Andreas Papasalouros

A Model for Interoperability in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning activities involve combination of complex software tools that often need to interoperate in a wider context of learning. This paper proposes a data model that accommodates requirements of typical collaborative learning situations and facilitates interoperability of tools and interchange of products of collaboration and evaluation data. The model has been tested against various typical tools used for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration of groups of students.

Automatic generation of tests from domain and multimedia ontologies

The aim of this article is to present an approach for generating tests in an automatic way. Although other methods have been already reported in the literature, the proposed approach is based on ontologies, representing both domain and multimedia knowledge. The article also reports on a prototype implementation of this approach, which automatically creates tests using the Semantic Web standard technology OWL (Ontology Web Language) as well as proper annotations of images. The proposed approach is independent of specific domain characteristics, since question items are generated according to generic ontology-based strategies. In the presented prototype implementation, simple natural language generation techniques are used to project the items in the tests.

Learning Useful Kick-off Ontologies from Query Logs: HCOME Revised

Ontology engineering has been fully or partially practiced by knowledge engineers or knowledge workers, towards delivering either fully fledged conceptualizations of domains or providing lightweight ontology versions for less demanding but more frequent knowledge tasks. Domain-specific information can be shaped into ontologies either manually or (semi-)automatically using ontology learning techniques. The aim of the paper is to present a novice ontology learning approach that automatically constructs kick-off and useful ontologies from query logs. We place tasks related to the proposed learning approach in all phases of an ontology engineering life-cycle. By providing knowledge workers a useful kick-off ontology that is automatically built from “their needs (i. e. users’ search interests)” in order to address “their needs (i. e. use of the kick-off ontology to query data precisely)”, an approach that contributes as an incentive in the semantic content creation bottleneck is introduced.

The Grid4All ontology for the retrieval of traded resources in a market-oriented grid

One of the most challenging problems in grid environments concerns the matchmaking between resource requests and offers. As it happens in the physical economy, grid economy must be supported by services that locate resources based not only on their characteristics, but also on market-related properties, offerspsila and requestspsila properties and constraints, as well as on declarative specifications of peerspsila (providers and consumers) features. Resource retrieval in the context of a grid economy extends the notion of resource matchmaking to the process of discovering those markets that trade resources through market orders. This paper describes an ontology that represents resource orders (offers and requests) in a market-oriented resource retrieval process, showing preliminary results of its utilization for the retrieval of traded resources.

Automatic Exercise Generation in Euclidean Geometry

Automatic assessment has recently drawn the efforts of researchers in a number of fields. While most available approaches deal with the construction of question items that assess factual and conceptual knowledge, this paper presents a method and a tool for generating questions assessing procedural knowledge, in the form of simple proof problems in the domain of the Euclidean Geometry. The method is based on rules defined as Horn clauses. The method enumerates candidate problems and certain techniques are proposed for selecting interesting problems. With certain adaptations, the method is possible to be applied in other knowledge domains as well.

High-level Authoring of Simple Sequencing Descriptions

Simple Sequencing is a specification for describing educational activities dynamically presented to learners based upon the achievement of specific goals during their navigation in educational content. Authoring such descriptions is a difficult task. This paper describes an approach for authoring Simple Sequencing descriptions by hiding underlying details. This approach is based on a mapping between Simple Sequencing descriptions and statechart diagrams, a well-known formalism for describing hypermedia. Based on this mapping, an authoring tool has been developed, which is also presented.

The Grid4All Ontology for the Retrieval of Traded Resources in a Market-Oriented Grid

One of the most challenging problems in grid environments concerns the matchmaking between resource requests and offers. As it happens in the physical economy, grid economy must be supported by services that locate resources based not only on their characteristics, but also on market-related properties, offerspsila and requestspsila properties and constraints, as well as on declarative specifications of peerspsila (providers and consumers) features. Resource retrieval in the context of a grid economy extends the notion of resource matchmaking to the process of discovering those markets that trade resources through market orders. This paper describes an ontology that represents resource orders (offers and requests) in a market-oriented resource retrieval process, showing preliminary results of its utilization for the retrieval of traded resources.

A Direct TeX-to-Braille Transcribing Method

The TeX/LaTeX typesetting system is the most widespread system for creating documents in Mathematics and Science. However, no reliable tool exists to this day for automatically transcribing documents from the above formats into Braille code. Thus, blind students who study related fields do not have access to the bulk of studying materials available in LaTeX format. We develop a tool, named latex2nemeth, for transcribing directly LaTeX documents to Nemeth Braille, thus facilitating the access of students with blindness to Science.

Estimating the Gap between Informal Descriptions and Formal Models of Artifact Flows in CSCL

Teacher-designers incorporate constructs in their informal designs descriptions, which vaguely express the artifact flow dependencies as configuration constraints. This study analyzes through a corpus of CSCL designs, whether these constructs are supporting means for modeling, and the value of these elements is lost in the modeling process.

Towards a framework for trusting the automated learning of social ontologies

Automatically learned social ontologies are products of social fermentation between users that belong in communities of common interests (CoI), in open, collaborative and communicative environments. In such a setting, social fermentation ensures automatic encapsulation of agreement and trust of the shared knowledge of participating stakeholders during an ontology learning process. The paper discusses key issues for trusting the automated learning of social ontologies from social data and furthermore it presents a framework that aims to capture the interlinking of agreement, trust and the learned domain conceptualizations that are extracted from such a type of data. The motivation behind this work is an effort towards supporting the design of new methods for learning trusted ontologies from social content i.e. methods that aim to learn not only the domain conceptualizations but also the degree that agents (software and human) may trust them or not.