- Date:
- 2007-2008
- Themes:
- Human Computer Interaction, Interaction
Category search within digital repositories is poorly supported. This means that people wishing to access the assets of digital repositories are largely limited to keyword search, which means they must know what they want in order to look for it. Our participant studies of digital repositories use have shown that, when restricted to keyword search, it is perceived as often easier to use a search engine like Google rather than keyword search on a local repository, even if this is to find a local artefact. An advantage that local repositories currently have over massive search services, however, which is not being leveraged, is local or community-based knowledge. This knowledge of context, such as who works with whom; how one project "Over Here" relates to another project "Over There." In this proposal we plan to investigate how cross-repository browsing/exploration can be assisted via social, semantic tagging mechanisms, and to deliver a test framework and web services both to investigate the use of and to deploy services for such meaningful mechanisms.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- das05r
- jl2
- Date:
- 2007-2010
- Themes:
- Human Computer Interaction, Interaction
- Funding:
- AHRC, EPSRC, JISC
Vision: To provide the best support possible for researchers to be able to explore relevant information sources and build new knowledge.
Mission: * To integrate heterogeneous data sources so that they can be explored effectively via one interface service * To deliver an optimal interaction approach to support this exploration * To develop a better understanding of how researchers use these new tools over time, so that these tools can be optimized to support the process of discovery, creativity, invention, and the development of new knowledge
Primary investigators
- monica schraefel
- Mark Everist, Music
- Jeanice Brooks, Music
- Richard Prolfreman, Music
Secondary investigators
- das05r
- David Bretherton
Partners
- RISM
- RILM
- COPAC
- British Library Sound Archive
- Grove Online, Oxford University Press
- Date:
- 2007-2009
- Themes:
- ELearning, Platforms and Tools, Digital Libraries, Reusable Learning Objects
- Funding:
- JISC
A copy of the original EdSpace proposal (with CVs and letters of support removed) can be found at http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/hcd/EdSpace_final_short.pdf and the original JISC call can be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/capital/circular0107/appendix_g_0107_institutional_exemplars_call_final.doc
VLEs have proved to be useful tools in facilitating staff in organising educational resources and activities in a hierarchical structure representing the structure of programmes and modules. However, while they are excellent vehicles for delivering materials, they are not in themselves ideal mechanisms for managing and curating materials. What we require is a repository of educational materials that can be used to populate VLEs.
The University of Southampton has taken the strategic decision to develop a repository for educational materials using its well established EPrints research repository software as the framework. The reason we have chosen this route is embedded in our understanding that excellent technical specifications alone will be unlikely to facilitate the cultural change necessary throughout the institution; it is the co-design process of specifying and implementing the details of the system that will be most important in ensuring community and uptake.
The EdSpace repository will be a central part of the educational infrastructure as envisaged in the recently implemented e-Learning Strategy which focuses on enabling student centred research-led learning, inclusivity and employability.
The EdSpace repository will be a social site allowing staff and students to share resources; it will provide for metadata, tagging, and semantic mark-up of stored items. A range of local and external tools will access the repository using services interfaces. Between the tools and the repository are service layers to allow users to annotate items according to an educational ontology or according to other metadata schemas, to set the access policies which will apply to items, and to create and access versions of items.
The University seeks funding to accelerate the process both in implementing the technical changes to the EPrints interfaces and providing the personnel to engage academics and students in the co-design process. Both the University of Southampton and the wider JISC community will benefit from extending EPrints into the educational domain, and from the case study of the institutional change and integration.
