Sean W. M. Siqueira

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.

Nondeterministic planning for generating interactive plots

Interactive storytelling is a new kind of digital entertainment in which users interact with a story being told. In this context, automated planning algorithms are interesting alternatives to create plots that are coherent with the intended genre. Diversity of stories and opportunities for interaction are however other key requirements to be considered by such applications. It is also important to generate stories incorporating failed attempts to achieve goals, since this is essential to create dramatic tension. In this paper, we describe a planner that takes these issues into account by means of planning with nondeterministic events, that is, events with more than one possible different outcome. The implemented planner has been incorporated to the new version of the interactive storytelling system Logtell.

The Use of Software Tools in Linked Data Publication and Consumption: A Systematic Literature Review

To reduce the complexity intrinsic to LD manipulation, software tools are used to publish or consume data associated to LD activities. However, few developers have a broad understanding of how software tools may be used in publication or consumption of Linked Data. The goal of this work is to investigate the use of software tools in Linked Data publication and consumption processes. More specifically, understanding how these software tools are related to process of publication or consumption of LD. In order to meet their goal, the authors conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to identify the studies on the use of software tools in these processes. The SLR gathered 6473 studies, of which only 80 studies remained for final analysis (1.25% of the original sample). The highlights of the study are: (1) initial steps of the publication process are fairly supported by the software tools; (2) Non-RDF serialization is fairly supported in publication and consumptions process by the software tools; and (3) there are non-supported steps in consumption and publication processes by the tools.

Finding Topical Experts in Question a Answer Communities

Question and Answer (Q&A) communities (such as Stackoverflow) have become important places for information exchange and knowledge creation. Their success relies predominantly on two aspects of the feedback generated by their members: quality and speed. Of these, the former reflects on the reputation of the community, whilst the latter is indicative of the efficiency of the Q&A system to correctly answer a given question. In this paper, we present a three phase study for identifying and recommending topical experts in Q&A communities. The first phase investigates the most relevant criteria for identifying reputable members of the community (often experts in a given field), the second phase introduces an approach based on semantic annotations to ascertain their area of specialism, and the last phase presents a method to recommend experts to answer questions in their areas of expertise. Our evaluation (carried out using real-world data from the Biology Stack Exchange Q&A community) shows that the numbers of answers provided by each member can be used as reliable indicators of expertise, and semantic annotations can be successfully used to identify the topics in which they specialize. Furthermore, on average, 74% of the recommendations suggested by our method were successful.

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.

Adding meaning negotiation skills in multiagent systems

In order to perform its tasks on the semantic web, software agents must be able to communicate with other agents using domain ontologies, even when considering different ontologies. Thus, its necessary to address the semantic interoperability issue to enable agents to recognize common concepts and misunderstandings. This work proposes the use of negotiation concepts in business scenarios for addressing concept compatibilization problems in communication between software agents. Negotiation techniques are suitable in this context by providing a formal communication protocol useful for reaching conceptualization consensus. An architecture is proposed, with modules that encapsulate these negotiation concepts.

Recuperação Contextual de Informação na Web para Apoiar Aprendizagem Colaborativa em Redes Sociais

The keynotes goal is to reflect on emergent opportunities for human Discovery (in science), Creativity (in art & industry), and Learning (in education) as processes often occurring serendipitously in individuals and in communities empowered by dynamic Web connections in the global village. These reflections seem to fit best with the mandate of the CBIE Conference: sustainable education.Este trabalho apresenta uma evolucao do assistente inteligente SAE para inferir e fornecer orientacao pedagogica coerente com varias metodologias educacionais, superando uma dificuldade tradicional para este tipo de software, alem de fornecer mais apoio ao ensino-aprendizagem personalizado.O artigo fundamenta-se nos resultados do processo de desenvolvimento de um ambiente web de aprendizagem, ja modelado em dissertacao de mestrado (CABRAL,2006). O sistema tem por objetivo facilitar o acompanhamento das atividades que envolvem a definicao e a elaboracao de pre-projetos de Trabalhos de Conclusao de Curso (TCC). Para atingir tal objetivo o sistema e baseado em uma camada de agentes inteligentes que atuam como colaboradores para execucao de todas as atividades necessarias ao desenvolvimento do TCC. Para que esses agentes atuem de forma satisfatoria no ambiente e necessario o estabelecimento de um processo de comunicacao que possibilite aos agentes agirem em um nivel conceitual mais proximo do ser humano. Dessa forma, este artigo expoe os resultados obtidos ao longo do desenvolvimento dos agentes computacioniais e seus mecanismos de comunicacao.Este artigo descreve o projeto de desenvolvimento de jogo educativo baseado em metodologias participativas, pelas quais estudantes da rede publica de ensino medio idealizam, projetam e desenvolvem prototipos de um jogo sobre Sistema Imunologico e virus da Dengue. O objetivo da pesquisa e verificar os impactos do processo sobre a aprendizagem dos estudantes.O objetivo deste artigo e apresentar resultados de estudo de um caso exploratorio, realizado junto aos alunos de uma Instituicao de Ensino Superior. Como resultados, foram levantados indicadores de avaliacao do Sistema de EaD e identificados problemas, segundo a percepcao dos alunos. A partir dos resultados destaca-se que a Universidade desconhece a metodologia ITIL® e que seria fundamental que fosse implantada uma estrategia do servico (fase inicial da ITIL®), conduzindo a melhoria continua do servico e da infra-estrutura da Universidade.O facil acesso as informacoes devido a difusao da internet possibilita o enriquecimento intelectual, mas por vezes acaba por ser um meio de usufruir do conhecimento de outrem sem mencionar seus creditos/direitos autorais, o que por fim acaba na configuracao do plagio. O plagio no meio academico e uma tarefa dificil de ser controlada, devido o grande numero de trabalhos que sao feitos por uma vasta quantidade de alunos e tambem pelo excesso de tarefas dos professores e pelo pouco tempo que conseguem dedicar para o controle da qualidade e autenticidade dos trabalhos. Com isso, e importante contar com softwares que auxiliem no processo de verificacao de indicios de plagio, desta maneira o presente trabalho vislumbra desenvolver uma nova ferramenta de analise de indicios de plagio bem como aprimorar o metodo DIP – Detector de Indicios de Plagio para auxiliar o docente na verificacao da autenticidade dos trabalhos.A Neuropedagogia promove o confronto sucessivo e simultâneo entre concepcoes tacitas, crencas e valores normativos com esquemas inovadores, criando um espaco entropico e poetico no âmbito da experiencia humana. A natureza da ciencia neuropedagogica exige um modelo fractal de construcao de mundo, sustentado pelo prazer da perplexidade. Busca-se a geratriz e as leis de formacao para atingir a unanimidade sobre o conceito de educacao de pessoas com alta dotacao humana, impossivel de se concretizar, sem o recurso das ideologias filosoficas, cientificas e tecnologias aliadas as eticas.In this talk I will elaborate on the development, implementation and evaluation of the use of online tools for learning, with special attention to games and gamification, sharing and collaboration.

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.