ontology based resource for history education · ontology based resource for history education...

TEM Journal. Volume 7, Issue 4, Pages 782-786, ISSN 2217-8309, DOI: 10.18421/TEM74-13, November 2018.

782 TEM Journal – Volume 7 / Number 4 / 2018.

Ontology Based Resource for

History Education

Desislava Baeva 1, Desislava Atanasova

1

1Department of Informatics and Information Technologies, “Angel Kanchev” University of Ruse,

8 Studentska str., Ruse, Bulgaria

Abstract – Integrating knowledge databases into the

learning process would contribute to the creation of

interactive and cognitive software solutions. Since

historical research is a domain that provides

interesting opportunities for the introduction of

ontologies, not only computer scientists, but historians

are also interested in popularizing people's repositories

(PDR). The other hand, chatbots interact with the user

using a pattern based on matching rules. This article

presents the functionality of educational rule-based

software with a natural language interface that allows

working with factual information about Bulgarian

history. The topic is focused on the use of interactive

forms and methods in the teaching process and the

development of methodological models for classroom

work. Traditional ways of educating students have

well-proven advantages but there are problems with

maintaining students engaged and engaging without

innovative technology.

Keywords – Digital History, Knowledge bases,

Ontology for History.

1. Historical research as a domain

The integration of ICT in education is a

prerequisite for a number of innovative methods of

learning, while modern scientific knowledge for

effective learning is aimed at changing the current

DOI: 10.18421/TEM74-13 https://dx.doi.org/10.18421/TEM74-13

Corresponding author: Desislava Baeva, Department of Informatics and Information Technologies, “Angel Kanchev” University of Ruse, Ruse, Bulgaria Email: [email protected]

Received: 07 July 2018. Accepted: 17 September 2018. Published: 26 November 2018.

© 2018 Desislava Baeva,Desislava Atanasova; published by UIKTEN. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

The article is published with Open Access at www.temjournal.com

educational practice. An ambition of modern

education is to form and develop the cognitive skills

of the students. Compared to traditional forms,

innovative approaches and methods convert the

trainee in an active participant of the learning process

and place it in the center of the educational

interaction. It outlines tendencies of educational

resources to become more social, authentic, tailored

to individual motivations and abilities to reflect

reality strategically. [21]

In recent years, the increase of the interest in the

use of ontologies happens in order to present the

semantics of data from different fields of knowledge.

Their specific advantages such as simplicity,

visibility, clarity, simplicity of presentation are a

prerequisite for the formalization of large amounts of

factual information. Therefore semantic digital

libraries attract the attention of various scientific and

educational institutes.

Ontologies are an approach to presenting factual

information in its logical relationship, thus providing

interesting opportunities for the development of

historical research. This is the reason why not only

computer scientists but historians are interested in

popularizing people's repositories (PDRs).The static

ontologies cannot capture the relevant contextual

knowledge required for search and retrieval of

historical documents because the entities in the world

and the relations among them change over time. The

demand for temporarily contextualized information

represented in the ontology and that of relations

among entities that are relevant during different time-

based intervals are available to support user queries.

Moreover, it is necessary to account for the fact that

the course of the ontology’s development and the

processes that have affected it are a part of the

knowledge that should be brought to carry on the

analysis of information at any given time. [7]

Organizing and retrieving appropriate educational

resources or classifying them are thus major issues in

learning environments. Within this context, there

exist various systems based on semantic retrieval that

are capable of organizing educational assets [12].

Content management [19], educational support and

intelligent tutoring [6] systems, information retrieval

[11], question-answering [16], classification [20],

https://dx.doi.org/10.18421/TEM74-13

https://dx.doi.org/10.18421/TEM74-13

http://www.temjournal.com/


TEM Journal – Volume 7 / Number 4 / 2018. 783

recommender [22] can also be enumerated as means

for this purpose. These systems are equipped with

various types of semantic approaches such as

annotating, tagging and indexing, that may facilitate

resource organization process.

1.1 Historical ontology resources

For example, the Factoid Prosopography Ontology

(FPO) is semantic web ontology that defines

components for the factoid approach to

prosopography as used by the Department of Digital

Humanities at King’s College London (DDH/KCL)

in a formal manner [5]. The data model developed by

the Personendaten-Repositorium (http://pdr.bbaw.de)

(Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der

Wissenschaften) bundles person information from

various academy projects and makes them retrievable

through a common interface.

