Interconnecting and Enriching Higher Education Programs using Linked Data

Online environments are increasingly used as platforms to support and enhance learning experiences. In higher education, students enroll in programs that are usually formed of a set of courses and modules. Such courses are designed to cover a set of concepts and achieve specific learning objectives that count towards the related degree. However we observe that connections among courses and the way they conceptually interlink are hard to exploit. This is normal as courses are traditionally described using text in the form of documents such as syllabi and course catalogs. We believe that linked data can be used to create a conceptual layer around higher education programs to interlink courses in a granular and reusable manner. We present in this paper our work on creating a semantic linked data layer to conceptually connect courses taught in a higher education program. We highlight the linked data model we created to be collaboratively extended by course instructors and students using a semantic Mediawiki platform. We also present two applications that we built on top of the data to (1) showcase how learning material can now float around courses through their interlinked concepts in eLearning environments (we use moodle as a proof of concept); and (2) to support the process of higher education program reviews.