Primary investigator
- hcd
Secondary investigators
Partners
- ISS
- The Library
- LATEU
- Student Services
- The EPrints team
Associated research groups
- Learning Societies Lab
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2007-
Primary investigator
- Prof Hugh Perry
Secondary investigator
Associated research group
- Optoelectronics Research Centre
- Date:
- 2006-2007
- Funding:
- EPSRC
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- DJ Richardson
- kef
Associated research group
- Optoelectronics Research Centre
- Date:
- 2004-
- Funding:
- EMRS DTC
Primary investigator
Associated research group
- Optoelectronics Research Centre
- Date:
- 2006-2009
- Funding:
- Self funded - no external funds requested
Low Noise Phase Locked Loops
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
- lk05r
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2006-2007
- Themes:
- ELearning, Platforms and Tools, Learning Technologies, Reusable Learning Objects
- Funding:
- Eduserv Foundation
The MURLLO project will address some key issues that have been identified (see the eLanguages L20 project) as critical success factors for effectively managing, using and re-purposing re-usable learning objects (RLOs):
- The need to add context-rich metadata to assist in resource discovery and material selection
- The need for streamlining the processes involved in the selection, export and licensing of resources
- The ease by which resources can be re-used or their ability to be re-purposed
MURLLO will test models for collecting context-rich metadata, for IPR management of online resources and for identifying suitable business models for licensing content. These will inform the development and testing of 'open source' tools. Innovative development will allow practitioners to use a Wiki-type tool for editing and storing revised content and an 'online shopping trolley'-type tool for selection and export of collections of RLOs.
Primary investigators
- Kate Dickens
- hcd
Partner
- e-languages at Southampton
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2006-2009
- Themes:
- Knowledge Technologies, Semantic Web, Web Science, Trust and Provenance, e-Defence
- Funding:
- Ministry of Defence
The MIMEX initiative is a Data and Information Fusion Defence Technology Centre (DIF DTC) cluster project comprising two academic partners (Cardiff University and the University of Southampton) and one industrial partner (General Dynamics UK Ltd). MIMEX aims to investigate some of the key challenges confronting military agencies in an era of effects-based operations and network-enabled capabilities. These challenges include the need to integrate information from physically disparate and semantically heterogeneous information repositories, the need to coordinate response outcomes with bodies of socio-cultural and psychological information, and the need to cope with hostile agencies that may deliberately attempt to subvert or disrupt coalition decision making. To address these challenges MIMEX countenances a solution strategy that embraces semantic integration techniques, human factors analysis, trust evaluation and cultural modelling. The operational focus area for MIMEX is the domain of stability and support operations, specifically information operations (IO). IO forms part of a spectrum of military operations which entail the exploitation of open source intelligence (OSINT), often focused on the civil, rather than the military, domain. Not only are these operations a central element of notions such as effects-based operations, they also reflect much of the operational reality of current military engagements by British Armed Forces. While traditional warfighting operations typically target effects against an enemyââ¬â¢s ability to fight, operations such as IO often attempt to achieve regional stability by targeting the ââ¬Ëhearts and mindsââ¬â¢ of relevant social groups (i.e. those groups with sufficient power and influence to instigate or control negative events). This focuses attention on the need for enhanced cultural awareness, which is a key aspect of the ontology engineering effort for MIMEX. The aim is to develop ontologies that support culture-sensitive decision-making and enhance cultural awareness by enabling the task-specific retrieval and visualization of culture-relevant information.
Another aspect of the MIMEX research agenda concerns the development of solutions for improved situation awareness. This research aims to explore a variety of issues including knowledge-based support for task-relevant information aggregation, the use of semantic technologies to enable information fusion, and the contribution of human factors interventions to cognitively-optimal modes of information processing.
The MIMEX project also aims to undertake research to support human and machine agents with respect to information quality assessments. It is notable that information content often varies with respect to quality criteria (e.g. accuracy, relevance, usability, etc.), and this is especially the case in competitive decision-making contexts (corporate or military) where there is a strong possibility of adversarial agencies disseminating false or misleading information (not all information providers are qualified to provide information; neither are their information offerings always benign). These issues are being explored in MIMEX by investigating techniques for probabilistic and trust-based reasoning in the context of the Semantic Web.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- ps02v
- tdh
Partners
- General Dynamics UK Limited
- University of Cardiff
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2006-
- Theme:
- Accessible Technologies
- Funding:
- Self funded - no external funds requested
OSCA (On-Screen Communication Access) provides the means to give information and ask questions of deaf detainees who use Sign Language. This undergraduate project was undertaken in collaboration with Glen Barham of Hampshire Constabulary by Tom Lewis and supervised by Dr Mike Wald
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- Thomas Lewis
- Glen Barham
Partner
- Hampshire Constabulary
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab