Applying the FAIR Principles to Open Educational Resources: A Semantic Similarity Approach to Improve Resource Discovery

IEEE Access, vol. 13, pp. 136626–136642

Abstract

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, or research resources freely available for use and reuse. Despite their potential, OER uptake in existing education systems remains low, primarily due to challenges in locating suitable resources. This study addresses this challenge by proposing and implementing a workflow applying the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles to OER. We demonstrated this framework within Earth system sciences as an application domain. We constructed a knowledge graph of approximately 500 FAIR OER, each annotated with structured metadata using Schema.org vocabulary and made accessible through a SPARQL endpoint. To bridge the gap between making resources queryable and enabling their practical reuse, we employed a transformer-based language model (Sentence-BERT). The model was fine-tuned using few-shot learning on a domain-specific dataset of course-description pairs. This specialized model was then used to map the OER collection against over 200 university courses across five academic programs at a German university, based on semantic similarity between OER descriptions and university course descriptions. Expert evaluation of the model’s recommendations demonstrated 74% accuracy in identifying reusable OER for university courses. Notably, even with limited training data, fine-tuning the Sentence-BERT model significantly improved performance, resulting in a 16% reduction in mean squared error compared to the base model. This study provides both a generalizable methodology and a practical demonstration of how FAIR principles can streamline OER discovery, potentially accelerating OER uptake in higher education.

Authors 4

1. Farzaneh Sadeghi

   Aalborg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

   Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University Copenhagen, A. C. Meyers Vænge 15, København, Denmark

2. Auriol Degbelo

   Technische Universität Dresden

   Affiliation as printed

   Chair of Geoinformatics, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany

   Chair of Geoinformatics, Technical University of Dresden, Helmholtzstraße 10, Dresden, Germany

3. Carsten Keßler

   Aalborg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

   Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University Copenhagen, A. C. Meyers Vænge 15, København, Denmark

4. Reza Zolnouri Aachen Chair of Mathematics of Information Processing

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Chair of Mathematics of Information Processing, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

   Chair of Mathematics of Information Processing, RWTH Aachen University, Pontdriesch 12–14, Aachen, Germany