Linking OpenCourseWares and Open Education Resources: Creating an Effective Search and Recommendation System
With a growing number of digital libraries and other
open education repositories being made available throughout the
world, effective search and retrieval tools are necessary to access the
desired materials that surpass the effectiveness of traditional, allinclusive
search engines. This paper discusses the design and use of
Folksemantic, a platform that integrates OpenCourseWare search,
Open Educational Resource recommendations, and social network
functionality into a single open source project. The paper describes
how the system was originally envisioned, its goals for users, and
data that provides insight into how it is actually being used. Data
sources include website click-through data, query logs, web server
log files and user account data. Based on a descriptive analysis of its
current use, modifications to the platform's design are recommended
to better address goals of the system, along with recommendations
for additional phases of research.
[1] Brusilovsky, P., Kobsa, A., & Nejdl, W, (Eds.). (2007). The adaptive
web methods and strategies of web personalization. Berlin: Springer.
[2] Chu, W., & Park, S. T. (2009). Personalized recommendation on
dynamic content using predictive bilinear models. In Proceedings of the
18th international World Wide Web Conference.
[3] Johnson-Henson, S. (2008). The folksemantic web: Tools for a humancentered
approach to learning. International Conference of the Learning
Sciences (ICLS) 2008, Utrecht, Netherlands.
[4] Seow, P. (2008). Towards a framework for seamless learning
environments. In Proceedings of the International Conference of the
Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2008. Utrecht, Netherlands.
[5] Cape Town Open Education Declaration (2008) Read the declaration ÔÇö
Retrieved November 13, 2008, from
www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration
[6] Duffin, J. & Muramatsu, B. (2008). OER Recommender: Linking NSDL
Pathways and OpenCourseWare Repositories. 2008 Joint Conference on
Digital Libraries, Pittsburgh, PA.
[7] Tom Caswell, Shelley Henson, Marion Jensen, & David Wiley
(February - 2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal
education. Retrieved March 8, 2010 from
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/469/1001
[8] Zia, Lee L. "The NSF National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and
Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) Program: A Progress
Report." D-Lib Magazine, October 2000. Available at
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/zia/10zia.html
[9] Muramatsu, B., Ball, J., Duffin, J., Wiley, D., Gray, J., Godwin, A.,
Reedstrom, R., Cooper, C. & Whipkey, C. (June, 2008). Open
Educational Resources Interoperability Sprint Outcomes: Linking OER
Providers. Paper presented at OpeniWorld: Europe 2008, Lyon, France.
[10] Wiley, D. (2005, July 13). OCW Finder. iterating towards openness.
Blog. Retrieved March 31, 2010 from
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/175
[11] Duffin, J., Muramatsu, B. & Henson Johnson, S. L. (2007). OER
Recommender: A recommendation system for open educational
resources and the National Science Digital Library. White paper funded
by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Folksemantic.org project.
(Updated March 7, 2008).
[12] Boodman, A., Greasemonkey (2007). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/748
[13] Mobasher, B., & Anand, S. S., (2005). Intelligent techniques for web
personalization. In Intelligent Techniques for Web Personalization.
Bamshad Mobasher and Sarabjot Singh Anand (Eds.), Lecture Notes in
Artificial Intelligence (3169) , (pp. 1-37). Springer.
[14] Belkin, N. J. (2000). Helping people find what they don-t know.
Communications of the ACM, 43(8), 58-61.
[15] Montaner, M., L├│pez, B., & De la Rosa, J. L. (2003). A taxonomy of
recommender agents on the Internet. Artificial Intelligence Review.
19(4), 285-330.
[16] Resnick, P., Iacovou, N., Suchak, M., Bergstrom, P., & Riedl, J. (1994).
GroupLens: An open architecture for collaborative filtering of NetNews.
In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW). ACM Press, New York, 175-186.
[17] Zhou, T., Ren, J., Medo, M., & Zhang, Y. C. (2007). Bipartite network
projection and personal recommendation. Physics Review E., 76.
[18] Brin, S. & Page, L. (1998). The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual
Web Search Engine. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on
World Wide Web (WWW). Brisbane, Australia. pp. 107-117.
http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1998-8.
[1] Brusilovsky, P., Kobsa, A., & Nejdl, W, (Eds.). (2007). The adaptive
web methods and strategies of web personalization. Berlin: Springer.
