Linked Data based applications for Learning Analytics Research: faceted searches, enriched contexts, graph browsing and dynamic graphic visualisation of data

We present a case of exploitation of Linked Data about learning analytics research through innovative end-user applications built on GNOSS, a semantic and social software platform. It allows users to find and discover knowledge from two datasets, Learning Analytics Knowledge (LAK) and Educational Data Mining (EDM), and also reach some related external information thanks to the correlation with other datasets.

We used four additional datasets, either to supplement information or to generate enriched contexts: Dbpedia, Geonames, DBLP-GNOSS (an index of scientific publications in Computer Science from DBLP) and DeustoTech Publications (publications of the Institute of Technology of the University of Deusto, and more specifically a selection of works by the DeustoTech Learning research unit). The featured applications are: faceted searches, enriched contexts, navigation through graphs and graphic visualization in charts or geographic maps. Faceted searches can be performed on three basic items: scientific publications, researchers (authors of the publications) and organizations in the learning analytics area.

The search engine enables aggregated searches by different facets and summarization of results for each successive search. Analytics on data are provided firstly through that summarization given for results in every facet, and secondly through dynamic graphic representations for some attributes. Several charts are available to show the distribution of publications depending on different attributes (e.g. per publication type and year or per organization). The search results for organizations and researchers can be visualized in geographic maps.