- Date:
- 2004-2008
- Themes:
- ELearning, Platforms and Tools, Grid and Distributed Computing, Knowledge Technologies, Learning Technologies, Web Science
- Funding:
- EU (IST Programme Framework VI)
The European Learning Grid Infrastructure (ELeGI) project has the ambitious goal to develop software technologies for effective human learning. With the ELeGI project we will promote and support a learning paradigm shift. A new paradigm focused on knowledge construction using experiential based and collaborative learning approaches in a contextualised, personalised and ubiquitous way will replace the current information transfer paradigm focused on content and on the key authoritative figure of the teacher who provides information.
We have chosen a synergic approach, sometimes called "human centred design", to replace the classical, applicative approach to learning. With consideration of humans at the centre, learning is clearly a social, constructive phenomenon. It occurs as a side effect of interactions, conversations and enhanced presence in dynamic Virtual Communities: experimental research concepts integrating new powerful developments of services in the Semantic GRID, the leading edge of currently available and future ICT technologies, with highly innovative and powerfully significant scenarios of human learning.
The ELeGI project has three main goals:
- Goal 1. To define new models of human learning enabling ubiquitous and collaborative learning, merging experiential, personalised and contextualised approaches.
- Goal 2. To define and implement an advanced service-oriented Grid based software architecture for learning. This will allow us to access and integrate different technologies, resources and contents that are needed in order to realise the new paradigm. This objective will be driven by the pedagogical needs and by the requirements provided by the test-beds (SEES) and informed by the experience gained through implementing the demonstrators.
- Goal 3. To validate and evaluate the software architecture and the didactical approaches through the use of SEES and demonstrators. The project will build extensively on advanced work already done, creating new learning environments rather than creating new learning resources per se.
Primary investigator
- hcd
Secondary investigators
Partners
- SCHLUMBERGESEMA (now ATOS)
- CENTRO DI RICERCA IN MATEMATICA PURA ED APPLICATA (CRMPA)
- CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE ON METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR LEARNING & KNOWLEDGE (CEMSAC)
- UNIVERSIT� MONTPELLIER 2
- TELINDUS
- UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREW
- UNIVERSITY OF GRANZ
- THE OPEN UNIVERSITY (UK)
- COUNCIL FOR THE CENTRAL LABORATORY FOR THE COUNCIL RESEARCH
- HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING CENTRE (University of Stuttgart )
- THE RUHR-UNIVERSIT�T BOCHUM
- KAUNAS TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY
- COMMUNICATION & SYSTEMES - SYSTEMES D'INFORMATION
- FRIEDRICH ALEXANDER UNIVERSITAT ERLANGEN-NUMBERG
- HELLENIC OPEN UNIVERSITY
- UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE
- RESIST
- FACULTES N.D. DE LA PAIX, NAMUR
- CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE
- UNIVERSIT� DE PAU ET DES PAYS DE L�ADOUR-IUT DE BAYONNE
- CENTRALE RECHERCHE SA
- EUROPEAN MICROSOFT INNOVATION CENTER
Associated research groups
- Learning Societies Lab
- Grid and Pervasive Computing Group
- Date:
- 2002-2004
- Themes:
- Assessment, Learning Technologies
- Funding:
- JISC (X4L)
TOIA brings together practitioners from UK Further and Higher Education to pool experience and expertise in the fields of online assessment, interoperability, technological education and involvement in UK and European funded projects.
It is a key project aim to provide the education sector with cutting edge online assessment tools that are both very practical and embody best practice within the implementation and interpretation of IMS specifications.
Primary investigators
- hcd
- saw
- Professor Grainne Conole
Secondary investigator
- gp2
Partners
- University of Strathclyde
- Edexcel
- Glenrothes College
- Loughborough University
- Sheffield Hallam University
- Newark & Sherwood College
Associated research groups
- Learning Societies Lab
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2003-2008
- Themes:
- ELearning, Platforms and Tools, Digital Libraries, Learning Technologies
- Funding:
- NSF, JISC International Digital Libraries Research Programme
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United Kingdom Joint Information System Committee (JISC) have jointly funded the DialogPlus project as part of their Digital Libraries in the Classroom initiative. The project combines the efforts of geographers, education specialists, and computer scientists at Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara (U.S.) and the University of Southampton and the University of Leeds (U.K.) to develop and deploy reusable digital learning nuggets through the Alexandria Digital Library.
