Transcript ppt - Institut für Informatik

Rebuilding Virtual
Study Environments
Using Topic Maps
Kamila Olsevicova
Faculty of Informatics and Management
University of Hradec Kralove
TMRA'05
7th October 2005
Objectives of presentation

Describe disadvantages and missed
opportunities of current virtual study
environments

Propose a new solution based on
principles of knowledge management
and built using Topic Maps

Present a pilot application
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Introduction

E-learning
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“transport of knowledge and skills enabled by electronic
means/computer network”
transforms educational processes with the aim to customize learning
to student’s needs in terms of study style, time and space
accent on student’s activity in development
of knowledge structures in his mind
the most common solution: e-courses delivered in…
…Virtual study environments = courseware
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used both in commercial area (training of employees) and at
academic institutions (support of study programmes)
a piece in puzzle of different information systems at university
(together with scheduling applications, document repositories,
students’ agenda systems, digital and non-digital libraries etc. )
tens of products, the most famous are WebCT, LearningSpace,
Blackboard,…
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Tools and functionalities
of virtual study environments
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Educational content delivery
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Synchronous and asynchronous communication
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calendar, schedule, notice board, tests, self tests, assignments,
groups, users, evaluation,…
Individual student’s utilities
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mail, discussion, whiteboard, videoconferences,
PDA integration, e-commerce,…
E-course management
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documents, presentations, e-books, programs, databases,
bookmarks, glossaries,…
portfolio, homepage, progress, statistics, private folders…
General functionalities
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syllabus, e-course info, table of contents, index, searching,
printing,…
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Example: WebCT (1)
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Example: WebCT (2)
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Example: WebCT (3)
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Courseware limitations
(when used at academic institution)
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Content of related e-courses in completely independent and
unconnected -> no subject categorization of study materials
Hard to locate particular study resource -> ineffective
browsing in different e-courses, full text searching available
only inside one e-course
No intelligent support of educational processes and no
customization to students needs (although the idea of
intelligent tutoring systems is not new!)
No connection to other IS of the faculty
Content presentation does not respect the specifics of the
web media -> classical textbooks rewritten to html, linear
organization of content
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Our proposed solution
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understand virtual study environments from
the point of view of knowledge
management and semantic web…
…and integrate…
a) Contents of particular e-courses
b) Virtual study environment with other
information and knowledge resources and
repositories available at the university
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…using ontologies and Topic Maps
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Pilot study (1)
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Developed for demonstration of the proposed
solution
Courses of Logic programming and Knowledgebased technologies that are taught at FIM UHK:
 All
courses are related to the same discipline (AI)
 Traditional e-courses in WebCT are already prepared
 Different information and knowledge resources are
available (university library, digital library of the
faculty, university website, IS of student agenda
department, shared folders on university network,
teachers as domain experts,…)
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Pilot study (2)

Three kinds of Topic Maps
 General
map of information and knowledge
resources of the university -> domain
independent KM solution for university
 Maps of particular e-courses
 Domain map (for Artificial intelligence)
Maps are supposed to be merged + scopes
are defined for different user groups
 Built in Ontopia Omnigator
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Pilot study (3)
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Ontology of the general map of educational institution
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Topics: Address, Article, Bachelor programme, Bachelor thesis,
Conference, Consultation, Course, Credit, Database, Department, Email,
Entrance test, Examination, Faculty, etc.
 Associations:
person – is-guarantee-of – course,
person – offers-topic-of – bachelor thesis/master thesis etc.,
person – participates-on – project/conference/workshop etc.,
course – is-recommended-to – study programme/semester,
(lesson/assignment etc.) – is-stored-in – (library/folder etc.), etc.
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Ontology of the course map
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Topics:
Assignment, Exercise, Lesson, Test question, etc.
 Associations:
lecture – previous/next to – lecture,
lesson – requires – prerequisites, etc.
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Ontology of Artificial intelligence
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Simple taxonomy, part of ACM Computer Classification Schema + term
explanations from WordNet and from classic Ai textbooks
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Pilot study (4)
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Pilot study (5)
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Pilot study (6)
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Pilot study (7)
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Pilot study (8)
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Conclusion
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Virtual study environments can be understood as
knowledge management tools
Topic Maps can help to integrate information and
knowledge resources available at the university
Next research can be focused on
 Development
of suitable ontologies for description of
educational reality
 Design of detail architecture of e-learning application
based on Topic Maps
 Automatic construction of educational TM from available
amount of educational content, e.g. repositories of
learning objects
 Merging TM of different educational institutions to share
study materials…
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Thank you for your attention!
Kamila Olsevicova
Dept. of Information Technologies
Faculty of Informatics and Management
University of Hradec Kralove
Rokitanskeho 62
Hradec Kralove 500 03
Czech Republic
[email protected]
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