Supporting student research with semantic technologies and digital archives

Abstract

This article discusses how the idea of higher education students as producers of knowledge rather than consumers can be operationalised by means of student research projects, in which processes of research archiving and analysis are enabled through the use of semantic technologies. It discusses how existing digital repository frameworks can be extended, and processes of data ingest, description and annotation made easier. It describes a set of easy-to-use self-archiving tools that have been developed to complement and extend the Fedora digital repository, with semantic web approaches being used not only to structure personal archives but to allow these to be shared and reused. Preliminary outcomes of research with undergraduate education studies students are presented, showing how their emerging research, writing and archiving practices might be supported and developed by the availability of such tools.

Keywords:

• digital archiving
• semantic technologies
• student research
• documentation standards
• technology-enhanced learning

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge the work and consultancy carried out by Arofan Gregory (Metadata Technology) in the design of the model underlying the implemented set of tools.

Notes

1. The Human Relations Area Files, founded in 1949: http://www.yale.edu/hraf/about.htm

2. http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/

3. http://www.ddi-alliance.org

4. http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/

5. http://dext.data-archive.ac.uk/about/introduction.asp

6. http://www.driver-repository.eu/

7. http://www.duraspace.org/

8. http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/mods-mapping.html

9. http://mulgara.org/

10. http://projectblacklight.org/

11. http://www.ensemble.ac.uk/

12. http://www.esds.ac.uk/

13. http://www.metadatatechnology.com

14. http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

15. http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/