Pedagogically-driven Ontology Network for Conceptualizing the e-Learning Assessment Domain

The use of ontologies as tools to guide the generation, organization and personalization of e-learning content, including e-assessment, has drawn attention of the researchers because ontologies can represent the knowledge of a given domain and researchers use the ontology to reason about it. Although the use of these semantic technologies tends to enhance technology-based educational processes, the lack of validation to improve the quality of learning in their use makes the educator feel reluctant to use them. This paper presents progress in the development of an ontology network, called AONet, that conceptualizes the e-assessment domain with the aim of supporting the semi-automatic generation of assessment, taking into account not only technical aspects but also pedagogical ones.Fil: Romero, Lucila. Universidad Nacional del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: North, Matthew. The college of Idabo; Estados UnidosFil: Gutierrez, Milagros. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de Ingeniería en Sistemas de Información; ArgentinaFil: Caliusco, Maria Laura. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de Ingeniería en Sistemas de Información; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; Argentin

Semantic Management of E-learning in College of Engineering at Kerbala University

الإنترنت هو الأداة الأساسية لنقل المعلومات وتوفير الخدمات. الإنترنت له تأثير كبير على مختلف مجالات الحياة، بما في ذلك التعلم، حيث ظهر التعلم الإلكتروني باعتبارها واحدة من الخدمات التي تقدمها شبكة الإنترنت. التعلم الإلكتروني هو اكتساب المعرفة عن بعد باستخدام الطرق الإلكترونية، وزيادة الاعتماد عليها في العقدين الماضيين. واحدة من المشاكل التي تواجه التعلم الإلكتروني هو إدارة محتويات لأنه يختلف عن التعلم التقليدي من خلال التغلب على ظروف الزمان والمكان. الشبكة الدلالية هي إعادة هيكلة الشبكة الحالية لإدارة البيانات والموارد لتصبح أكثر فعالية للإنسان والآلة. وتستند الشبكة الدلالية على علم الأنماط الذي يعرف بأنه تمثيل وصفي للبيانات والموارد. ومن المتوقع أن تؤثر تكنولوجيات الويب الدلالي والانطولوجيا على الجيل التالي من نظم وتطبيقات التعلم الإلكتروني. إطار وصف الموارد (RDF) هو نموذج عام لتمثيل البيانات باستخدام صيغ مختلفة.  من الصيغ المستخدمة لتمثل المفردات هي FOAF وDC والي تعتمد على قواعد RDF.  يهدف هذا البحث إلى تقديم مقترح إدارة دلالية للتعليم الالكتروني في كلية الهندسة بجامعة كربلاء والتي تعتمد على علم الانطولوجيا للملفات الشخصية للمستخدمين والأنشطة العلمية والدروس. تم استخدام RDF وFOAF وDC لإنشاء جمل البيانات الوصفية. تم تقييم العمل المقترح بواسطة قييم الإرجاع والدقة لنتائج البحث ومقاييس الشبكة الاجتماعية. وتظهر النتائج أن(FOAF) هو وسيلة جيدة لتمثيل العقد والعلاقات وهذا يحسن استخدامه في البحث دون الوصول إلى قاعدة البيانات. (FOAF) لديه القدرة على جمع البيانات المشتتة الأكثر فائدة.Internet is the essential tool of transmitting information and providing services to facilitate the human daily jobs. The internet has a great impact on various fields of life, including learning, where e-learning emerged as one of the services provided by the Internet. E-learning is a distance knowledge acquisition by using electronic methods and it has increased dependence in the two decades ago. One of the problems facing e-learning is contents management because E-learning differs from traditional learning by overcoming the conditions of time and place. The semantic web is the restructuring of the current web to managing data and resources to become more effective for human and machine. The semantic web is based on an ontology which is defined as a descriptive representation of data and resources. It is expected that Semantic Web technologies and Ontologies will affect the next generation of e-learning systems and applications. Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general modeling for data representation by using a variety of syntax. A friend of a friend (FOAF) and Dublin Core (DC) are a vocabulary description depending on RDFs' rules. This paper presents a semantic management of E-learning in College of Engineering at University of Kerbala based on ontology of users’ profile, scientific activities, and lessons. RDF, FOAF, and DC are used to create a syntax of metadata. The proposed work was evaluated according to average precision and recall of the search's results and social network metrics. The results demonstrate that FOAF is a good way to represent nodes and relations and this improves using it in searching without access the database. FOAF has the ability to gathering dispersed data into common interests

Performative ontologies. Sociomaterial approaches to researching adult education and lifelong learning

Sociomaterial approaches to researching education, such as those generated by actornetwork theory and complexity theory, have been growing in significance in recent years, both theoretically and methodologically. Such approaches are based upon a performative ontology rather than the more characteristic representational epistemology that informs much research. In this article, we outline certain aspects of sociomaterial sensibilities in researching education, and some of the uptakes on issues related to the education of adults. We further suggest some possibilities emerging for adult education and lifelong learning researchers from taking up such theories and methodologies. (DIPF/Orig.

