Experiment with Peer Instruction in Computer Science to Enhance Class Attendance

Class attendance of computer science courses in higher education is typically not overwhelming. Anecdotal reports and the authors’ experiences with a low-resource mode of peer instruction indicated increased class attendance after a lecture with such concept tests. This has been evaluated systematically with a 3rd-year computer science module using a medium-resource, software-based, Audience Response System (‘clickers’). Results show there is neither a positive nor a negative relation between lectures with peer instruction (PI) and class attendance. The student participation rate in software-based voting decreased and some decline in lecture attendance was observed. Thus, PI itself could not be shown to be a useful strategy to enhance class attendance. Notwithstanding, the students’ evaluation of the use of PI was a moderately positive

A note on the compatibility of part-whole relations with foundational ontologies

Parthood in mereology is one relation, and typically is included in foundational ontologies. Some of these foundational ontologies and many domain ontologies use a plethora of parthood and part-whole relations, such as `sub process' and `portion'. This poses requirements on the foundational ontologies and, perhaps, Ontology, on what to do with these two different approaches to part-whole relations. We present an analysis of DOLCE, BFO, GFO, SUMO, GIST, and YAMATO on their inclusion and use of part-whole relations. It demonstrates there is no perfect fit with either for various reasons. We then aim to bridge this gap with an orchestration of ontologies of part-whole relations that are aligned to several foundational ontologies and such that they can be imported into other ontologies

Preventing, Detecting, and Revising Flaws in Object Property Expressions

The OWL 2 DL ontology language is very expressive and has many features for declaring complex object property expressions. Standard reasoning services for OWL ontologies take these expressions as correct and according to the ontologist's intention. However, the more one can do, the higher the chance modelling flaws are introduced; hence, an unexpected or undesired classification or inconsistency in the class hierarchy may actually be due to a mistake in the 'object property box', not the class axioms. We analyse the principles of subsumption in object property hierarchies, and use it to identify the types of flaws that can occur in object property expressions. We propose the compatibility services SubProS and ProChainS that check for meaningful property hierarchies and property chaining and propose how to revise a flaw. These insights can also be used to prevent flaws and to choose the best option, which we demonstrate with the chain pattern for upward and downward distributivity over parthood relations. SubProS and ProChainS were evaluated with several ontologies, which demonstrates that such flaws do exist, that they can be isolated effectively, and useful suggestions for revisions can be proposed

Orchestrating a Network of Mereo(topo)logical Theories

Parthood is used widely in ontologies across subject domains. Some modelling guidance can be gleaned from Ontology, yet it offers multiple mereological theories, and even more when combined with topology, i.e., mereotopology. To complicate the landscape, decidable languages put restrictions on the language features, so that only fragments of the mereo(topo)logical theories can be represented, yet during modelling, those full features may be needed to check correctness. We address these issues by specifying a structured network of theories formulated in multiple logics that are glued together by the various linking constructs of the Distributed Ontology Language, \DOL. For the KGEMT mereotopological theory and five sub-theories, together with the DL-based OWL species and first- and second-order logic, this network in \DOL orchestrates 28 ontologies. Further, we propose automated steps toward resolution of language feature conflicts when combining modules, availing of the new `OWL classifier' tool that pinpoints profile violations

Automatically changing modules in modular ontology development and management

Modularity has been proposed as a solution to deal with large ontologies. This requires, various module management tasks, such as swapping an outdated module for a new one or a computationally costly one for a leaner fragment. No mechanism exists to exchange an arbitrary module automatically. To solve this manual task, we modify the SUGOI algorithm into SUGOI-Gen; with SUGOI-Gen, one can swap any module within a modular system, implemented it, and wrapped a GUI around it. We carried out an experimental evaluation with six ontologies covering three different use-cases to determine whether arbitrary interchangeability is practically doable, and to what extent such changes affect the quality of the module and automated reasoning over it. The results are positive, with the success rate varying between 22-100% depending on the number of mappings between the source and target module. The evaluation also revealed that the interchangeability does indeed have an impact on a module’s metrics. Regarding reasoning, when comparing an original ontology to one where a module has been swapped, the processing time is greatly improved for all except one of the swapped modules in the set

Toward a knowledge-to-text controlled natural language of isiZulu

The language isiZulu belongs to the Nguni group of languages, which also include isiXhosa, isiNdebele and siSwati. Of the four Nguni languages, isiZulu is the most dominant language in South Africa, which is spoken by 22.7\% of the country's 51.8 million population. However, isiZulu (and even more so the other Nguni languages) still remains an under-resourced language for software applications. In this article we focus on controlled natural languages for structured knowledge-to-text viewed from a potential utility for verbalising business rules and OWL ontologies. IsiZulu grammar---and by extension, all Bantu languages---shows that a template-based approach is infeasible. This is due to, mainly, the noun class system, the agglutination and verb conjugation with concords for each noun class. We present verbalisation patterns for existential and universal quantification, taxonomic subsumption, axioms with simple properties, and basic cases of negation. Based on the preliminary user assessment of the patterns, selected ones are refined into algorithms for verbalisation to generate correct isiZulu sentences, which have been evaluated

Evaluation of the effects of a spellchecker on the intellectualization of isiZulu

Through its bilingual language policy and plan that recognises English and isiZulu as official languages of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), UKZN has aggressively promoted the intellectualisation of isiZulu as an effective strategy in advancing indigenous, under-resourced African languages as vehicles for innovation, science, and technology research in Higher Education and Training institutions. UKZN recently launched human language technologies (HLTs) in isiZulu as enablers towards the intellectualisation of the language. One of these is an isiZulu spellchecker, which was trained on an organic isiZulu National Corpus. We evaluate the isiZulu spellchecker’s effects on the intellectualisation of isiZulu. Two surveys were conducted with the target end-users, consisting of relevant questions and the System Usability Scale, and an analysis of words added to the spellchecker. It is evident that the spellchecker has had a positive impact on the work of target end-users, who also perceive it as an enabler in the intellectualisation of isiZulu. The survey responses show modest success for a first version of the tool. The analysis of the words added to the spellchecker indicates that new words are being added to the isiZulu lexicon