Training towards a society of data-savvy information professionals to enable open leadership innovation

Project Information

MOVING

Grant agreement ID: 693092

DOI

10.3030/693092

Project closed

EC signature date 14 January 2016

Start date 1 April 2016

End date 31 March 2019

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 3 470 253,75

EU contribution

€ 3 470 253,75

Coordinated by

ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS
Greece

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MOVING (Training towards a society of data-savvy information professionals to enable open leadership innovation)

Reporting period: 2017-04-01 to 2019-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Public administrators, compliance officers, auditors and researchers dealing with an ever-growing flood of information need tools that allow fast and accurate evaluation and visualisation of the analysis results. This means that the tools need to enable state-of-the-art search and semantic analysis of large digital content, where the users will be able to: i) get access to an extensive source inventory, ii) use search and visualisation methods, and iii) generate knowledge in a comparable speed and comprehensiveness. The tools also need to make their own functioning understandable to their users and support them through: i) a detailed and scientifically-proven help system, ii) individually-configurable training programs, and iii) a vivid community of people from various sectors of society that have similar interests or problems to be solved. MOVING has built an innovative training platform that enables users from all societal sectors (companies, universities, public administration) to fundamentally improve their information literacy by training how to choose, use and evaluate data mining methods in connection with their daily research tasks, and to become data-savvy information professionals. MOVING provides them technical support and advice on how to organise, filter and exploit information in a more efficient and sustainable way. The MOVING platform is both: i) a working environment for the quality and usability analysis of large text and multimedia collections and free online contents with data mining methods, and ii) a training environment with information, training and exchange offers in the broad field of digital information management. In this context, the project's specific objectives are: i) development of a qualification/training concept, ii) development and testing of an application for data mining, iii) providing a platform as an integrated learning and working environment, and iv) building a stable community of practice.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

"For addressing the first objective, we developed a semantic profiling and recommender system for scientific publications; implemented and tested the “Learning-how-to-search” and “Curriculum reflection” widgets of the Adaptive Training Support system, to guide users on how to efficiently use the platform and familiarize them with its technologies (crawling of social media, websites and videos; incremental schema-level indexing for distributed Linked Data retrieval; duplicate detection and removal; author name disambiguation; entity extraction and linking; detection and forecast of trending topics; automated semantic document annotation; video processing; user logging mechanism; and various visualisation technologies). Also, we developed the use case curricula for auditors and junior researchers, and produced learning materials and educational sequences. Furthermore, we implemented and evaluated a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) as a practical implementation of the use case 2 curriculum, as well as new educational sequences.
For meeting the second objective, the consortium increased the amount of data resources available in the platform and developed a rich set of dedicated technology components (covering data acquisition, data processing, user logging and data visualisation), as well as a common data model for supporting the exchange between them; they also worked on the integration of these components in the MOVING platform. Regarding data acquisition, we improved the crawlers and extended the FLuID model. Regarding data processing, we extended our technique for duplicate detection, introduced two different techniques for entity extraction and linking, and developed a trend detection and forecasting method. About video processing, we extended the transcript-based lecture video fragmentation method, and developed a new machine learning technique for dimensionality reduction and concept annotation. Regarding the user logging method we improved the WevQuery tool, and evaluated the pattern mining features of WevQuery through a user study. Finally, regarding data visualisation, we improved the Concept Graphs, and added the uRank, the Tag Cloud and Top Properties user interfaces.
Concerning the third objective, the work done focused on the definition of the overall platform architecture, the separation of the test and production server, and the integration of all project functionalities and learning materials in the platform. More specifically, the most important developments were the complete redesign and adaptation of the project environment for community building, the integration of the MOOC and its functionality, the integration of the Recommender System widget, the Adaptive Training Support widgets, the user interaction tracking system, and all new and updated data acquisition and processing components, the development and integration of large-scale data collection techniques, and the design and implementation of the platform’s UI, including its responsive design.
Finally, addressing the fourth objective involved organizing and participating in a multitude of dissemination and networking activities, such as the presentation of MOVING results in more than 80 industry- and scientific-oriented events (conferences, workshops, exhibitions, summer schools, invited talks, demonstrations, open door days, user days, meetings and presentations). Also, the implementation of the MOVING MOOC represents a community-building effort on the MOVING platform. The exploitation strategy of the project focused on analysing the market environment and on guiding the research and development towards addressing the ""real-life"" needs of public administrators and researchers. This involved, for instance, using the business model canvas (BMC) methodology for capturing the exploitation parameters of the platform and all other IP assets generated in MOVING.
"

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The MOVING platform is composed of new and innovative services that enable users from companies, universities and public administration to improve their information literacy. The close collaboration with the user- and focus-groups during the project has led to the development of tools with a potentially significant impact for these communities. For instance, our tools allow researchers and public administrators to better understand novel data analysis features of the platform, such as identifying new topics, trends and key researchers. The project strengthens the role of universities in innovation but also boosts innovation competencies in auditing-related public administrators as we support training them on how to deal with large amounts of information. The MOVING work resulted in a publicly-available platform that already attracted, in the first few months of its availability, more than 800 users; while, in the course of the project, we reached already over 48,000 individuals via our communication, dissemination and community-building activities; and we exposed a MOVING-developed technology to the approx. 20,000 montly users of VideoLectures.net. With the MOVING platform development having been completed and a customized EY version also having been prepared at the end of the project, we anticipate to expose the platform and/or make parts of the platform or its techniques available to a target 60,000 EY compliance officers and 100,000 TUD students and post graduate researchers at affiliated HEIs during the platform’s five-year durability period, i.e. by 2024.

MOVING platform's learning page

MOVING platform's main search results page with the faceted search and the ATS widget

MOVING platform's concept graph visualization