Context based learning: a survey of contextual indicators for personalized and adaptive learning recommendations. A pedagogical and technical perspective

Learning personalization has proven its effectiveness in enhancing learner performance. Therefore, modern digital learning platforms have been increasingly depending on recommendation systems to offer learners personalized suggestions of learning materials. Learners can utilize those recommendations to acquire certain skills for the labor market or for their formal education. Personalization can be based on several factors, such as personal preference, social connections or learning context. In an educational environment, the learning context plays an important role in generating sound recommendations, which not only fulfill the preferences of the learner, but also correspond to the pedagogical goals of the learning process. This is because a learning context describes the actual situation of the learner at the moment of requesting a learning recommendation. It provides information about the learner current state of knowledge, goal orientation, motivation, needs, available time, and other factors that reflect their status and may influence how learning recommendations are perceived and utilized. Context aware recommender systems have the potential to reflect the logic that a learning expert may follow in recommending materials to students with respect to their status and needs. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art approaches for defining a user learning-context. We provide an overview of the definitions available, as well as the different factors that are considered when defining a context. Moreover, we further investigate the links between those factors and their pedagogical foundations in learning theories. We aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of contextualized learning from both pedagogical and technical points of view. By combining those two viewpoints, we aim to bridge a gap between both domains, in terms of contextualizing learning recommendations

Modeling coherent social systems for learning

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The Semantically Rich Learning Environments: A Systematic Literature Review

Purpose: The research is intended to extract repetitive themes in the field of semantic-rich learning and to express the basic opportunities and challenges therein. Method: The method applied was to review the articles published in the WOS database, during the years 2000 to 2020 by using the paradigm funnel technique; moreover the Nvivo software was used for document analysis and theme extraction. Findings: In the study, it was found that establishing access to appropriate educational content, proper analysis and representation of knowledge, human capabilities enhancement, personalization of learning, and improving the quality of assessment, are the most important positive effects of using STs in learning; Also, in this study, nine themes and seven major challenges in the field of semantic-rich learning were identified. Conclusion: personalization and adaptation, and the development of various ontologies, are the most cited themes; and access to learning content and concerns about the design and development of learning systems are the most important challenges facing semantic-rich learning environments. We believe that in order to overcome the enumerated challenges, the combination of STs with other emerging cognitive and communication technologies, such as IoT, is necessary and could be the subject of future research in this field

From the mainframe to the flesh: Pedagogical approaches to conceptualizing human experience in bio-modeling

The design of medical instrumentation is a vital aspect of Biomedical Engineering (BME) programs. Yet, no full-length study analyzing the consequence of pedagogical methods on a medical device’s final design has been conducted. Being that these technologies are created with a specific end-use in mind, an examination of instructional design is essential for ascertaining how the user has come to be understood by those drafting solutions on their behalf. As such, this thesis examines the ways that biomedical engineering programs conceptualize user experience through design instruction. It navigates essentialist questions like who is a user and evolves to investigate the theoretical crux of medical device making to ask why decisions are made and what apparatuses might inform these choices. Through this process, it discerns a lack of critical pedagogy in BME design curricula, and thus argues that biomedical engineering programs must take seriously the ideas of race, gender, and other social categories in the teaching of medical device design. This work begins by reflecting on the socio-historical relevance of medical devices. In doing so, it outlines health, education, and illness as value-laden, multi-dimensional notions that are often singularized. This piece contends that such singularization limits the reach and effectiveness of design instruction, reifying the belief that science is distinct from social meaning. It then reflects on the use of technology in the development of medical devices. Here, it offers a generational description of mechanical Computer Aided-Design (CAD)—a band of software used to transform 2D sketches into 3D digital models. Finally, through a series of semi-structured interviews with six recent graduates of two top ranked BME programs, this work develops the concept of exclusion as enactment to describe the catastrophic impacts exclusion can have for those underrepresented in currently utilized instructional frameworks

