Tech Reports
Tech Report kmi-04-04 Abstract
Semantic Learning Webs
Techreport ID: kmi-04-04
Date: 2004
Author(s): Arthur Stutt, Enrico Motta
If current research is successful there will be a plethora of e-learning platforms making use of a varied menu of reusable educational material or learning objects. For the learner, the semanticized Web will, in addition, offer rich seams of diverse learning resources over and above the course materials (or learning objects) specified by course designers. This much is already in development. But we can go much further. Semantic technologies make it possible not only to reason about the Web as if it is one extended knowledge base but also to provide a range of additional educational semantic web services such as summarization, interpretation or sense-making, structure-visualization, and support for argumentation. It can thus provide the means for learners to navigate through the plethora of sources, find help in their interpretation of material by contextualizing it to debates and narratives, and actively enter into these debates or construct these stories as members of living online communities of learners. In this paper we present a model of how the Semantic web could be used for learning. In particular we discuss Knowledge Navigation which is the process of linking from web document to web document by means of Knowledge Charts. These are a new form of learning object which represent contextualized community knowledge such as the debates, narratives, and analogies which animate any field. By combining navigation with a means of learner participation within Knowledge Neighbourhoods (locations on the Web where communities collaborate to create and use representations of their knowledge ) the learner becomes, not a passive recipient of knowledge, but the sort of critical thinker able to deal with the complexity of the material available in a knowledge based society.
Future Internet
KnowledgeManagementMultimedia &
Information SystemsNarrative
HypermediaNew Media SystemsSemantic Web &
Knowledge ServicesSocial Software
Semantic Web and Knowledge Services is...
Our research in the Semantic Web area looks at the potentials of fusing together advances in a range of disciplines, and applying them in a systemic way to simplify the development of intelligent, knowledge-based web services and to facilitate human access and use of knowledge available on the web. For instance, we are exploring ways in which tnatural language interfaces can be used to facilitate access to data distributed over different repositories. We are also developing infrastructures to support rapid development and deployment of semantic web services, which can be used to create web applications on-the-fly. We are also investigating ways in which semantic technology can support learning on the web, through a combination of knowledge representation support, pedagogical theories and intelligent content aggregation mechanisms. Finally, we are also investigating the Semantic Web itself as a domain of analysis and performing large scale empirical studies to uncover data about the concrete epistemologies which can be found on the Semantic Web. This exciting new area of research gives us concrete insights on the different conceptualizations that are present on the Semantic Web by giving us the possibility to discover which are the most common viewpoints, which viewpoints are mutually inconsistent, to what extent different models agree or disagree, etc...
Our aim is to be at the forefront of both theoretical and practical developments on the Semantic Web not only by developing theories and models, but also by building concrete applications, for a variety of domains and user communities, including KMi and the Open University itself.
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