OUseful.Info, the blog…

Picking up on data.open.ac.uk Linked Data Now Exposing Module Information, which describes how to query the Open University linked data store for course (that is, module) information, I’ve just posted an SVG map of how all the current* OU undergraduate course relate.

* if I understood @mdaquin correctly… specifically, a course is current if a description field is available for it.

You can see the graph here or by clicking through on the image below (if you’re using at least Firefox, Safari or Chrome, you should be able to click and drag the image to move it around, as well as zoom in and out.

The links between courses are the ‘related to’ links contained within the linked data. The nodes are sized according to degree and coloured according to modularity group, following application of the Gephi modularity statistic. The layout is an expanded form of a Yifan Hu layout.

The modularity statistic seems to identify clusters of courses reasonably well, allowing a student of potential student to get an overall view of the courses offered by the OU along with the courses that are naturally taken together. It may be interesting to explore the extent to which this sort of view may be used as a navigation surface, or made a little more interactive, for example by displaying information about a course (maybe including price and start date?!;-) when a user hovers over a course node.