RHIT COURSE CATALOGUE SEMANTIC WIKIOverview and Initial Thoughts

From your client for 371-02:

Christina Selby, RHIT Math Dept

selby@rose-hulman.edu

G214, 812-877-8305

Task

Create a semantic wiki in order to search, organize, tag, browse, evaluate, and share the RHIT course catalogue.

Why?• There is a lot of structure in the RHIT course catalogue that can be

stored in a triplestore database.

• Queries can be made on such a database in order to quickly and accurately obtain useful information for student advising and course planning.

• A wiki allows users to enrich the data within the database. Users would be able to make connections between courses by tagging courses with keywords.

• The graphical structure of the data could be analyzed in order to obtain information about the courses at Rose-Hulman.

• There are many other ways the course data could be enriched!

Strategic Goals Addressed (1 of 2)

Goal 1: Rose-Hulman will support and recognize excellence in teaching, learning, innovation, and intellectual growth- both in and out of the classroom

• Teaching could be improved by providing an interface where instructors may relate courses to one another. New classroom examples, projects, collaborations, etc. could be formed through the knowledge shared in the semantic wiki.

Strategic Goals Addressed (2 of 2)

Goal 2: Rose-Hulman will give students a vision of the breadth of their possible futures and will prepare them to achieve these futures.

Goal 3: Rose-Hulman will foster a culture of lifelong connection with all of our constituents.

• The wiki could be designed so that alumni may contribute “projects” to the wiki. These projects could be tagged with keywords related to the courses in the RHIT catalogue. The students would be able to easily browse from their courses to “real-world” problems completed by RHIT alumni.

What is a Semantic Wiki?

From http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_wiki“A semantic wiki is a wiki that stores some portion of its data in a way that can be queried elsewhere. Typical uses of such data include querying it within the wiki (sometimes using standard query languages like SPARQL), aggregating it in displays like tables, maps and calendars; exporting it via formats like RDF, OWL or CSV; and reasoning with it, to calculate new facts from the given facts. Semantic wikis do not necessarily need to include standards or technologies considered part of the Semantic Web, although they usually do, to some extent.”

Open-source Software: Semantic MediaWiki

From http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki:“Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) is a semantic wiki engine that enables users to add semantic data to wiki pages. This data can then be used for better searching, browsing, and exchanging of information. SMW also powers semanticweb.org. Current information about SMW can be found on its homepage semantic-mediawiki.org, which also contains the complete user documentation.”

Semantic Web

Semantic wikis are part of the “Semantic Web.”

From http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page:“The Semantic Web is the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites. It has been described in rather different ways: as a utopic vision, as a web of data, or merely as a natural paradigm shift in our daily use of the Web. Most of all, the Semantic Web has inspired and engaged many people to create innovative semantic technologies and applications.”

Milestones and End-State• A prototype of the RHIT course catalogue will be created for the

Junior CSSE Project 2013-2014.

• A plan to incorporate the wiki into the Rose-Hulman culture will be created during the 2013-2014 academic year. (How much would this cost??)

• During summer 2014 and the 2014-2015 academic year, students will create a public version of the wiki to be released Fall 2016 to the Rose-Hulman community. (How much would this cost??)

• More features may be added to the wiki in following years, as desired. (How much would this cost??)

Success Criteria• The number of logins and edits could be used to measure

how often the wiki is used.

• Surveys could be created in order to evaluate the wikis usefulness.

• (This is still a bit fuzzy.)

Future Work• The semantic course catalogue could be part of a larger

wiki that would include other valuable Rose-Hulman information.• Include example syllabi, exams, etc.

• (contributed by students and staff??)

• Rules and Procedures• Faculty Information• General “knowledge-sharing” by students• Alumni interaction (as described previously)

Semantic Wiki Example• Example of a semantic wiki:

• http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Familypedia#Semantics

Example of Academic Wiki (not Semantic)

• Arkansas State University Computer Science Wiki: • https://wiki.cs.astate.edu/index.php/Main_Page• This is not quite what we’re wanting, but it appears to use

MediaWiki.

Technical Overview: Links• http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page• http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_wiki• http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki• http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki• http://www.w3.org/RDF/• http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/• http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Using_SPARQL_a

nd_RDF_stores

Videos and Slideshows:• http://videolectures.net/eswc08_dolog_sw/• http://

www.slideshare.net/mtgreaves/tutorial-semantic-wikis-and-applications