This is a guest post by Alexander Mikroyannidis, a researcher at the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University, discussing the use of http://data.open.ac.uk to identify related material to OpenLearn units within a Moodle block.


The winning application of the KMi Linked Data Application Competition has attracted the interest of the ROLE project (Responsive Open Learning Environments – www.role-project.eu). The OpenLearn Linked Data application was originally developed by Fouad Zablith as a showcase of querying data.open.ac.uk for educational resources related with OpenLearn courses. I have now transformed this application into a widget that can be directly embedded into any OpenLearn course as a Moodle block. The widget displays a list of Open University courses, iTunesU podcasts, as well as OpenLearn tags related to the course that the user is currently viewing. As data.open.ac.uk is constantly growing by integrating metadata from more repositories, the widget will also be extended with recommendations about educational resources of additional types. You can try out the current release by logging in as guest at: http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/role/moodle/course/view.php?id=3.


This widget is part of the widget bundles developed by ROLE for providing self-regulated learning support. ROLE is aiming at empowering learners for lifelong and personalised learning within a responsive open learning environment. OpenLearn comprises one of the project’s test-beds concerning the transition from formal learning towards informal learning, where the learner is in control of the whole learning process. For more information about the learning technologies developed so far by ROLE, please visit the Showcase Platform (http://www.role-showcase.eu/).