[2] Chu, W., & Park, S. T. (2009). Personalized recommendation on
dynamic content using predictive bilinear models. In Proceedings of the
18th international World Wide Web Conference.
[3] Johnson-Henson, S. (2008). The folksemantic web: Tools for a humancentered
approach to learning. International Conference of the Learning
Sciences (ICLS) 2008, Utrecht, Netherlands.
[4] Seow, P. (2008). Towards a framework for seamless learning
environments. In Proceedings of the International Conference of the
Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2008. Utrecht, Netherlands.
[5] Cape Town Open Education Declaration (2008) Read the declaration ÔÇö
Retrieved November 13, 2008, from
www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration
[6] Duffin, J. & Muramatsu, B. (2008). OER Recommender: Linking NSDL
Pathways and OpenCourseWare Repositories. 2008 Joint Conference on
Digital Libraries, Pittsburgh, PA.
[7] Tom Caswell, Shelley Henson, Marion Jensen, & David Wiley
(February - 2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal
education. Retrieved March 8, 2010 from
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/469/1001
[8] Zia, Lee L. "The NSF National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and
Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) Program: A Progress
Report." D-Lib Magazine, October 2000. Available at
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/zia/10zia.html
[9] Muramatsu, B., Ball, J., Duffin, J., Wiley, D., Gray, J., Godwin, A.,
Reedstrom, R., Cooper, C. & Whipkey, C. (June, 2008). Open
Educational Resources Interoperability Sprint Outcomes: Linking OER
Providers. Paper presented at OpeniWorld: Europe 2008, Lyon, France.
[10] Wiley, D. (2005, July 13). OCW Finder. iterating towards openness.
Blog. Retrieved March 31, 2010 from
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/175
[11] Duffin, J., Muramatsu, B. & Henson Johnson, S. L. (2007). OER
Recommender: A recommendation system for open educational
resources and the National Science Digital Library. White paper funded
by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Folksemantic.org project.
(Updated March 7, 2008).
[12] Boodman, A., Greasemonkey (2007). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/748
[13] Mobasher, B., & Anand, S. S., (2005). Intelligent techniques for web
personalization. In Intelligent Techniques for Web Personalization.
Bamshad Mobasher and Sarabjot Singh Anand (Eds.), Lecture Notes in
Artificial Intelligence (3169) , (pp. 1-37). Springer.
[14] Belkin, N. J. (2000). Helping people find what they don-t know.
Communications of the ACM, 43(8), 58-61.
[15] Montaner, M., L├│pez, B., & De la Rosa, J. L. (2003). A taxonomy of
recommender agents on the Internet. Artificial Intelligence Review.
19(4), 285-330.
[16] Resnick, P., Iacovou, N., Suchak, M., Bergstrom, P., & Riedl, J. (1994).
GroupLens: An open architecture for collaborative filtering of NetNews.
In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW). ACM Press, New York, 175-186.
[17] Zhou, T., Ren, J., Medo, M., & Zhang, Y. C. (2007). Bipartite network
projection and personal recommendation. Physics Review E., 76.
[18] Brin, S. & Page, L. (1998). The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual
Web Search Engine. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on
World Wide Web (WWW). Brisbane, Australia. pp. 107-117.
http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1998-8.
@article{"International Journal of Business, Human and Social Sciences:64741", author = "Brett E. Shelton and Joel Duffin and Yuxuan Wang and Justin Ball", title = "Linking OpenCourseWares and Open Education Resources: Creating an Effective Search and Recommendation System", abstract = "With a growing number of digital libraries and other
open education repositories being made available throughout the
world, effective search and retrieval tools are necessary to access the
desired materials that surpass the effectiveness of traditional, allinclusive
search engines. This paper discusses the design and use of
Folksemantic, a platform that integrates OpenCourseWare search,
Open Educational Resource recommendations, and social network
functionality into a single open source project. The paper describes
how the system was originally envisioned, its goals for users, and
data that provides insight into how it is actually being used. Data
sources include website click-through data, query logs, web server
log files and user account data. Based on a descriptive analysis of its
current use, modifications to the platform's design are recommended
to better address goals of the system, along with recommendations
for additional phases of research.", keywords = "Digital libraries, open education,recommendation system, social networks", volume = "4", number = "6", pages = "1524-6", }