Goals
Two primary goals of DialogPlus are:
- to develop a distributed information infrastructure that supports the teaching and learning of Geography;
- to establish innovative approaches to teaching and learning, based on this infrastructure.
Specifically, we want to:
- show how undergraduate and postgraduate Geography programs in the consortium universities can be enriched and developed through cross-national collaboration and on-line delivery;
- demonstrate how major geospatial resources concerning the environment and human population can be used in study programs;
- show how important skills in the analysis of spatial information through the use of Geographical Information Science and Earth Observation software and functions can be taught on-line in undergraduate programs;
- develop on-line learning and teaching resources to use on campus so geography courses can be delivered to students in other disciplines, overcoming scheduling problems.
Primary investigators
- hcd
- Professor Grainne Conole
- Mike Freeston
Secondary investigators
- cpb
- kf
- Professor Dave Martin
- Dr Sally Priest
- Mr Samuel Leung
Partners
- School of Geography (Southampton)
- Research and Graduate School of Education
- University of California Santa Barbara
- University of Leeds
- Pensylvania State University
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2002-2004
- Themes:
- ELearning, Platforms and Tools, Web Science, Learning Technologies
- Funding:
- EU (Socrates Programme - Minerva)
This project's main objective is to establish a European platform of standards (guidelines, techniques and tools) for user modeling -based adaptability and adaptation, in the sense of the new paradigm of intelligent human -computer interaction, based on the new generation of ODL tools, towards individualization of the learning process. The project's main contribution is in going one step further than plain user modeling, by creating a common structure for the ODL systems' adaptive response to specific user needs, thereby creating a basis for modern European Education.
Primary investigator
- hcd
Secondary investigator
- gp2
Partners
- Eindhoven TU
- Milano Politechnical University
- Instituto Trentino di Cultura
- University of Twente
- University of Nottingham
Associated research groups
- Learning Societies Lab
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2000-2003
- Themes:
- Learning Technologies, Reusable Learning Objects, Assessment
- Funding:
- FDTL
The project has built a question bank (repository) of peer reviewed items suitable for use in the teaching of electrical and electronic engineering. Although the project life has technically ended, the resources developed by e3an are being actively and widely used for research and implementation in a range of related UK projects (eg: COLA, TOIA) and research studies which focus on interoperability and reusable learning objects. Suggested contacts Will Davies, Hugh Davis.
Primary investigators
- hcd
- saw
Secondary investigator
- rmc
Partners
- Bournemouth University
- Portsmouth University
- Southampton Institute
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2004-2005
- Theme:
- Nanomaterials and Dielectrics
The International Technology Roadmap for semiconductors has identified a new gate stack and material as one of the grand challenges for the coming years. The thickness of the incumbent SiO2 gate oxide has been scaled down to less than 2 nm, and further reduction is impossible because of the leakage currents due to direct tunneling. For this reason, the present gate oxide dielectric materials will eventually be replaced by a high-k dielectric gate oxide. The current proposal aims at identifying promising materials for CMOS gate high-k dielectrics by using combinatorial methods for synthesis and screening of materials in a collaboration between the departments of Electronics & Computer Science and Chemistry of the University of Southampton. Unlike industrial methods such as atomic layer chemical vapour deposition, our multiple e-beam deposition will allow us to vary the concentration and thickness of the gate oxide on the same wafer. Not only will this enable identification of the most promising materials, it will also show systematic correlation between chemical and structural properties on one side and electrical properties on the other side over a wide range of concentrations and elements. This makes it feasible to detect patterns in the correlation which will lead to a much better physical understanding of the factors influencing the electrical properties of the gate dielectric in CMOS transistors.
