This document discusses key issues around sharing and searching for open educational resources (OER) in Asia. It identifies the weakest link in OER repositories as poor metadata and outlines approaches to address this such as text mining algorithms that can read, learn from, and recommend metadata to improve search and discovery of resources. The document provides an overview of the OERScout tool which uses text mining of resource content and metadata to generate keyword mappings to strengthen metadata quality and enhance search.

1. Metadata
How to Remove the Weakest Link
Web-conferencing Series #1:
OER in Asia: Key issues of sharing and searching
25th February 2014
Ishan Abeywardena
MSc, MSc (Brunel), BSc (Bangalore), MIEEE, MBCS, MIET, MTA
Deputy Dean and Senior Lecturer
School of Science and Technology
Wawasan Open University
Penang, Malaysia

2. The Weakest Link

3. Curation
Content repositories
Portal repositories
Content and portal repositories
McGreal, R. (2010). Open Educational Resource Repositories: An Analysis. Proceedings: The 3rd Annual Forum on e-Learning
Excellence, 1-3 February 2010, Dubai, UAE.

5. Metadata
IEEE-LOM
DCMI

6. LOM
Casali, A., Deco, C., Romano, A. and Tomé, G. (2013) 'An Assistant for Loading Learning Object Metadata: An Ontology Based Approach', Interdisciplinary
Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO), vol. 9, p. 11.

7. DCMI
the DCMI resource model
Source: http://dublincore.org/documents/abstract-model/ (29/08/2013)

8. LRMI
http://creativecommons.org/tag/learning-resource-metadata-initiative

9. Some Existing Solutions
• Federated Search: BRENHET2; OpeScout;
Global Learning Object Brokered Exchange
(GLOBE); and Pearson’s Project Blue Sky.
• Semantic Search: OER-CC ontology; the
“Assistant” prototype; the “Folksemantic”
project; and “Agrotags”.

10. Federated Search
User
Metadata
Federation
Organisation
Institution
Repos
Repos
Consortium
Institution
Repos
Repos
Institution
Repos
Repos

11. Semantic Search
Disease Prevention
Vitamins
Nutrition
Apples
Fiber
Varieties
Processed Products
McIntosh
Honeycrisp
Juice
Sauce
Cider
Pink Lady

12. However…the issue is

13. Removing the Weakest Link

14. A Text Mining Algorithm
 READS
 LEARNS
 RECOMMENDS

15. What is OERScout

16. The ‘Bag of Words’

17. Term Dictionary

18. Making the Connection

19. Keyword-Document Matrix (KDM)

20. OERScout

22. About…
Ishan Abeywardena
Deputy Dean and Senior Lecturer, School of Science and Technology, Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia
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MSc in Wireless Enterprise Business Systems, Brunel University, UK.
MSc in Engineering Management, Brunel University, UK.
BSc in Computer Science, Bangalore University, India.
PhD Candidate in Computer Science, University Malaya, Malaysia. Areas of specialisation: text
mining, metadata, faceted search
Professional Member of
– Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (MIEEE)
– British Computer Society (MBCS)
– Institution of Engineering and Technology (MIET)
– Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA)
Official Profile: http://www.wou.edu.my/IshanAbeywardena.html
Professional Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ishansa
Research Profile: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ishan_Abeywardena/
Tech Blog: http://www.ishantalks.com
E-mail: ishansa@wou.edu.my

23. Media Sources
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Multimedia_icon.png/120px-Multimedia_icon.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Nuvola_multimedia.png/120px-Nuvola_multimedia.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Open_Clip_Art_Library_Piggy_Bank.svg/120pxOpen_Clip_Art_Library_Piggy_Bank.svg.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_learning_-_jigsaw_map_of_Southeast_Asia.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F_800px-Ua-er9m-558-20070728.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Public_Bus,_Cairo_02.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polski_Fiat_126p_in_Krak%C3%B3w_(MWM_2010).jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PLM_2011_64_Jetalliance_Lotus.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YkbeycRa2A
hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu