Maria Helena Lima Baptista Braz

Modeling e‐learning content

Purpose – This paper seeks to present a modeling approach for e‐learning content, describing how to structure e‐learning content and also represent it in OWL DL.Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents three different layers of information that should be considered in e‐learning and conceptual models to guide the representation of e‐learning content. This proposal is based on existing standards and experience gained in previous works. It is also shown how to structure and represent the content embedded in learning objects (LOs).Findings – Besides providing a better structuring of the e‐learning content, content reuse and exploratory navigations over content through the semantic relationships between information (mainly information objects (IOs) and conceptual units) are promoted.Research limitations/implications – A visual tool to allow a better exploration of the e‐learning content is already being developed. However, it is essential to develop optimized storing and retrieving mechanisms that wo...

Increasing the Semantics of Learning Objects

The Internet has promoted several changes in the world. In this scenario, new theories, paradigms and methodologies have been discussed in the education area. In addition, as the development of learning material is expensive and time-consuming, the use of Learning Objects (LO) has been proposed for improving content reuse. However, the emphasis has been on how to describe LO, but it is not clear how to develop them. In addition, people want to satisfy their learning needs according to their personal characteristics such as knowledge background and learning style. The work presented in this paper proposes the increase of LO semantics. The idea behind our proposal is to develop LO based on a model for structuring knowledge (concepts, demonstrations and interactions) according to their context, representation and composition. This approach enables increased reusability and adaptability while providing better structured content material.

A semi-automatic strategy for achieving learning content and practice repurposing

The development of instructional content using Information Technologies is an expensive, time-consuming and complex process that requires new methodologies. It was in this context that the concept of Learning Objects (LOs) was proposed in order to promote reuse. However, this goal is not yet fully attained and new contributions to increase reuse are still welcome. Besides, if content is conveyed in LOs that are easier to reuse, they must be combined and sequenced in order to build more elaborated and complex content. This paper presents a strategy to deal with these problems based on the definition of small LOs here called Component Objects (COs). These COs are structured and combined according to a conceptual metamodel, which is the basis for the definition of conceptual schemas representing the existing material, including not only content but also practice. This strategy for searching, extracting, and sequencing COs, supports a teacher to better control the implementation of complex content, reducing errors in the authoring process. This approach includes a specification language and an algorithm for semi-automatic sequencing learning content and practice. Finally, a case study that shows the proposed approach and some results of using the algorithm are presented.

An Ontology for Musical Phonographic Records: Contributing with a Representation Model

Music is a complex domain with some interesting specificities that makes it difficult to be modeled. If different types of music are considered, then the difficulties are even bigger. This paper presents some of the characteristics that makes music such a hard domain to model and proposes an ontology for representing musical phonographic records. This ontology will provide a global representation that can be used to support systems interoperability and data integration, which provides disseminating music worldwide, contributing to culture in the knowledge society.

Evaluating the Reuse of Learning Content through a Segmentation Approach

There is an increasingly number of worldwide available content on the Web, which could be reused to support learning processes. However, web content is getting more and more structured as multimedia files and reusing it implies on using the whole file, which limits its applicability and the return on investment of its development. So, an interesting approach is the segmentation of content, structuring it on reusable segments. Furthermore, once created, these segments can be reused in an easy way in different educational contexts. This paper discusses the segmentation process and presents the results obtained from a case study conducted using a prototype to evaluate this approach.

A Strategy for Achieving Learning Content Repurposing

The development of instructional content using new Information Technologies is an expensive, time-consuming and complex process that points to the establishment of new methodologies. It was in this context that the concept of Learning Objects (LOs) was proposed as an approach that promotes content reuse. However, if content is conveyed in small LOs, they must be combined and sequenced in order to build more elaborated and complex content. This paper presents a strategy to deal with this problem based on the definition of smaller LOs, which represent not only content but also practice, here called Component Objects (COs). These COs are structured and combined according to a conceptual metamodel, which is the basis for the definition of conceptual schemas representing the existing material. Considering these ideas the paper presents a strategy for searching, extracting and sequencing COs, which supports a teacher/professor to better control the implementation of a complex content such as a course, reducing errors and eventual omissions in the authoring process. Finally, a case study that shows the proposed approach and some results of using the algorithm are presented.

Cataloguing and Searching Musical Sound Recordings in an Ontology-Based Information System

Although a lot of information is available worldwide, getting the right piece of information is challenging. In addition, integrating information from different sources is still very complicated. To make the different information systems to interoperate, it is necessary to provide common knowledge structures. Ontologies have been developed for making the semantics of a domain explicit. However, using such formal structures is not straightforward and their benefits are not clear to the users. The work presented in this paper explores the use of an ontology for musical sound recordings in order to allow cataloguing and searching for such information. Therefore it investigates how the knowledge society can benefit from ontologies, with focus on the culture, more specifically the music domain. Some possible benefits and pitfalls are also described and a case study shows an evaluation of the proposed approach by users of this domain.

Developing Learning Objects through Concepts and Contexts

The Internet has promoted several changes in the world, including on education. People have been more interested in learning, which makes developing higher quality content material even more important. In addition, people want to satisfy their learning needs according to their personal characteristics such as knowledge background and learning style. Therefore, nowadays there is a great interest on reusable learning content material and adaptive systems. Learning metadata standards contribute to achieve such reusability through the idea of learning objects. However, there is no guidance on how to develop learning objects, but only on how to describe them. The work presented in this paper proposes a model for structuring knowledge (concepts, demonstrations and interactions) in learning objects according to their context, representation and composition. This approach enables increased reusability and adaptability while providing better structured content material.

Improving the Efficiency of Web Searches in Collaborative Learning Platforms

The web is nowadays one of the main information sources and information searching is one important issue where many advances have been reported. However, in learning environments, web searches do not consider the learning context in order to provide more adequate learning content. As collaborative learning platforms are usually web-based systems, it would be important to add a contextual web query tool to provide additional learning material from the web. This paper describes a strategy for incorporating such functionality in online social networks, as they can be used as collaborative learning platforms. In this study, the learning environment was a learning community in an online social network, in which a course was implemented. Contextual search was provided through a prototype that implements the proposed query expansion, which was evaluated using learning documents. Some results are summarized and presented.

A Social Network for Sharing Learning Segments and Compositions

The development of learning content using information technologies is an expensive, time-consuming and complex process. Therefore, it is important to consider reusing already developed instructional artifacts. This reuse approach is particularly interesting as it is observed that both teachers and learners perform searches for learning content, according to their needs and interests in order to create units – or compositions – of instructional content, aiming to accomplish a particular learning objective. Previous works discussed how the learners can learn from sharing instructional segments, but the composition of these segments is also important in the learning process. Therefore, in this paper different strategies for composition of learning segments are discussed and an educational social network oriented to instructional segments, is presented. A prototype was developed and a case study was performed in order to evaluate the proposed strategy.