An Ontology Oriented Approach on eLearning: Integrating Semantics for Adaptive eLearning Systems

In the last decade the evolution on educational technologies forced an extraordinary interest in new methods for delivering learning content to learners. The role of technology has often been overestimated causing a myopic consideration of the critical issues in e-learning. This paper provides an initial discussion of the role of ontologies in the context of e-learning. The overall objective is to emphasize the importance of analysing a phenomenon and reveal the descriptive conceptualizations that affect the employment of technology. Ontology as a term has an intrinsic holistic character and from this point of view is quite interesting to investigate ways of understanding the phenomenon of e-learning from several perspectives. An initial clarification of term ontology is presented and the main issues are used for the description of the developmental process of the e-learning ontology entitled Mutli- Dimensional Dynamic Learning (MDL). The final conclusion balances conceptualizations and technological formulations by drilling down abstract concepts to data declarations and thus machine-readable semantics

Integration of ontology data through learning instance matching

Information integration with the aid of ontology can roughly be divided into two levels: schema level and data level. Most research has been focused on the schema level, i.e., mapping/matching concepts and properties in different ontologies with each other. However, the data level integration is equally important, especially in the decentralized Semantic Web environment. Noticing that ontology data (in the form of instances of concepts) from different sources often have different perspectives and may overlap with each other, we develop a matching method that utilizes the features of ontology and employs the machine learning approach to integrate those instances. By exploring ontology features, this method performs better than other general methods, which is revealed in our experiments. Through the process that implements the matching method, ontology data can be integrated together to offer more sophisticated services. © 2006 IEEE

Encouraging and Utilizing Linked Data from Open Online Courses

Access to affordable education to achieve printed and digital literacy helping all learners to acquire knowledge, coping with change, and seeding mindsets for creativity and intellectual curiosity are considered major indicators and measures of quality of life worldwide. The emergence of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) promising new, scalable models that can provide an �education for everyone� has generated a new and broad interest in rethinking learning and education. Frames of reference (identifying underlying assumptions, conceptualizations, and perspectives) are needed to conceptualize the meaning and the implications of MOOCs in the context of rich landscapes for learning. Most of the discussions and analyses about MOOCS have been based on economic perspectives and technological perspectives. This contribution critically assesses MOOCs from a learning sciences perspectives. This paper focuses on integrating all the trending websites which includes Coursera ,Udacity and Swayam and searches for the best optimal course that the user requires. Information is retrieved using web crawler with the help of ontology schema

Some Reflections on Working-Class Ontology and Epistemology — or Why Teaching in Higher Education Needs to Be More Concrete

Based on my own experiences with having one foot in academia and the other in construction, I reflect on how the tendential form of work among the working class affects their ontology and epistemology, and discuss what this may mean for teaching and learning in higher education. I attempt to write from both a working-class and middle-class perspective. This I do because it was the clashing of my working-class and middle-class experiences that caused me to reflect on forms of work in relation to ontology and epistemology; I need to present both perspectives to make sense of the argument

An ontology for the description of and navigation through philosophical resources

What does it mean for a student to come to an understanding of a philosophical standpoint and can the explosion of resources now available on the web support this process, or is it inclined instead to create more confusion? We believe that a possible answer to the problem of finding a means through the morass of information on the web to the philosophical insights it conceals and can be made to reveal lies in the process of narrative pathway generation. That is, the active linking of resources into a learning path that contextualizes them with respect to one another. This result can be achieved only if the content of the resources is indexed, not just their status as a text document, an image or a video. To this aim, we propose a formal conceptualization of the domain of philosophy, an ontology that would allow the categorization of resources according to a series of pre-agreed content descriptors. Within an e-learning scenario, a teacher could use a tool comprising such an ontology to annotate at various levels of granularity available philosophical materials, and let the students explore this semantic space in an unsupervised manner, according to pre-defined narrative pathways

Towards an ontology of networked learning

Networked learning, conceived of as networks of people, informational resources and technologies, constitutes what has been termed a ‘highly interwined’ technology. In this paper we develop our earlier argument that sociotechnical networks can form the basis for a non-determinist theory of learning technology. Firstly, we argue that Kling et al’s sociotechnical interaction network (STIN) is compatible with a realist ontology, drawing on Fleetwood’s ‘ontology of the real’ and Lawson’s proposition of the social nature of the artefact in networks of ‘positioned practices’. This, we suggest, gives a more secure basis for the STIN concept, and provides a clear alternative to actor network theory (ANT)-based views of sociotechnical networks which do not distinguish between the influence of human and material agents. This also, we argue, provides an alternative way of anchoring concepts from the social informatics literature, often influenced by Giddens’ structuration theory, in ways that can help networked learning research. Secondly, we explore some potential implications of such an approach for theories of networked learning and learning more widely. In particular, we suggest a possible ontology of elements of learning technology. The use of the word ‘learning’ here is somewhat problematic, as it is routinely used rather loosely to describe changes at multiple levels but which are likely to have rather different underlying mechanisms. A more thorough ontology of learning technology would allow us to distinguish between these uses and identify potentially distinct mechanisms at play in different forms and levels of learning. Thirdly, we use this approach to explore how viewing learning technologies as sociotechnical networks helps to clarify our thinking about identities in social networking for personal, learning and professional purposes

