Criação e aplicação de um modelo baseado em Topic Maps à documentação educativa

As políticas da União Europeia para a sociedade da informação estão a promover um modelo educativo baseado na aquisição de competências e na aprendizagem ao longo da vida. A eficácia da aprendizagem neste modelo educativo assenta numa educação digital, na qual os recursos digitais estruturam, organizam e representam o seu conteúdo de acordo com as suas potencialidades educativas. Descrevem-se os passos prosseguidos na aplicação da norma ISO/IEC 13250:2000 Topic Maps como escolha para a organização e representação do conhecimento de uso educativo, adaptando a recuperação deste tipo de informação a um modelo de aprendizagem centrado no educando, tal como as actuais políticas europeias promovem. Numa primeira parte apresenta-se a análise realizada sobre as várias metodologias para a representação do conhecimento: thesaurus, mapas conceptuais e ontologias. Discutem-se as características que levaram à selecção dos Topic Maps como a metodologia a ser utilizada neste projecto. Numa segunda parte, apresenta-se a norma ISO/IEC 13250:2000 Topic Maps e discute-se de que forma nos irá auxiliar a criar um ambiente de aprendizagem centrado no educando e utilizando os recursos educativos (objectos de ensino, artigos, monografias, teses, etc) disponíveis na Web. Por fim, numa terceira parte, apresenta-se uma arquitectura funcional capaz de suportar a metodologia seleccionada e o cenário de aplicação: especificação de mapas conceptuais orientados a programas educativos dinâmicos e que reagem às interacções dos educandos; agregação de conteúdos disponíveis na Web com o objectivo de criar um repositório de objectos de ensino (utilização do protocolo OAI-PMH); definição de estratégias para a população do mapa conceptual com os conteúdos recolhidos da Internet; exploração do repositório a partir do mapa conceptual. Em conclusão, iremos demonstrar que já é possível criar um ambiente com estas características utilizando vários componentes e tecnologias existentes mas, também, que é necessário fazer algum trabalho de integração e normalização.Policies of the European Information Society are to promote an educational model based on the acquisition of skills and lifelong learning. The effectiveness of learning in this educational model is based on a digital education, in which digital resources structure, organize and represent its content according to their educational potential. We describe the steps pursued in the implementation of ISO / IEC 13250:2000 Topic Maps as the selected methodology adopted for the organization and representation of knowledge of educational use, adapting the retrieval of such information to a student-centered learning model, as the current European policies promote. The first part presents the analysis on the various methodologies for the representation of knowledge: thesaurus, concept maps and ontologies. In the following we discuss the characteristics that led to the selection of Topic Maps as the methodology to be used in this project. The second part presents the ISO / IEC 13250:2000 Topic Maps, and discusses how it will help to create an environment focused on student learning through the use of educational resources (learning objects, articles, monographs, theses, etc.) available on the Web. Finally, a third part presents a functional architecture capable of supporting the selected methodology and the application scenario: specification of concept maps, oriented educational programs and dynamic interactions that respond to the students; content aggregation available on the Web in order to create a repository of learning objects (using OAI-PMH), strategies for the population of the conceptual map with the contents collected from the Internet, holding the repository from the conceptual map. In conclusion, we demonstrate that it is possible to create an environment with these features using several existing technologies and components, but also that some work for integration and standardization is needed

Models for Learning (Mod4L) Final Report: Representing Learning Designs

The Mod4L Models of Practice project is part of the JISC-funded Design for Learning Programme. It ran from 1 May – 31 December 2006. The philosophy underlying the project was that a general split is evident in the e-learning community between development of e-learning tools, services and standards, and research into how teachers can use these most effectively, and is impeding uptake of new tools and methods by teachers. To help overcome this barrier and bridge the gap, a need is felt for practitioner-focused resources which describe a range of learning designs and offer guidance on how these may be chosen and applied, how they can support effective practice in design for learning, and how they can support the development of effective tools, standards and systems with a learning design capability (see, for example, Griffiths and Blat 2005, JISC 2006). Practice models, it was suggested, were such a resource. The aim of the project was to: develop a range of practice models that could be used by practitioners in real life contexts and have a high impact on improving teaching and learning practice. We worked with two definitions of practice models. Practice models are: 1. generic approaches to the structuring and orchestration of learning activities. They express elements of pedagogic principle and allow practitioners to make informed choices (JISC 2006) However, however effective a learning design may be, it can only be shared with others through a representation. The issue of representation of learning designs is, then, central to the concept of sharing and reuse at the heart of JISC’s Design for Learning programme. Thus practice models should be both representations of effective practice, and effective representations of practice. Hence we arrived at the project working definition of practice models as: 2. Common, but decontextualised, learning designs that are represented in a way that is usable by practitioners (teachers, managers, etc).(Mod4L working definition, Falconer & Littlejohn 2006). A learning design is defined as the outcome of the process of designing, planning and orchestrating learning activities as part of a learning session or programme (JISC 2006). Practice models have many potential uses: they describe a range of learning designs that are found to be effective, and offer guidance on their use; they support sharing, reuse and adaptation of learning designs by teachers, and also the development of tools, standards and systems for planning, editing and running the designs. The project took a practitioner-centred approach, working in close collaboration with a focus group of 12 teachers recruited across a range of disciplines and from both FE and HE. Focus group members are listed in Appendix 1. Information was gathered from the focus group through two face to face workshops, and through their contributions to discussions on the project wiki. This was supplemented by an activity at a JISC pedagogy experts meeting in October 2006, and a part workshop at ALT-C in September 2006. The project interim report of August 2006 contained the outcomes of the first workshop (Falconer and Littlejohn, 2006). The current report refines the discussion of issues of representing learning designs for sharing and reuse evidenced in the interim report and highlights problems with the concept of practice models (section 2), characterises the requirements teachers have of effective representations (section 3), evaluates a number of types of representation against these requirements (section 4), explores the more technically focused role of sequencing representations and controlled vocabularies (sections 5 & 6), documents some generic learning designs (section 8.2) and suggests ways forward for bridging the gap between teachers and developers (section 2.6). All quotations are taken from the Mod4L wiki unless otherwise stated

