Marco de Trabajo de Interoperabilidad Semántica para la Educación Abierta : un enfoque para la Integración de Sistemas de Información de Recursos Educativos Abiertos autónomos, distribuidos y heterogéneos

Abstract

ABSTRACT CONTEXT The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was coined at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open Courseware. Currently, hundreds of higher education institutions worldwide produce, reuse, and remix educational materials. This movement has challenged the traditional value chain of educational material creation, by employing new methods to deliver high-quality open educational content. In this new paradigm for educational content consumption, OER are expected to play a decisive role for learning. Reuse of educational resources by both individuals and organizations may have significant creative and economic benefit for the educational environment. Although OER are made available under an Open License, however, legally free not imply that the OER is easy to discover, use, reuse, adapt, remix, and share. Open license is not enough, an open license doesn’t OER make. Currently, OER are shared as Information Silos (autonomous, heterogeneous and distributed OER information systems) or Walled Gardens. The presence of OER silos impedes the interoperability, discovery, synthesis, and flow of knowledge. Additionally, It’s difficult to develop tools for consume global open educational materials. The distributed and heterogeneous data stores has gaining attention of many researchers that attempts to logically interoperate and integrate several different independent, distributed and heterogeneous information systems, while allowing the local systems to maintain complete control of their operations. In the OER context, the heterogeneous and distributed repositories/resources connection is only theoretically feasible, but unfeasible in practice because of the extremely autonomous, heterogeneous and distributed environment. The need for communication and interoperation between autonomous and distributed OER information systems is increasing with the expansion usage of the Web. The challenge is to connect silos of autonomous and heterogeneous OER information systems distributed across the Web. Different OER initiatives are not interoperable because there are barriers to interoperability between information systems. There exist common barriers –or incompatibilities-- to all OER providers, large amounts of unstructured, and semi-structured educational content; heterogeneity of structures/technologies/semantics; not all OER information systems and resources have a similar or compatible structure and meaning. APPROACH The goal is enhance the discoverability, reuse and integration of OER into formal and informal education. From a general perspective, the framework is the synergy between OER, Linked Open Data and human expertise. Developing semantic interoperability in the open education context is a complex research, and development project. Although some fragmented knowledge and solutions for interoperability have been accumulated since years, a semantic interoperability approach is still missing. Interoperability is generally defined as the ability for two (or more) systems to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged (IEEE, 1990). In the context of OER, interoperability refers to the ability of interactions (exchange of information and semantics) between OER information systems. Semantic Interoperability is considered as significant if the interactions can take place at least at the four levels: technology/data, semantics/information, organizational and legal in a defined and given context. Autonomy, heterogeneity and distribution are not the bigger problem. The key problem is the presence of silos and poor collaboration to establish agreements towards global interoperability. The World Wide Web uses relatively simple and open technologies with sufficient scalability, efficiency and utility that they have resulted in a remarkable information space of interrelated resources, growing across languages, cultures, and media. In this way, the Semantic Web, is a new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling human beings and machines to work in cooperation. In order to perform semantic interoperability to OER Ecosystem, in an organized and efficient way, this work presents a framework, which aims at helping establishing interoperability in OER Information Systems in a step-by-step manner. The proposed framework combines the traditions of knowledge sharing and creation (human power) with emergent Web technology and knowledge base systems, to create a vast ecosystem of openly shared educational resources, while harnessing today’s collaborative spirit to develop educational approaches that are more responsive to learner’s needs. Interoperability is studied from four aspects: Technical, Semantic, Organizational, and Legal. In our proposal, these four aspects are considered as problems (barriers) to be tackled rather than interoperability to be established. The framework presented in this work consists of four main parts: Strategic vision, general instruments, technological instruments, OER semantic interoperability ecosystem. The interoperability and openness of OER ecosystem is enhanced through LOD4OER Framework (Linked Open Data for Open Educational Resources). An interoperability framework is elaborated to structure interoperability issues and concerns. An interoperability measurement approach is designed to characterize the degree of interoperability achieved. A structured Linked Data lifecycle approach is defined showing the main phases to follow to use the LOD4OER framework, and openness and interoperability measurement methods. Semantic Web approach and Linked data technologies are used to consolidate and integrate OER information systems and resources to ensure the best discovery, use, and reuse of OER. Linked data is essential to connect the semantic web. Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data that wasn't previously linked, and, using the Web to lower the barriers to exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs, RDF and ontologies. Currently, Linked Data delivers the most scalable and best performing interoperability available for OER sources. The LOD4OER framework is a effort fostering global collaboration to address interoperability and integration challenges in OER ecosystem and open education. Silos and isolation must stop. The way is breaking down the silos and facilitating collaboration.