The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Semantic Technologies for Learning and Teaching in the Web 2.0 era - A survey

Semantic Technologies for Learning and Teaching in the Web 2.0 era - A survey
Semantic Technologies for Learning and Teaching in the Web 2.0 era - A survey
The strengths of semantic technologies for learning and teaching and their benefits in the areas of digital libraries, virtual communities and e-learning have been identified and well established. The case for semantic technologies in education has been on the expressive power of metadata to describe learning content, people, and services, and on how these could be intelligently matched for added value services and an advanced learning experience. However, certain concerns on the feasibility of ontology consensus and of the annotation of the enormous amount of content currently available on the Web have arisen making globally available and interoperable semantic-rich metadata for learning resources a long term vision. At the same time, progress towards a more modest machine-readable Web has been made, and pragmatic solutions to interoperability based around REST and XML have emerged in the last few years along with prototypes of SPARQL server implementations and new RDF/OWL annotation tools. Web 2.0 systems have enabled a lightweight knowledge modelling approach (sometimes called folksonomies) based around techniques such as community tagging, clustering, and community authoring. These are strong indications that consensus on ontologies can be achieved within a virtual community and that content can be efficiently annotated by community members provided adequate tools become available. Seen in this broader context it can be argued that Semantic Technologies are already impacting on the way in which we learn and teach, and will have an increasing impact as the sophistication of the tools increases (as identified at the recent JISC CETIS Conference 2007). The UK JISC funded SemTech (Semantic Technologies for learning and teaching) project is conducting a survey on the use of semantic technologies in higher and further education today taking into account these recent developments. The survey addresses the availability of semantic tools and services and their relevance to teaching and learning activities as well as their pedagogical intent. The semantic tools and services that were surveyed are categorised according to a number of criteria: - What is the education context in which they can be used? (formal learning, informal learning, higher education administration and services) - Which are the established teaching and learning activities that the surveyed tools and services relate to? A distinction between activities designed for the individual and group activities is made. - Which are the emerging e-learning activities enabled by these services? Where is the underpinning pedagogy in these activities? In addition, the survey distinguishes between the following different types of semantic technology use in education: - Use of semantic technologies with lower expressiveness in annotation to enable interoperability with databases and legacy systems within educational institutions - Use of semantic technologies with lower expressiveness in annotation to enable interoperability across institutions - Use of semantic technologies with higher expressiveness in annotation for application requiring advanced inferencing - Use of non-semantic metadata but with the intent of semantic enrichment in the future to enable more intelligent applications - Use of Web 2.0 technologies for learning content creation and annotation with the intent of semantic enhancement in the future This paper discusses the initial findings of this survey for each of the above categories and discusses the extent to which the success of Web 2.0 can be leveraged to enable ontology consensus, mass annotation and semantic application deployment in a higher education setting. In addition, the criteria for categorising teaching and learning activities in the above context are discussed. The significance of the distinction between individual and group learning activities when examining the impact of semantic technologies in Web 2.0 environments is elaborated on further. This survey is a living document to which the community will be able to contribute both in terms of including additional semantic technologies and in terms of refining the template for conducting the survey over the Web. Additional findings based on community contribution will also be reported and discussed.
Tiropanis, Thanassis
d06654bd-5513-407b-9acd-6f9b9c5009d8
Davis, Hugh
1608a3c8-0920-4a0c-82b3-ee29a52e7c1b
Millard, David
4f19bca5-80dc-4533-a101-89a5a0e3b372
Weal, Mark
e8fd30a6-c060-41c5-b388-ca52c81032a4
Tiropanis, Thanassis
d06654bd-5513-407b-9acd-6f9b9c5009d8
Davis, Hugh
1608a3c8-0920-4a0c-82b3-ee29a52e7c1b
Millard, David
4f19bca5-80dc-4533-a101-89a5a0e3b372
Weal, Mark
e8fd30a6-c060-41c5-b388-ca52c81032a4