Тhe Italian SyMoGIH project was created as an

open modular platform for storing geo-historical

information. The benefit of the platform is to allow

researchers to share their data and texts in a

collaborative environment. [3]

Santangelo, Antonella et al. promote a multimodal

system with natural language dialogue, to assist users

when visiting cultural heritage sites. [18]

It is opinion of many authors Ramli 2014,

Santangelo 2006, Bradley 2013 [17][18]14], that the

application of ontologies to describe historical data is

difficult because of a large amount of information

and the complexity it can be semantically

represented. This is due to the fact that historical data

are highly contextual and suggest several possible

interpretations.

Creation and integration of applications including

ontologies with historical facts make it easier and

faster for data about our past to be understood. This

is an opportunity which will provide accurate and

impartial information enabling computers and people

to work in cooperation. [13][14]

1.2 Historical ontology in education

Retrieving resources in an appropriate manner has

a promising role in increasing the performance of

educational support systems. A variety of works have

been done to organize materials for educational

purposes using tagging techniques. Despite the

effectiveness of these techniques within certain

domains, organizing resources in a way being

adequately reusable for support purposes is still in

the offing.

The integration of these knowledge databases in

the education process would contribute to the

creation of interactive solutions and lead to:

- Acquisition of wider competence in the field of

study;

- Increased activity and independence of students;

- Development of critical thinking in students;

- Acquisition of ICT skills for expert work and

others. [15]

Unfortunately, such developments are rare in

Bulgaria. This is what motivates the creation of

ontology-based chatbot, as a private assistant in

teaching Bulgarian history.

2 The proposed approach

The purpose of this article is to present the

functionality of an educational software product with

natural language interface that allows working with

factual information on Bulgarian history and to

analyze the organization of its data.

The most existing educational software requires a

certain level of consumer knowledge, which in

certain cases makes it difficult for students and

distracts them from the main objective, namely

conducting a full and thorough educational process.

This requires a careful analysis of user groups and

the selection of appropriate means of communication

between man and computer according to the profile.

Given the peculiarities of the target users, namely,

students studying Bulgarian history as a means of

access to databases was elected as a natural language

chatbot agent communication through dialogue.

Figure 1 Details of the proposed framework

Natural language conversational agents represent

an original approach to the problems of the human-

machine interface. Chatbots interact with the user by



using a model based on matching rules. These

systems monitor the lexical matches between user’s

queries and modules request - answer written about

their knowledge base. Chatbots systems allow

realizing dialogue system based on natural language.

Therefore, they are used as interfaces to a number of

business software, entertainment applications from

educational field, eLearning platforms, and

navigation sites for e-commerce and other

applications. There are many examples of integration

of technology chatbot systems and more

sophisticated technologies. [1][2][9][10]

2.1 Data organization

The presented project is aimed at maintaining a

dialogue with historical themes. Communicating in

Bulgarian and allows you to make queries in natural

language (for example – Fig.2).

Figure 2. User-computer dialogue

The data organization approach is ontologically

based. The Person class in the center of the modeling

of the reality consisted of knowledge of Bulgarian

kings and khans and the events which they manage.

The framework includes four main classes: Person,

Event, Place, Source. The different kinds of political

events are the subclasses of Event, they include

specific events described by the time period and

place. The relationship between kings/khans may be

the predecessor-successor or family relationship of

is-father-of, is-son-of, is-brother-in and more.

The presented XML code illustrated the basic

terms of the historical domain.

<Declaration>

<Class IRI="#Place"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#is-brtother-of"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#has-capital"/>

<DataProperty IRI="#Title"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#leeds"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#precedes"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#is-son-of"/>

<Class IRI="#Person"/>

<DataProperty IRI="#YearBegin"/>

<DataProperty IRI="#Description"/>

<Class IRI="#Sourse"/>

<Class IRI="#Political_actions"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#is-father-of"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#has-a"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#is-described"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#ascedended"/>

<DataProperty IRI="#YearEnd"/>

<Class IRI="#Battle"/>

<Class IRI="#Political_actions"/>

<Class IRI="#Event"/>


<ObjectProperty IRI="#ascedended"/>

<DataProperty IRI="#Title"/>

<DataProperty IRI="#YearBegin"/>

<DataProperty IRI="#YearEnd"/>


<ObjectProperty IRI="#is-son-of"/>



<ObjectProperty IRI="#has-a"/>

<ObjectProperty IRI="#leeds"/>

</Ontology>

The example is a formal ontology designed to

improve the integration and exchange of

heterogeneous information on the historical heritage.

