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Towards a Cloud-Based Big Data Infrastructure for Higher Education Institutions

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Frontiers of Cyberlearning

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Educational Technology ((LNET))

Abstract

This chapter reports about experiences gained in developing a learning analytics infrastructure for an ecosystem of different MOOC providers in Europe. These efforts originated in the European project ECO that aimed to develop a single-entry portal for various MOOC providers by developing shared technologies for these providers and distributing these technologies to the individual MOOC platforms of the project partners. The chapter presents a big data infrastructure that is able to handle learning activities from various sources and shows how the work in ECO led to a standardised approach for capturing learning analytics data according to the xAPI specification and storing them into cloud-based big data storage. The chapter begins with a definition of big data in higher education and thereafter describes the practical experiences gained from developing the learning analytics infrastructure.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://project.ecolearning.eu/.

  2. 2.

    See https://experienceapi.com and https://github.com/adlnet/xAPI-Spec.

  3. 3.

    Detailed examples are available at https://experienceapi.com/statements-101/.

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/TrustedLA/xAPI-Dutch-Spec/.

  5. 5.

    https://experienceapi.com/adopters/.

  6. 6.

    http://xapi.vocab.pub.

  7. 7.

    https://experienceapi.com/recipes/.

  8. 8.

    https://github.com/kirstykitto/CLRecipe.

  9. 9.

    https://github.com/jiscdev/xapi.

  10. 10.

    https://www.imsglobal.org/activity/caliper.

  11. 11.

    https://d3js.org.

  12. 12.

    https://developers.google.com/chart/.

  13. 13.

    http://www.laceproject.eu.

  14. 14.

    https://www.rescuetime.com.

  15. 15.

    https://www.fitbit.com.

  16. 16.

    https://openweathermap.org.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Welten Institute, Open University of the Netherlands, Valkenburgerweg 177, 6419 AT, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Stefaan Ternier, Maren Scheffel & Hendrik Drachsler

  2. German Institute of International Educational Research (DIPF), Goethe University Frankfurt, Schloßstraße 29, 60486, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany

    Hendrik Drachsler

Authors
  1. Stefaan Ternier
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  2. Maren Scheffel
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  3. Hendrik Drachsler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefaan Ternier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Learning Technologies, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

    J. Michael Spector

  2. School of Computing and Information System, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada

    Vivekanandan Kumar

  3. Analytics and R&D, McGraw-Hill Education, Boston, MA, USA

    Alfred Essa

  4. Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

    Yueh-Min Huang

  5. Open University in the Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Rob Koper

  6. School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Richard A. W. Tortorella

  7. Smart Learning Institute, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Ting-Wen Chang

  8. School of Educational Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Yanyan Li

  9. School of Educational Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Zhizhen Zhang

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Ternier, S., Scheffel, M., Drachsler, H. (2018). Towards a Cloud-Based Big Data Infrastructure for Higher Education Institutions. In: Spector, J., et al. Frontiers of Cyberlearning. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0650-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0650-1_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-0649-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-0650-1

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