semantic technologies in learning environments

Semantic Technologies in Learning Environments

Dragan GaševićAthabasca University

Email: dgasevic@acm.org

The Social Web is here!

What now?

Topics to discuss – morning

Semantics as a big promise Learning ecosystems Examples of semantics in-use

Authoring and reuse of learning content Learning analytics

Open challenges

Part ISemantics as a Big Promise

Semantic Web

To create a universal medium for the exchange of data.

… to smoothly interconnect personal information management, enterprise application integration and the global sharing of commercial, scientific and cultural data.

Semantic Web Activity Statementhttp://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Activity

Semantic Web

Key characteristics Anyone can say anything about anything Explicit definition of the meaning

What is an ontology?

Definition(Swartout and Tate, 1999) the basic structure or armature

around which a knowledge base can be built

< musician: Musician rdf:ID="urn:rdf:969914d5ca929194ea18787de32c665a-1"> … <musician:name>Eric Clapton</musician:name> <musician:records rdf:resource = "http://www.guitar.org/legendaryrecordings/EC#urn:rdf:958804d5ca918084ea17676de21c887a-0"/> … </musician:Musician>

Musician

Album

Event

plays

plays at

attends

records

Admirer

Instrument

musician:records

rdf:type rdf:type

<album: Album rdf:ID="urn:rdf:958804d5ca918084ea17676de21c887a-0"> … <album:title>Unplugged</album:title> <album:year>1992</album:year> … </album:Album>

RDF

The Semantic Web

is NOT opposite to

the Social Web!

Semantic Web

Ontologies: Interconnecting applications Shared domain conceptualizations

Linked Data

Linked Data

SPARLQ end pointsThey enable data mash-ups

Part IIIPromises for

Learning Environments

Learning Ecosystems

http://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/1023-sb-W3CTechSemWeb/DataServicesWebAppMetro2.jpg

Learning Ecosystems

Authoring

Reusability

Packaging

Educators

ReusabilityAdaptivityEvolutionCollaboration with educators and students

Learning Ecosystems

Authoring

Reusability

Packaging

Educators

Feedback

Learning and Collaborating

PersonalizationAdaptivityContext-awarenessSocial interaction…

Learners

Learning Ecosystems

Authoring

Reusability

Packaging Learning and Collaborating

Community

Peer-Review

Presenting

Administration

Mobile

Educators Learners

Important considerations

Julita Vassileva (U of Saskatchewan) “Rule: hard/impossible to impose hard rules”

Gord McCalla (U of Saskatchewan) Ecological approach – sharing experience

Personal Learning Information Management

Connect presently isolated islands - not ecological!

Students/EducatorsContent•LORs•Libraries•Multimedia•Reuse

Pedagogy•User models•Adaptivity•Educational models

Collaboration•Chat•Discussion•Services

Community•Course, University, …

Portfolio•Evidence•Competencies

Peer-review•Courses•Publishing

Platforms•Mobile•Desktop Domain tools

•Mashed up with education tools

Desktop•Email•Firefox…

Authoring•Word•Frontpage•Reload…

Privacy•Policy•Identity

Part IIIaAuthoring and Reuse

How to reduce the number of clicks, improve precision and shorten the effort time?

Semantic Documents

Resources composed of data units Uniquely identified by URIs Annotated by concepts from ontologies Linked to other data units via explicit links

Semantic Document ManagementSemantic Document Authoring

RDFizingAnnotation IndexingLinking

Semantic Document Search & Retrieval

Semantic Document Navigation

Nešić Saša, Mehdi Jazyeri, Dragan Gasevic "Semantic Document Architecture for Desktop Document Integration and Management, “the 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE), San Francisco, USA, 2010, In Press.

Semantic Documents Sharing

Social Networks around shared semantic documents

Nešić Saša, Jazayeri Mehdi, Lelli Francesco, and Gasevic Dragan, "Towards Efficient Document Content Sharing in Social Networks,” 2nd International Workshop on Social Software Engineering and Applications, co-located with ESEC/FSE 2009.

SemanticDoc – MS Office Tools

Nešić Saša, Jazayeri Mehdi, Gašević Dragan, "Extending MS Office for sharing Document Content Units over the Semantic Web," – 8th IEEE International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE), Yorktown Heights, New York, USA, 2008.

SemanticDoc – MS Office Tools

Nešić Saša, Jazayeri Mehdi, Gašević Dragan, "Extending MS Office for sharing Document Content Units over the Semantic Web," – 8th IEEE International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE), Yorktown Heights, New York, USA, 2008.

SemanticDoc – MS Office Tools

Nešić Saša, Jazayeri Mehdi, Gašević Dragan, "Extending MS Office for sharing Document Content Units over the Semantic Web," – 8th IEEE International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE), Yorktown Heights, New York, USA, 2008.

SemanticDoc – MS Office Tools

Nešić Saša, Jazayeri Mehdi, Gašević Dragan, "Extending MS Office for sharing Document Content Units over the Semantic Web," – 8th IEEE International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE), Yorktown Heights, New York, USA, 2008.

SemanticDoc – MS Office Tools

Nešić Saša, Jazayeri Mehdi, Gašević Dragan, "Extending MS Office for sharing Document Content Units over the Semantic Web," – 8th IEEE International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE), Yorktown Heights, New York, USA, 2008.

SemanticDoc – MS Office Tools

Nešić Saša, Jazayeri Mehdi, Gašević Dragan, "Extending MS Office for sharing Document Content Units over the Semantic Web," – 8th IEEE International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE), Yorktown Heights, New York, USA, 2008.

