Delores Extensions is the part of the Delores project (Delivering Open Educational Resources for Engineering Design) which will present a dynamic collection of university-level Open Educational Resources (OERs) and other openly available resources relevant to Engineering Design. The resources will be sourced from collections from around the world, including such sources as UKOER projects, OCWC, OER Commons, Journal Tables of Contents, and industry news. The first step is to filter the RSS feeds from those sources to select the items that are likely to be relevant using the sux0r software. The Waypoint software at Bath is then collects these via the API created for sux0r by the Bayesian Feed Filter project in order to classify and present them as a coherent collection.
sux0r has been set up to classify items into classes along two “vectors”. These are:
- Vector: Design Eng. Relevancy
- Relevant
- Not Relevant
- Vector: Design Eng. Subj.
- Design for X
- Graphical communication
- Machine elements
- Manufacturing processes
- Principles of design
The API gives access to the resources grouped by these vectors and or categories. The OER metadata is returned in a standard RSS 2.0 format based partly on OCW Consortium’s guidelines on RSS feeds. It is also based on what the sux0rAPI already does through the “return RSS items for a user” call.
The rationale for using RSS is that sux0r and Waypoint are loosely-coupled using a standard format. This should enable Waypoint to import information direct from sources where the sux0r filtering isn’t necessary, and on the other hand, other systems may be able to consume the information from sux0r filtering without needing any special tool.
API Usage
API_URL_BASE: http://icbl.macs.hw.ac.uk/delores/icbl/api
1. ReturnVectors Call
Example: http://icbl.macs.hw.ac.uk/delores/icbl/api/vectors
2. ReturnCategories per Vector Call
Example: http://icbl.macs.hw.ac.uk/delores/icbl/api/categories/?vec_name=DesignEngSubj
3. ReturnItems per Category Call *
Example: http://icbl.macs.hw.ac.uk/delores/icbl/api/items/?cat_name=designForX
4. ReturnFeeds Call
Example: http://icbl.macs.hw.ac.uk/delores/icbl/api/feeds/
5. ReturnItems Call *
Example: http://icbl.macs.hw.ac.uk/delores/icbl/api/items/?maxHits=200
* The XML structure for the Item elements is based on this proxy doc proposed by Phil.
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