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Lightweight domain modeling for adaptive web-based educational system

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Abstract

Support for adaptive learning with respect to increased interaction and collaboration over the educational content in state-of-the-art models of web-based educational systems is limited. Explicit formalization of such models is necessary to facilitate extendibility, reusability and interoperability. Domain models are the most fundamental parts of adaptive web-based educational systems providing a basis for majority of other functional components such as content recommenders or collaboration widgets and tools. We introduce a collaboration-aware lightweight domain modeling for adaptive web-based learning, which provides a suitable representation for learning resources and metadata involved in educational processes beyond individual learning. It introduces the concept of user annotations to the domain model, which enrich educational materials and facilitate collaboration. Lightweight domain modeling is beneficial from the perspective of automated course semantics creation, while providing support towards automated semantic description of learner-generated content. We show that the proposed model can be effectively utilized for intelligent processing of learning resources such as recommendation and can form a basis for interaction and collaboration supporting components of adaptive systems. We provide the experimental evidence on successful utilization of lightweight domain model in adaptive educational platform ALEF over the period of five years involving more than 1,000 real-world students.

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Notes

  1. Heavyweight domain modeling typically involves stricter criteria on domain elements. For example, a basic element concept is defined as a triple (Cimiano 2006): (lexical realisation, intentional description, extension). E.g., concept jovian planet would be defined as ({jovian planet, gas giant, giant planet}, “planet composed from materials other than rock or other solid matter”, {Jupiter, Neptune, 47 Ursae Majoris c, …}). In lightweight modeling, a simple term-based description is sufficient (“jovian planet”). In addition, in approaches based on heavyweight semantics, more complex, domain-expert crafted ontologies are created. The relationships between concepts are richer, new layers of conceptualization are introduced (e.g., relationships between types of relationships, axiom schemas, general axiomatic theorems).

  2. Some students were enrolled in multiple courses, the number of non-unique users was 1735.

  3. An interesting potential of annotation utilisation for metadata enrichment we also reported in previously described study on definition annotations (Svrcek and Simko 2014).

  4. In addition to annotation-based interfaces to support collaborative learning, which have roots directly in the domain model, also other different forms of—more explicit, direct—collaboration can be interconnected within educational courses based on the lightweight domain model. For example, Srba and Bielikova proposed a collaborative extension PopCorm for ALEF, aimed to support collaborative tasks such as group discussion, listing advantages/disadvantages or categorization during software engineering learning (Srba and Bielikova 2014).

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contracts No. APVV-15-0508 and No. APVV-16-0213, the Scientific Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic, grant No. VG 1/0646/15 and the Cultural and Educational Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic, grant No. KEGA 028STU-4/2017.

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Simko, M., Bielikova, M. Lightweight domain modeling for adaptive web-based educational system. J Intell Inf Syst 52, 165–190 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10844-018-0518-3

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