Educating Semiosis: Exploring ecological meaning through pedagogy

This thesis consists of six essays – framed by introduction and conclusion chapters – that develop possibilities for philosophy of education and pedagogy from the lens of bio-semiotics and edu-semiotics (biological and educational semiotics). These transdisciplinary inquiries have found commonality in the concept of learning-as-semiosis, or meaning-making across nature/culture bifurcations. Here, quite distinct branches of research intersect with the American scientist-philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839 - 1914) pragmatic semiotics. I argue in these essays that the research pathway suggested by the convergence of edu- and bio-semiotics, reveals possibilities for developing a (non-reductive) theory of learning (and pedagogy generally) that puts meaning-making processes in a central light. A fully semiotic theory of learning implores us to take an ecological and biological view of educational processes. These processes explore the complementarity of organism-environment relations and the relationship between learning and biological adaptation. They also unravel new implications for education through the basic recognition that meaning is implicitly ecological. Understanding semiotic philosophy as an educational foundation allows us to take a broader and less dichotomized view of educational dynamics, such as: learning and teaching, curriculum design, arts and music education, inter/trans-disciplinary education, literacy (including environmental and digital literacy), as well as exploring the relationships and continuities between indigenous/place-based and formal pedagogical processes and practices. From this meaning-based and ecological perspective, what is important in the educational encounter is not psychologic explanations of learning stages, predetermined competencies, or top-down implemented learning-outcomes, but rather meaning and significance and how this changes through time-space and with others (not only human others) in a dynamic and changing environment. As addressed more directly in the conclusion chapter, these essays unravel the implications of this emerging approach to the philosophy of education, pedagogy and learning theory, specifically by providing conceptual/philosophical possibilities for integrating arts education, science education, and indigenous place-based knowledge into holistic educational approaches and programs

A social realist analysis of participation in academic professional development for the integration of digital technologies in higher education

The introduction of digital technologies at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), in keeping with higher education institutions globally, has had a significant impact on the learning environment at the institution. Despite this the anticipated demand for academic professional development (APD) did not materialise at DUT. Using Margaret Archer’s Realist Social Theory (1995) this single-institution case study offers a critical examination of cultural, structural and agential conditions that enable and constrain academic professional development (APD) for the integration of digital technologies in teaching–learning interactions at a higher education institution in South Africa. Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach enabled an investigation of the interface between the conditions encountered by the academics (at macro, meso and micro levels), in order to theorise about the material, ideational and agential conditions that obtained and which in turn influenced the decision to participate or not participate in the APD programmes. This longitudinal study from 2012 until 2016 traced the APD related changes following the decision to promote the implementation of digital technologies in teaching–learning interactions as an institutional imperative. The theoretical framework allowed for an examination of the interpretation of the conditions experienced by academics, either as compatible or contradictory to their individual or collective concerns. It further provided an insight into their evaluation of the legitimacy and value of the APD programmes. The study examined the impact of the provision of resources for APD on the nature of the use of digital technologies in teaching–learning interactions at the site of the case study, the Durban University of Technology in South Africa. The analysis of academic reactions to the changes instituted at both the meso (institutional) and micro (academic professional development) levels revealed that the changes produced conditions that resulted in limited morphogenesis. In particular, it seems that the disruption brought about by the introduction of the technology imperative was accompanied by conditions resulting in further diversification of academic capacities at the institution. This study advances concrete propositions about the conditions that influenced the APD related responses of the academics to the institutionalisation of e-Learning. The research adds to knowledge through insights into the process theory approach to causation, which recognises that structures, mechanisms and events produce unique effects and that the same mechanisms at times produce different events. This study argues that understanding what underlies a certain course of events may enable informed interventions to create better correspondences between APD and the introduction of digital technologies in higher education. Further, this study has generated insights into the importance of taking into consideration the discipline-related knowledge structures in the design and provision of academic development programmes. It is proposed that the incorporation of organising principles of knowledge practices within the academic professional development programme design would earn value and legitimacy for the programme, and promote participation by academics in digital technology-related academic professional development. In summary, the research contributes to an understanding of why it has been that, even with many first order barriers – such as digital access and infrastructural limitations – reduced, the uptake of digital technologies and participation in related academic professional development programmes by academics in higher education has yet to initiate a move beyond doing what is familiar in a digitally-mediated learning environment