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SResource Discovery in e-Social

Science (ReDReSS)Rob Crouchley

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SBackground: what is e-Science?

The three exponentials:

• Computer speed doubles every 18 months. Our ability to model and simulate complex systems increases at the same rate;

• Storage density doubles every 12 months. Some groups talking about data sets that are a Petabyte in size and which will be 10 Petabytes/year in 5 years time;

• Network bandwidth doubles every 9 months.

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SBackground: what is e-Science?

The GRID concept puts all three components together and makes them even more important. There are several different types of GRID, e.g.

1. Computational GRIDs for high-performance computation;

2. Access GRIDs for collaborative visualization involving distant researchers;

3. Data GRIDs for moving large volumes of data;

4. Sensor GRIDs for real-time monitoring (e.g traffic and pedestrian flows, electronic transactions);

5. Educational GRIDs for orchestrating distributed content.

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SSo What?

• You may say, as you do not need e-Science or e-Social Science to do your research, learning, teaching or admin.

• However, there are some generic insights and developments into VLEs and VREs that have a much wider relevance.

• Critical to these developments are the creation of open source and platform independent software

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SWe All need User Friendly Tools

The open source software developments needed for doing e-research, e-collaboration, e-admin and e-learning are all lagging behind that of the hardware, the ’software gap’

However, portals can make all our e-tools easier to use

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SWhat is a Portal?

• Portals are a framework to deploy e-tools (aka rectangles), they focus on how the user wants to arrange their own “rectangles”;

• The portal allows component integration, the goal is for the tools to work together closely and seem to really be parts of a larger “tool”;

• Portals have a lot of features that come ‘out of the box’, like chat, file sharing, etc. This makes them useful straight away.

• They allow customisation, preferences and improve accessibility.

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SPortals Add Value for all of us

1. Provide increased functionality, web pages and resources tailored to the needs of the individual;

2. We think that this is an ideal framework for e-Research tools and for resource discovery;

3. They can be Plug and Play;4. Portals will soon provide an interface

to many of our e-Research tools/services and resources;

5. They also bridge the gap between e-Learning and e-Research.

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SReDReSS Tools/Technology

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SSakai/CHEF

• Sakai/CHEF already adopted as the open source hosting framework of choice for VLEs(MLE) and VREs (OGCE) development in the USA

• Big new investments from Mellon Foundation and leading American Universities ($6.8M) ;

• OGCE (Open Grid Computing Environments Collaboratory) funded by NSF, use CHEF

• Sakai used at Michigan (20,000 students) & by Jan at Indiana (90,000 students)

• Sakai will soon be able to take JSR-168 and WSRP compliant portlets. This will enable access to Web services via the registry and link to core services;

• The Sakai/ OGCE Projects have critical mass and a lot of momentum.

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SReDReSS Content

• Introductory Material and Support• Motivation and Background• Agenda Setting Workshops• Collaboration• Data Management• Visualisation• Semantics and Knowledge Management• Examples from e-Social Science Projects• Software Development• Social Shaping• Portals and Related Technology• High Performance Computing• Security and Confidentiality• Grid and Web Services• Network Technology• Databases

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SReDReSS web Site

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SResources on Web site

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• Thesaurus at http://redress.lancs.ac.uk/acr.html

Resources on Web site

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• Help on using Sakai found at http://e-science.lancs.ac.uk/sakaihelp.html

Resources on Web site

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SGetting to the ReDReSS Portal

{Via the Home button}

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SInside the Portal

“Resources” page for “Evaluation” work site

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SStructuring Content

• We are developing a resource discovery tool (some Portal software) that constructs a tutorial (Learning Design/content sequence) appropriate to a users needs.

• It will integrate content created by most standard authoring systems (incl. video) that is visible on the web

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SAutomatic vs Manual LDsWe are adopting two strategies for tutorial creation, in parallel.– A system that automatically

generates Learning Designs using metadata records, and then plays them back in the CopperCore engine.

– A manual procedure, using LDCue, the RELOAD editor and the CopperCore playback engine.

