Working with teachers and students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses, this project explored the potential of the emerging Semantic Web to support teaching in complex, controversial and rapidly-evolving fields where case based learning is the pedagogical approach of choice.

The project was one of eight funded by the joint ESRC and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Technology Enhanced Learning Programme, to explore the potential of the Semantic Web to support teaching and learning in complex, controversial and rapidly-evolving fields using case-based learning.

The project explored both the nature and role of the cases around which learning is focused, and the role that emerging Semantic Web technologies and techniques can play in supporting this learning. The back-end repository focuses on Fedora, with metadata schemas developed to deal with a disparate range of object types and their relationships. Front ends focus on piloting semantic web (such as Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments: SIMILE) and Web 3.0 tools developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Technology in Sydney.

Archive contribution

The Archive led four work packages delivering:

• Fedora structures
• metadata schema
• data exemplars
• testing or publishing and visualisation tools

Principal investigator:  Patrick Carmichael
Funder:  Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Dates:  October 2008 - September 2011
Contact:  Louise Corti
Links:  ESRC Ensemble outputs