Meaning Management: A Framework for Leadership Ontology

Leadership is a multifaceted and complex subject of research and demands a sound ontological stance that guides studies for the development of more integrative leadership theories. In this paper, I propose the leadership ontology PVA (perception formation – value creation – achievement realization) and associate it with the two existing leadership ontologies: TRIPOD (leader – member – shared goals) and DAC (direction – alignment – commitment). The leadership ontology PVA, based on a new theory called “meaning management,” consists of three circularly supporting functions: cognitive function to form perception, creative function to generate value, and communicative function to realize higher levels of achievement. The PVA is an epistemology-laden ontology since the meaning management theory allows one to make propositions that explicitly link its three functions with the leadership outcomes: perception, value, and achievement. Moreover, the PVA leadership ontology transcends and includes both the conventional TRIPOD ontology and the DAC ontology

A Presuppositional Critique of Constructivism

Educational theories have roots. They have roots in broader philosophies, conceptions of the nature of reality, and the theories utilized in classrooms to teach have implications for broader society. The author takes a presuppostitional view and shows that all systems have most basic beliefs that are un-provable. So at the heart of any form of interpretive schema or paradigm is faith in that schema. The author discusses the role of theories of truth, how fact-constructivism embraces a relativist position that is self-refuting, and ultimately is untenable absent a suspension of laws of logic. The author argues in favor of revelation from God as axiomatic and demonstrates how logic can exist on that basis, whereas on a secular basis, philosophy cannot generate any True facts whatsoever. The author then looks at the educational theory of constructivism and examines the theory and practices it endorses it in light of the presuppositional critique and concludes that the relativistic nature of constructivism precludes it from being a philosophically acceptable approach for the Christian

Integrating descriptions of knowledge management learning activities into large ontological structures: A case study

Ontologies have been recognized as a fundamental infrastructure for advanced approaches to Knowledge Management (KM) automation, and the conceptual foundations for them have been discussed in some previous reports. Nonetheless, such conceptual structures should be properly integrated into existing ontological bases, for the practical purpose of providing the required support for the development of intelligent applications. Such applications should ideally integrate KM concepts into a framework of commonsense knowledge with clear computational semantics. In this paper, such an integration work is illustrated through a concrete case study, using the large OpenCyc knowledge base. Concretely, the main elements of the Holsapple & Joshi KM ontology and some existing work on e-learning ontologies are explicitly linked to OpenCyc definitions, providing a framework for the development of functionalities that use the built-in reasoning services of OpenCyc in KM ctivities. The integration can be used as the point of departure for the engineering of KM-oriented systems that account for a shared understanding of the discipline and rely on public semantics provided by one of the largest open knowledge bases available

A Holistic Social Constructionist perspective to Enterprise Education

Purpose – Drawing on the Gestalt approach this article proposes a holistic framework for enterprise education (EE) research based on Social Constructionism, illustrating how the latter supports research into experiential learning in EE in 7 UK Higher Education (HE) pharmacy schools. Design/ Methodology/ Approach – This paper is based on a qualitative empirical study involving educators in UK Higher Education Institution (HEI) pharmacy schools in semi-structured interviews, and investigates the delivery of EE through experiential learning approaches. Social Constructionism is proposed as a suitable underlying philosophical paradigm. Findings – A Social Constructionism paradigm, which adopts relative realism ontology, transactional epistemology, and Gadamer’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology, offers a relevant, multi-perspectival philosophical foundation for EE research, supporting transactional relationships within contexts of multiple possibilities. Research limitations/implications – Social Constructionism does not necessarily support the individualistic paradigm, as advocated by Constructivists; and the values associated with the former encourage a more collaborative and cooperative approach different from the latter. Practical implications –The paper supports the understanding that applying experiential learning through inter-disciplinary and inter-professional learning is regarded as an approach beneficial for educators, institutions and learners, within the context of EE. Originality/ value – This paper offers a holistic conceptual framework of Social Constructionism that draws on the ‘Gestalt Approach’, and highlights the harmony between the ontological, epistemological and methodological underpinnings of Social Constructionism. The paper demonstrates the relevance of the proposed framework in EE research within the context of an empirical study, which is different in that it focuses on the delivery aspect of EE by considering the views of the providers (educators), an hitherto under-researched area. Paper type – Research paper Key words: Enterprise education, research philosophy, Social Constructionism, relative realism ontology, transactional epistemology, Gadamer’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Gestalt approach