ERIC EJ1099171: Topic Maps e-Learning Portal Development

2006·0.24 MB·English

by  ERIC

Topic Maps e-Learning Portal Development
Kamila Olsevicova
University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic
[email protected]

Abstract: Topic Maps, ISO/IEC 13250 standard, are designed to facilitate the organization and navigation of large
collections of information objects by creating meta-level perspectives of their underlying concepts and relationships. The
underlying structure of concepts and relations is expressed by domain ontologies. The Topics Maps technology can
become the core of an e-learning portal that will integrate different kinds of information and knowledge resources,
available in the educational institution – this idea was explored in the Ph.D. dissertation of the author. The offered portal
solution promises to bring advantages both for content consumers (students) and content providers (teachers,
administrative staff), but numerous problems hinder the practical implementation of this portal and therefore it requires
certain changes in the functioning of the educational institution and asks teachers, teaching assistants and e-courses
designers to change their routines and to develop new skills. In the paper we offer a new methodology for development
and maintenance of the Topic Maps e-learning portal and we briefly present a pilot application.

Keywords: e-Learning portal, