How can we build an open and scalable learning infrastructure

for food safety

Nikos Manouselisnikosm@agroknow.gr

“meaningful services around high-quality agricultural data”

http://wiki.agroknow.gr

“…why do I care??”

?

?

!

How can I provide safe food?

How can I produce safe

food?

?

Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) being established to raise at least $45,000,000 for implementation of a Roadmap and 5-year workplan

aim: train small food producers, around the world, using blended approaches

global food safety capacity building

is it a…

?

reflecting on complexity#3

Program Facilitation

Open & Scalable Learning Infrastructure

Includes : - OER data pool

- Course registry - Curriculum Development

-Curricula Alignment

Open & Scalable Learning Infrastructure

Includes : - OER data pool

- Course registry - Curriculum Development

-Curricula Alignment

• may aim higher than a single GFSP learning platform – cannot generalize something that requires a focused, regional approach

• rather develop a GFSP Learning Infrastructure including (among others) – Educational Offerings Aggregator Services– Curriculum Support, Registry & Alignment Services– GFSP Learning Portal (main front end)– GFSP Learning Widgets/apps (to be integrated in web

sites, offered through smartphones/tablets, etc)

evolving the concept

could look like this

• back end technology infrastructure– ingest, harvest, aggregate course and OER

metadata from existing or new (e.g. legacy) learning platforms and OER collections– tools to allow course and OER providers to

align/map their metadata & classifications to the GFSP ones

Educational Offerings Aggregator

• representation of GFSP curriculum in interoperable format (using learning outcomes, competences)– tools to allow other course providers to register and

express/map their curricula to the GFSP curriculum– tools to facilitate the generation of multilingual versions

of the curricula descriptions– generation of transformable curricula representations to

allow users to browse using preferred curicullum format

Curriculum Registry & Alignment

• main front-end to present project and allow users to find information in the aggregated sources– various modalities (visual, device, thematic,

geographical, industry, …) for search & discovery of courses and OER –multilingual interfaces and metadata facilitated

by automatic translation engines

GFSP Learning Portal

• search/discovery interfaces and mechanisms that can be embedded in other web sites and portals (widget-like or search pages in sites)

• mobile apps for various operational systems (iOS, Android, Windows 8)

• back-end engine to allow straightforward generation of adaptable versions of both (thematic, industry, geographical, linguistic, …)

GFSP Learning Widgets/Apps

important distinction

• such a learning infrastructure is heavily dependent on the back-end layers

• it is important to be able to power existing applications and services

• the centralised portal mainly serves as demonstrator

• will really change something if it provides a wealth of resources around each topic

a case study

• regional meat producer in Paraguay– example scenario: exploring how their company

can start selling packaged cooked ham to an international food distribution company

• product of high quality one, made from pure pork ham– let us assume that they would like to find out more

about the food safety standards of cooked ham

this is why#3

Program Facilitation

Open & Scalable Learning Infrastructure

Includes : - OER data pool

- Course registry - Curriculum Development

-Curricula Alignment

Open & Scalable Learning Infrastructure

Includes : - OER data pool

- Course registry - Curriculum Development

-Curricula Alignment

what’s really happening behind

DOMAIN EXPERTS

publish & evolve vocabularies &

ontologies

CONTENT PROVIDER WITH CMS THAT SUPPORTS OAI-PMH (e.g. FSKN compliant, ePrints, DSPACE,...)

CONTENT PROVIDER WITH CMS THAT DOES NOT SUPPORT OAI-PMH (e.g. Proprietary DB)

Metadata export in proprietary

format & provides mapping

Ingestion in compliant tool

CONTENT PROVIDER WITH UNORGANISED COLLECTION(e.g. Listed at Web site or in DVD-ROM)

Chooses compliant tool

Exposes metadata

through OAI-PMH

Exposes metadata

through OAI-PMH

Exposes metadata

through OAI-PMH

METADATA AGGREGATOR

Indexed & available in back-end

typical problems

a. metadata authoring/creationb. metadata assurance/validationc. metadata values/vocabulariesd. metadata multilingualitye. …lots more

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a. authoring/creation

• metadata creation is a painful and costly process–automatic generation can help–high quality/accuracy/relevance

descriptions require human intervention

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a. authoring/creation

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b. assurance/validation

• good online services demand high quality (or at least not poor quality) description of content–someone needs to take the final decision

before something is published–especially relevant when content

development has been costly/labourous

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b. assurance/validation

40

c. values/vocabularies• mappings and crosswalks among values and

vocabularies of different collections are crucial–usually manually defined and maintained–difficult to ensure that all applications will

publish and link their vocabularies–vocabulary bank management tend to become

too complex for the purpose that they serve

41

c. values/vocabularies

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d. multilinguality• for multilingual contexts, everything

needs to become (and be maintained) multilingual–metadata values and labels– interface labels for various systems

• automatic translation helps but usually produces rather rough/poor translations

43

d. multilinguality

44

challenges in semantics

describing course offerings

• what I am describing is different to what you are describing…–…but there are so many similar things!

Africa Lead course database

Provider: University of Pretoria

CerOrganic portal

Africa Lead SchemaCerOrganic Schema

Missing

competencies description

• what I would like to learn is what you need me to know…–…but what is really needed is connecting a

job profile to the relevant course offerings!

GFSI Competency Framework

AGRICOM job profile description

Job description or single task description

Required competences

GFSI Competency Framework

AGRICOM Competence Framework / Job task

Competence Title

Competence description

Course title

Job / task title

Job profile / task description

expected learning outcomes

• what I am going to learn should be what I am expected to know for my job…–…but sometimes it’s not very clear what this

is going to be!

DICLA training centerCerOrganic Curriculum description

Capabilities: When completing this course you will be able to perform basic routine operations in a defined hydroponic context under close supervision.

more issues…

• old-fashioned legacy systems still used in such traditional settings– terms like “OER” and “MOOC” sound like science fiction

• novel technologies such as semantic stores and ontology editing/managing environments are not user-friendly and proven– especially for such technology-ignorant users

• very rich semantics to be represented, handled and exploited; but we are not there yet

wrap upwrap up

targeted domaintargeted domain

• rich in data-oriented problems and cases

• focused on “real” users• inter-disciplinary work• results related to societal

goals/challenges

increase use & reuseincrease use & reuse• digital sources and collections

material to be used (and potentially re-used) in several contexts– even different than originally

expected/thought of

thank you!info@agroknow.gr

http://wiki.agroknow.gr