What is Activity data?

Activity data refers to the

records of human actions,

both online and physical,

which can be analysed by a

computer. (JISC, 2013)

Usage data

‘actions that a user hasperformed (e.g. downloads)

Attention data

items that a user has viewed(e.g. metadata records)

Activity data is used as anumbrella term to coverusage and attention data’(AEIOU, 2011).

„Commercial companies such asAmazon and Tesco have made agreat success of exploiting their dataabout customer activities to improveservices to customers.

Recent research and projects havesuggested that similar opportunitiesmay exist for Higher Educationinstitutions in managing theirresearch, learning, information andadministrative services‟.

(AEIOU,2011)

„Explore user activity data infurther and higher education andto identify opportunities forinstitutions to improve services tostudents, teachers andresearchers.

To improve management ofinstitutional services and toidentify opportunities where itwould be beneficial or moreefficient to cooperate at anational, regional or consortialevel‟ (AEIOU, 2011).

The JISC Activity data programme fundednine projects to investigate a variety ofdifferent areas of activity data. (JISC, 2013).

For example:

1. Student Facing : e.g STAR-Trsk NG

2. Academic Performance: e.g AEIOU

3. Resourse Recommendation : e.g AEIOU

4. Process Related: e.g AGtivity

The Activity data to Enhance & IncreaseOpen-access Usage (AEIOU) project wasone of these projects that funded by JISCwhich will be explore in this presentation.

Project Aim:The goal of this project was toenhance the awareness ofacademic research in Wales, bycombining repository activitydata from Welsh educationalinstitutes, in order to produce arecommendation service titled“frequently viewed together”.This collaborative service issimilar to those used byAmazon and other retailwebsites. (AEIOU, 2011).

Both quantitative and qualitative assessments can be applied to demonstrate this process:

The goal is to increase the awareness and usage data that surround elements of the six major repositories on institutional data.

Another goal is to develop a focus group that can be used to assess the likely success of the recommendation service that has been proposed ‟ (AEIOU, 2011).

1) develop the Welsh research

industry.

2) increase awareness of Welsh

research projects.

3) improve collaborative actions

between multiple Welsh

educational institutes (AEIOU,2011).

Activity Data Audit:

First: identification and documentation ofcurrent activity data, which wasunderstood through the use of Googleanalytics.

Next, baseline activity data that wasextrapolated from related institutionswere established, in order to conduct acomparison and evaluation.

Finally, a report was made that includesthe findings of activity data, including thatwhich had been collected from corepartners over the course of the project, inorder to clarify the hypothesis outcome

Recommendation Service:

The following parameters are commonly applied to

assessing these recommendations:

1) User similarity.

defines a notion of similarity between two Users

2) Item similarity.

find similarity between Items.

3)User neighborhood .

In a user-based recommender, recommendations are

produced by finding a "neighborhood" of similar

users near a given user. for example, nearest 10

users.

(JISC, 2013).

Recommendation Service:

Undergraduate :

The focus group comprised six undergraduate students,three studying level 1 courses, 3 at level 2. Two hadpreviously studied several modules up to level 3. Thestudents were studying a range of subjects. The groupwere asked if they would make use ofrecommendations.

There was a general consensus that ratings andreviews from other students would be beneficial(because „other people‟s experiences are valuable‟)especially if it was known which module the studentleaving the rating had done, and how high a mark theyhad got for their module.

(JISC, 2013).

Postgraduate

This focus group was made up of fivepostgraduate students (one of whom was alsoa member of staff) studying a range ofdifferent subjects through arts, science, socialsciences and educational technology . Themain feedback was that:

Students use citation information as a formof recommendation

Students are wary of recommendationswhen they do not know the recommender egtutor recommendations are valued

(JISC, 2013).

While both undergraduates andpostgraduates demonstrated theimportance of trusting the source of therecommendation there were differences inhow that trust might be established. Forundergraduates trust came from thesuccess of their peers making therecommendations, whilst postgraduateswanted recommendations from people thatthey trust.

That implies a good level of academiccaution about the quality of resourcerecommendations. So that is possibly aqualification to AEIOU hypothesis “Thatrecommender systems can enhance thestudent experience in new generation e-resource discovery services”

(JISC,2011)

1. Reporting (using the core

activity data)

The data that have been

established from this service will

provide insight into institutional

processes, supplying reliable

information that can be

contextualized to a larger scale.

2. Promotion (via the recommendation service)

In order to develop the awareness and profile of Welsh research institutes, the repository can be used to display the projects and the results of research.

With regards to improving collaboration between different educational institutes, the repository data can be applied to recommending individuals that are interested in the same research area.

To attract postgraduates, different educational institutes have utilized the recommendation service to suggest new research topics to potential students that could be interested in studying at a particular establishment, such as the associated Welsh HEIs.

In order to support the existing network that has been produced, the repository can be utilized to improve awareness, attract visitors, and improve usage of the system

3. Future Sustainability:

The HEFCW corporatestrategy has been associatedheavily with the AEIOUproject, particularly due totheir shared common goal ofdeveloping „sustainableexcellent research in highereducation by building upquality and quantity tostrengthen the research basein Wales.‟ (JISC, 2011:online).

According to Birmingham City University (2011)

„It is a positive development

which hopefully will

encourage more repository

use and browsing across all

Welsh repositories‟

According to Birmingham City University (2011)

„who benefits most would depend

on who the user is. PhD students

for example would probably not

benefit from the service as they

would tend to take a very focused

approach to searching. It

depends on who the user is.

Undergraduates might benefit

more. „

According to Birmingham City University (2011)

‘It could encourage wider

use than materials in our

own repository – it has real

value’

“….helps to expose things

in smaller less well known

collections”

According to Birmingham City University (2011)

‘good pedagogically for

linking related research’

According to Birmingham City University (2011)

According to Birmingham City University (2011)

„one survey respondent felt

that the recommendation

service encouraged them to

browse for longer, with many

commenting that it

encouraged browsing both

within your own institutional

repository and across other

repositories „

„The AEIOU project aimed to

isolate a repository resource

recommendation service that

could be used by researchers.

There were many constraints on

this project, therefore limiting the

possible analytical, evaluative and

conclusive processes that could

have been undertaken. (AEIOU,

2011).

Welsh Repository Network. (2011) Activity data to Enhance and Increase Open-access Usage. [Online] [15/

12/2013]http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk/aeiou/

JISC. (2011) Exploiting activity data in the academic environment. . [Online] [15/ 12/2013]

http://www.activitydata.org/index.html

AEIOU. (2011) Activity data to Enhance and Increase Open-access Usage. . [Online] [15/ 12/2013]

http://aeiouproject.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/aeiou-project-plan.html

Birmingham City University. (2011) AEIOU Project Evaluation Report. [Online] [15/ 12/2013]

http://www.activitydata.org/AEIOU.html#AEIOU