Data, with big impact
on the organization and data consumption
• Linked Data enables organizations, data managers and
developers to focus on the “business-needs”, rather than on
solving technological challenges

26. Thank you!
@fzablith
@mdaquin
@stuartbrown
@liamgh
f.zablith@open.ac.uk
http://lucero-project.info
http://data.open.ac.uk