Primary investigators
- lhc02r
- km2
Associated research group
- Electronics and Computer Science
- Date:
- 2005-2014
- Theme:
- Quantum Electronics and Spintronics
- Funding:
- EU (FP6 Network of Excellence Sinano)
We have fabricated and measured single domain wall magnetoresistance devices with sub-20 nm gap widths using a novel combination of electron beam lithography and helium ion beam milling. The measurement wires and external profile of the spin valve are fabricated by electron beam lithography and lift-off. The critical bridge structure is created using helium ion beam milling, enabling the formation of a thinner gap (and so a narrower domain wall) than that which is possible with electron beam techniques alone. Four-point probe resistance measurements and scanning electron microscopy are used to characterize the milled structures and optimize the He ion dose. Successful operation of the device as a spin valve is demonstrated, with a 0.2% resistance change as the external magnetic field is cycled.
The critical dimensions used in CMOS technology and RAM memory are conventionnaly defined by photo-lithography and hence limited in size by the wavelength of the light. Methods to create smaller dimensions, such as electron beam writing, exist, but are prohibitively expensive for production purposes. Self-assembly of nanostructures is a fundamental from-bottom-to-top technique in which solid structures of nanometer dimensions are synthesized by self-organized processes from constituents like atoms, molecular beams, or macro-molecules. In the current project, magnetic nanostructures are defined by electrodeposition on Si through a mask of a self assembled template from poly(styrene) latex. The samples will be characterized by magnetic and magneto-resistance measurements and will provide unique information on giant and domain-wall magnetoresistance. Application as MRAM is envisioned.
Primary investigators
- Kees De Groot
- Prof. P.A. de Groot
- Prof. P. Bartlett
- Prof H. Fangohr
Secondary investigators
- ydw08r
- xl04r
- dcg04r
- mk03r
Associated research groups
- Nano Research Group
- Southampton Nanofabrication Centre
- Date:
- 2004-2006
- Theme:
- Machine Learning
- Funding:
- EPSRC
Classes of kernels which operate on discrete structures have been proposed relatively recently which allow the successful family of kernel-based algorithms to work directly on strings, trees, and other objects without the need to first convert them into an explicit vector representation first. It has been shown that there is a probablistic interpretation of the string kernel, which strongly relates string kernels and fisher kernels. This has lead to a kernel over a finite state automata which deals with variable-length substrings. This project intends to extend the work in this area by examining the area of kernels from generative models, with applications to text-categorisation, bioinformatics tasks and image classification. The project will also consider clustering algorithms using domain-specific kernels.
Primary investigator
- cjs
Secondary investigator
- av
Associated research group
- Information: Signals, Images, Systems Research Group
Creating archives of data on crystallography using the GNU EPrints software and creating a federated search system which harvests the metadata via OAI-PMH and provides additional services.
Primary investigators
- Liz Lyon (UKOLN)
- Les Carr
- David De Roure
Secondary investigators
- Monica Duke (UKOLN)
- Michael Day (UKOLN)
- Rachel Heery (UKOLN)
- Jeremy Frey
- Simon Coles
- Mike Hursthouse
- Christopher Gutteridge
Partners
- UKOLN
- PsiGate
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2002-2005
- Themes:
- Decentralised Information Systems, E-Business Technologies, Web Science
- Funding:
- EPSRC (GR/N35816/01), QinetiQ
Recommender systems have been widely advocated as a way of coping with the problem of information overload for knowledge workers. Given this, multiple recommendation methods have been developed. However, it has been shown that no one technique is best for all users in all situations. Thus we believe that effective recommender systems should incorporate a wide variety of such techniques and that some form of overarching framework should be put in place to coordinate the various recommendations so that only the best of them (from whatever source) are presented to the user. To this end, we show that a marketplace, in which the various recommendation methods compete to offer their recommendations to the user, can be used in this role. Specifically, we aims to the principled design and the development of such a marketplace (including the auction protocol, the reward mechanism and the bidding strategies of the component recommender agents) and evaluates the market's capability to effectively coordinate multiple methods. Through analysis, we show that our market is capable of shortlisting recommendations in decreasing order of user perceived quality and correlating the individual agent's internal quality rating to the user's perceived quality.
Primary investigators
- Nick Jennings
- lavm
- Wendy Hall
Secondary investigators
- David De Roure
- yzw01r
Partner
- QinetiQ
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group