Knowledge Cartography for Open Sensemaking Communities

Knowledge Cartography is the discipline of visually mapping the conceptual structure of ideas, such as the connections between issues, concepts, answers, arguments and evidence. The cognitive process of externalising one's understanding clarifies one's own grasp of the situation, as well as communicating it to others as a network that invites their contributions. This sensemaking activity lies at the heart of the Open Educational Resources movement's objectives. The aim of this paper is to describe the usage patterns of Compendium, a knowledge mapping tool from the OpenLearn OER project, using quantitative data from interaction logs and qualitative data from knowledge maps, forums and blog postings. This work explains nine roles played by maps in OpenLearn, and discusses some of the benefits and adoption obstacles, which motivate our ongoing work

Using Concept Maps to Plan an Introductory Structural Geology Course

This report presents the results of incorporating constructivist methods, including concept maps, into an undergraduate structural geology curriculum. A concept map is a visual representation of concepts and their relationship to each other in a body of knowledge. They show the hierarchy of these concepts and emphasize the links between them. The overall goal of this project was to encourage students to adopt a deep/holistic approach to learning in order to better understand the concepts of structural geology. The authors sought to determine whether teaching methods became more overtly constructivist, whether there was a change in the order of presentation of topics, and whether the order of presentation normally followed by textbooks was the same as the order determined using concept maps. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Case-based analysis in user requirements modelling for knowledge construction

Context: Learning can be regarded as knowledge construction in which prior knowledge and experience serve as basis for the learners to expand their knowledge base. Such a process of knowledge construction has to take place continuously in order to enhance the learners’ competence in a competitive working environment. As the information consumers, the individual users demand personalised information provision which meets their own specific purposes, goals, and expectations. Objectives: The current methods in requirements engineering are capable of modelling the common user’s behaviour in the domain of knowledge construction. The users’ requirements can be represented as a case in the defined structure which can be reasoned to enable the requirements analysis. Such analysis needs to be enhanced so that personalised information provision can be tackled and modelled. However, there is a lack of suitable modelling methods to achieve this end. This paper presents a new ontological method for capturing individual user’s requirements and transforming the requirements onto personalised information provision specifications. Hence the right information can be provided to the right user for the right purpose. Method: An experiment was conducted based on the qualitative method. A medium size of group of users participated to validate the method and its techniques, i.e. articulates, maps, configures, and learning content. The results were used as the feedback for the improvement. Result: The research work has produced an ontology model with a set of techniques which support the functions for profiling user’s requirements, reasoning requirements patterns, generating workflow from norms, and formulating information provision specifications. Conclusion: The current requirements engineering approaches provide the methodical capability for developing solutions. Our research outcome, i.e. the ontology model with the techniques, can further enhance the RE approaches for modelling the individual user’s needs and discovering the user’s requirements

Mapping the emotional journey of teaching

This paper will explore the use of Novakian concept mapping as a means of visualising and tracing the range of emotions inherent within any teaching experience. It will focus in particular on its use within higher education, where the presence of emotion has traditionally been disregarded or seemingly suppressed. The example of undergraduate teaching of the law degree will be used as an area where the role of emotion is particularly under-theorised. This paper will assess the effectiveness of concept mapping as a tool to enable academics to explicitly acknowledge, and reflect upon, the existence of emotion, both in terms of their individual teaching experiences, their collective teaching journey through a course or qualification and their students’ learning journey. It will also consider how use of this technique at a collective level could identify areas of pedagogic frailty, which may arise due to the misinterpreting, mishandling or suppression of emotion. The various opportunities and challenges arising from this application of concept mapping techniques will be discussed, drawing on a small, empirical pilot study, and leading to the conclusion that it has a useful and significant role to play within an emerging field of enquiry

Assessment and Active Learning Strategies for Introductory Geology Courses

Educational research findings suggest that instructors can foster the growth of thinking skills and promote science literacy by incorporating active learning strategies into the classroom. This paper describes a variety of such strategies that may be adopted in introductory geology courses to encourage the development of higher-order thinking skills, and provides directions for implementing these techniques in the classroom. It discusses six hierarchical levels of student learning and links them to examples of appropriate assessment tools that were used successfully in several sections of a general education Earth Science course taught by two instructors at the University of Akron. These teaching strategies have been evaluated qualitatively using peer reviews, student written evaluations and semistructured student interviews; and quantitatively by measuring improvements in student retention, exam scores, and scores on a logical thinking assessment instrument. Educational levels: Graduate or professional