More specifically, it defines the semantics of

database schemas and document structures used in

historical heritage and museum documentation, in

terms of formal ontology. The model does not define

the terminology that appears in specific data

structures, but has a characteristic relationship for its

use.

The model can serve as a guide for developers of

information systems, and a common language for

experts in the field of information and information

technology professionals. It is designed to cover

contextual information of historical, geographical

and theoretical nature about individual exhibits and

museum collections in general.

Structurally, the ontology consists of a hierarchy of

classes and a wide set of properties (binary relations)

that relate classes to each other. All concepts (classes

and properties) of the model can be divided into three

groups. The first group includes classes and relations

that cover the most general concepts of the

surrounding world: permanent and temporary

entities, relationships of participation, dependencies,

coincidences in time. The second group contains

concepts that partially support management

functions: acquisition and accounting of storage

units, transfer of ownership of cultural objects. The

third group includes the classes and properties used

for the internal organization of the ontology itself:

the means necessary to connect external sources of

terms, for example, thesauri by the branches of

culture.

The ontology model class hierarchy is divided into

2 branches: Constant Entities and Temporary

Entities. Other classes are auxiliary.


TEM Journal – Volume 7 / Number 4 / 2018. 785

At the lowest levels of the hierarchy of classes,

concepts that are characteristic of the sphere of

culture appear: Storage, Movement (values), "Project

or Procedure" (including production techniques),

Period (including artistic style). The class hierarchy

can be flexibly expanded using the built-in Class. Of

greatest interest are properties. Classes on the lower

levels of the hierarchy have about 10-15 properties,

with most of the properties inherited from the

ancestor classes. The names of properties are verbal

phrases chosen so that when the two classes are

sequentially linked, the property produces a

meaningful phrase with the subject (the first one, if

we consider from left to right, the class), a predicate

(property), and an object (second class).

During the First Bulgarian state the hierarchy is

dominated by Turkic-Iranian titling system of the

ranks and positions, and as it is typical for this

system, the positions of state administrative and

military positions prevail over the generic heritage.

The title "khan" is worn by the Supreme

Commander. After 917-year, the titling system is

virtually fully replaced by Byzantine, reserved is

only the monarch title "King". Between 865- 917

Bulgarian rulers are titled as "Prince" [4], that why

the issues of title are Khan, King- „Tsar“, Prince-

„Knyaz“. Without being exhaustive we will list some

of the instances of the dynasties - Dulo dynasty,

Samuil dynasty, Terter dynasty, dynasty Shishmans.

The relational database stores a set of ready-made

learning texts that complement the foreground. There

is also a short vocabulary, which translates from

English into Bulgarian the specific terms used in

ontology.

The created semantic network of Bulgarian khans

and tsars is rich with exhaustive and interactive

didactic material. They can be extracted and

presented as a mind map data for each Bulgarian

ruler separately.

3 Conclusions

The digitization of historical facts is undoubtedly

timely and important in order for tutors to provide

accessible and quality education by modernizing the

system and ensuring its adaptability. The

development of ontology for a specific world

historical domain is a challenge for modern scientific

communities because this activity requires not just

conceptualizing but also introducing a large amount

of factual data.

Figure 3. Example of some individuals and their

relationships

Building domain ontologies is difficult,

particularly when the experts have a little

background and knowledge of engineering

techniques and lack the skills of domain

conceptualization. In this paper, the main conclusion

that we showed was how domain ontology for

historical documents can be developed. Person-based

methods are much more efficient in defining the

scope and identifying the basic terms for

specification and conceptualization process for this

new ontology.

Some of the application purposes on the software

system are:

- observing, analyzing and studying target

historical domain;

- making new projects for shared and linked digital

historical assets, new learning projects,

documentaries, performances;

- content-dependent use for different purposes,

incl. gamification, storytelling, mobile applications,

studying, etc.

- stimulation of new research and promotion of

innovative usage and user interaction with the

historical heritage, etc.[23]

Going for future development of the presented

ontological model includes a number of key aspects:

First - improving the user interface for natural

language dialogue with consumers in order to make



the process of acquiring knowledge interactive and

dynamic.

Second - introducing a mechanism to expand the

search functions.

The implementation of Web integration would

allow expansion of reachability.

The topics are directed toward the use of

interactive forms and methods in the learning process

and the development of methodological models for

work in the class.

Traditional ways of educating students have well-

proven advantages, but there are problems with

keeping students involved and engaged without

innovative technologies. Today students are new

generation learners and the education must be

relevant to their needs. They are born with

technologies and prefer learning in the digital world

[8].

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ontology based resource for history education · ontology based resource for history education...

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