• This means that while we work on the automated system, we can still deliver tutorials using Learning Design.

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SLDCue

• A resource discoverer will be able to specify where am I now and where I want to be, then they will be supplied, by the LDCue tool, with a list of potentially suitable learning object URIs.

• The metadata on these URIs will help them create learning designs that sequence material unfamiliar to them (read this first, then this, etc ).

• Caching techniques will be used to locally store metadata and thus help make the tool useful, even when a network connection is unavailable and a metadata repository cannot be contacted.

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SMoving around the URI Terrain

ResearchMethods

e-SocialScience

EverythingElse

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SCore ReDReSS Metadata Labels

Label SourceTitle DublinCoreMetadataInitiativeCreator DublinCoreMetadataInitiativeSubject DublinCoreMetadataInitiativeDescription DublinCoreMetadataInitiativeCreated DublinCoreMetadataInitiativeModified DublinCoreMetadataInitiativeAudience DublinCoreMetadataInitiativeDifficulty IMSMetadataContext IMSMetadataSemanticDensity IMSMetadataClassification IMSMetadata

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SReload

• Reload is a learning design package (see http://www.reload.ac.uk/) which will facilitate the creation, sharing and reuse of learning objects and services.

• Reload helps to structure the learning objects, which can be presented to the learner either sequentially or as a selection.

• Reload automatically produces an xml file, which the learner can play back in CopperCore.

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SAutomatic LDs

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SManual LDs (LDCue, Reload &

CopperCore)• Just like a music

composer, Reload & LDCue are used to compose the structure for the learning design.

• The resource discoverer is the DJ who plays back the learning design created in Reload.

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SManual LDs (RELOAD Editor)

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SManual LDs (a fragment of xml) or

under the covers

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SManual LDs (Reload &

CopperCore)

• Like a radio, CopperCore is the tool we use to play back the learning design.

• However, CopperCore will keep track of what has been read by the resource discoverer.

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S Resource Discovery Deployment

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SAdvantages of CopperCore over a

search engine on the web• Search engines do not sequence

material by difficulty/complexity;• With Learning Design

(CopperCore) you know you are getting semantically coherent content;

• Google typically gives associative learning, which may be inappropriate for some e-Research learning objectives;

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SSome links

Redresshttp://redress.lancs.ac.uk/http://redress.lancs.ac.uk:8080/

portalSakaihttp://www.sakaiproject.org/http://collab.sakaiproject.org/portal

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SForthcoming Attractions

• In the next 12 months the Americans (mostly) will get uPortal and Sakai into the same JVM with uPortal handling navigation and layout for Sakai.

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SAligning Roadmaps

uPortal

JSR-168 WSRPConsumer

NavigationImprovements WSRPProducer

Sakai

iFrame

“Producer”

WSRP

Producer

JSR-168

Support

uPortal

Integration

Single JVM / Shared Navigation

Well Understood

Design IssuesRemain

Phase I Phase II

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S

Sakai

tool tool

HTTP

WSRP

Portal

Sakai

tool tool

HTTP

Sakai

tool tool

HTTP

Non-Sakai Non-Java Tools

tool toolW

SR

P

Non-SakaiTool

WSRP WSRP

Using WSRP and uPortal to Federate across Sakai sites and provide extreme user flexibility in presentation

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SOur learning and research requirements

appear to be different…

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Traditionally, there are some differences•Locus of control •Existing versus emerging information•Fixed versus fluid agenda•Different tools in use

Similarity and Differences

VRE Phys

ics

VRE ChemistryIE Social

Science

Teaching Learning

VisualizationGrid Computing

Annotation

QTIScormAttendance

ChatDiscussionResources

Repository

Shared Data

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SWe could integrate it all; we need a

PLRE

VLE

Visualization

Annotation

QTIScorm

Chat

Shared Data

Computing

IE

VRE

VRE

The Personal Learning/Research Environment (PLRE) would add a “productivity”layer to theVLEVREIESpacewhich Unifies the look/feel/usability across the multiple sources of information

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SStop

• Questions?