Semantic Search Matters

Usability Evaluation

User effectiveness and efficiency

Nešić Saša, Gašević Dragan, Jazayeri Mehdi, Monica Landoni, "Using Semantic Documents and Social Networking in Authoring Course Material: An Empirical Study," 10th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), Tunisia, 2010 (Best paper award).

Usability Evaluation

User effectiveness and efficiency

Nešić Saša, Gašević Dragan, Jazayeri Mehdi, Monica Landoni, "Using Semantic Documents and Social Networking in Authoring Course Material: An Empirical Study," 10th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), Tunisia, 2010 (Best paper award).

Usability Evaluation

User effectiveness and efficiency Number of mouse clicks

Nešić Saša, Gašević Dragan, Jazayeri Mehdi, Monica Landoni, "Using Semantic Documents and Social Networking in Authoring Course Material: An Empirical Study," 10th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), Tunisia, 2010 (Best paper award).

Usability Evaluation

User effectiveness and efficiency Number of windows switches

Nešić Saša, Gašević Dragan, Jazayeri Mehdi, Monica Landoni, "Using Semantic Documents and Social Networking in Authoring Course Material: An Empirical Study," 10th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), Tunisia, 2010 (Best paper award).

Semantic Documents

Open-source project Project website:

http://www.semanticdoc.org Source code:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sdarch/

Part IIIbContent Evolution

Feedback about effectiveness of used content and pedagogies

Context is Missing!

http://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/1023-sb-W3CTechSemWeb/DataServicesWebAppMetro2.jpg

“A crazy problem requires a crazy solution!”

(Griff Richards, 2005)

Learning Object Context Ontology: LOCO

Learning context Learner(s)

Learner characteristics Learning activity

Prerequisites, learning objectives, available time, … Learning object used/produced

Parts of objects and their pedagogical role Domain concepts

Jovanović, J., Knight, C., Gašević, D., Richards, G., "Learning Object Context on the Semantic Web," In Proc. 6th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Kerkrade, The Netherlands, 2006 pp. 669-673 (Best paper award).

Learning Object Context Ontology: LOCO

Learning context Learner(s)

Learner characteristics Learning activity

Prerequisites, learning objectives, available time, … Learning object used/produced

Parts of objects and their pedagogical role Domain concepts

Jovanović, J., Knight, C., Gašević, D., Richards, G., "Learning Object Context on the Semantic Web," 6th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Kerkrade, The Netherlands, 2006 pp. 669-673 (Best paper award).

LOCO-Analyst

LOCO-Analyst and iHelp Courses

http://www.jelenajovanovic.net/LOCO-Analyst/

LOCO-Analyst

LOCO-Analyst

LOCO-Analyst

LOCO-Analyst

OATS: Open Annotation & Tagging System

OATS with Moodle

Education Social Semantic Web

Combining Social and Semantic Web aspects OAST and LOCO-Analyst

Student comprehension in LOCO-Analyst

Evaluation of LOCO-Analyst

Two evaluations In 2006

Instructions provided and asked to try the tool Participants: 18 (14 male, 4 female) Experience: 3.09 (SD=2.2)

In 2009 Video clips demonstrating the tool Participants: 22 (17 male, 5 female) Experience: 6.45 (SD=5.58)

Evaluation of LOCO-Analyst Insights into the activities

No statistical improvement over the previous version => Better feedback about interactions between students is needed

Enables me to get an insight into the students’ interactions with the learning content †

3.71, 0.47, 17 4.45, 0.67, 22

The information helps me identify what needs to be improved in the learning content †

3.50, 0.70, 18 4.27, 0.70, 22

Relevant information regarding the students’ interactions within the online learning environment †

3.72, 0.46, 18 4.41, 0.80, 22

The information helps me determine how to improve the students’ online interactions. †

3.17, 1.09, 18 3.54, 1.01, 22

Help me identify the domain topics the students were having difficulties with.

NA 4.57, 0.68, 21

Evaluation of LOCO-Analyst

User interface

Significant preference for the improved tool version (t(38)=2.20, p < 0.05)

No statistically significant increase of intuitiveness and information overload

LOCO-Analyst’s GUI (Graphical User Interface) is intuitive enough

4.22, 0.73,18 4.5, 0.80, 22

LOCO-Analyst’s GUI is overburdened with information ‡ 1.72, 0.58, 18 2.5, 1.34, 22

General opinion about the GUI 4.00, 0.84, 18 4.5, 0.60, 22

Evaluation of LOCO-Analyst

Predictors of the perceived utility information about interactions of students

social networking students’ comprehension of content

collaborative tagging intuitiveness & ease-to-understand of

the presentation of the above two

Evaluation of LOCO-Analyst

Predictors of user interface perceived value students’ interaction with individual lessons

Individual learning – granularity level students’ activities in discussion forums and

chat rooms social activities

students’ comprehension of studied topics collaborative tagging

Part IV Open Challenges

Challenges

Ontology development Similar to databases –

someone needs to develop Some ontology development lessons learned

Lightweight ontologies:“Little semantics goes a long way”

Linked with other ontologies Friend of a Friend Semantically-interlinked Online Communities

Challenges

Peer, expert and user retrieval Networks and data are locked List of “friends” is not enough Interaction history also needed

Online presence

Challenges

Analytics for students Personal planning – social organizational Experience sharing

Analytics for organizational Learn. organizations and organization learn.

Learning ecosystems

Stay tuned…

http://intelleo.eu

Much more underway

Personal learning

information management

More Meaningful

personalizedinteractive

socialcollaborativeubiquitous

…Learning ecosystems

Thank you!