Tiropanis, Thanassis, Davis, Hugh, Millard, David and Weal, Mark (2009) Semantic Technologies for Learning and Teaching in the Web 2.0 era - A survey. WebSci'09: Society On-Line, , Athens, Greece. 18 - 20 Mar 2009.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

The strengths of semantic technologies for learning and teaching and their benefits in the areas of digital libraries, virtual communities and e-learning have been identified and well established. The case for semantic technologies in education has been on the expressive power of metadata to describe learning content, people, and services, and on how these could be intelligently matched for added value services and an advanced learning experience. However, certain concerns on the feasibility of ontology consensus and of the annotation of the enormous amount of content currently available on the Web have arisen making globally available and interoperable semantic-rich metadata for learning resources a long term vision. At the same time, progress towards a more modest machine-readable Web has been made, and pragmatic solutions to interoperability based around REST and XML have emerged in the last few years along with prototypes of SPARQL server implementations and new RDF/OWL annotation tools. Web 2.0 systems have enabled a lightweight knowledge modelling approach (sometimes called folksonomies) based around techniques such as community tagging, clustering, and community authoring. These are strong indications that consensus on ontologies can be achieved within a virtual community and that content can be efficiently annotated by community members provided adequate tools become available. Seen in this broader context it can be argued that Semantic Technologies are already impacting on the way in which we learn and teach, and will have an increasing impact as the sophistication of the tools increases (as identified at the recent JISC CETIS Conference 2007). The UK JISC funded SemTech (Semantic Technologies for learning and teaching) project is conducting a survey on the use of semantic technologies in higher and further education today taking into account these recent developments. The survey addresses the availability of semantic tools and services and their relevance to teaching and learning activities as well as their pedagogical intent. The semantic tools and services that were surveyed are categorised according to a number of criteria: - What is the education context in which they can be used? (formal learning, informal learning, higher education administration and services) - Which are the established teaching and learning activities that the surveyed tools and services relate to? A distinction between activities designed for the individual and group activities is made. - Which are the emerging e-learning activities enabled by these services? Where is the underpinning pedagogy in these activities? In addition, the survey distinguishes between the following different types of semantic technology use in education: - Use of semantic technologies with lower expressiveness in annotation to enable interoperability with databases and legacy systems within educational institutions - Use of semantic technologies with lower expressiveness in annotation to enable interoperability across institutions - Use of semantic technologies with higher expressiveness in annotation for application requiring advanced inferencing - Use of non-semantic metadata but with the intent of semantic enrichment in the future to enable more intelligent applications - Use of Web 2.0 technologies for learning content creation and annotation with the intent of semantic enhancement in the future This paper discusses the initial findings of this survey for each of the above categories and discusses the extent to which the success of Web 2.0 can be leveraged to enable ontology consensus, mass annotation and semantic application deployment in a higher education setting. In addition, the criteria for categorising teaching and learning activities in the above context are discussed. The significance of the distinction between individual and group learning activities when examining the impact of semantic technologies in Web 2.0 environments is elaborated on further. This survey is a living document to which the community will be able to contribute both in terms of including additional semantic technologies and in terms of refining the template for conducting the survey over the Web. Additional findings based on community contribution will also be reported and discussed.

Text
websci09-tiropanis.pdf - Other
Download (103kB)

More information

Published date: 2009
Additional Information: Event Dates: 18-20 March 2009
Venue - Dates: WebSci'09: Society On-Line, , Athens, Greece, 2009-03-18 - 2009-03-20
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 267106
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/267106
PURE UUID: c6cdc87a-39c0-4632-ab68-7aa66dba3566
ORCID for Thanassis Tiropanis: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6195-2852
ORCID for Hugh Davis: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1182-1459
ORCID for David Millard: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7512-2710
ORCID for Mark Weal: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6251-8786

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 13 Feb 2009 18:00
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:31

Export record

Contributors

Author: Thanassis Tiropanis ORCID iD
Author: Hugh Davis ORCID iD
Author: David Millard ORCID iD
Author: Mark Weal ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×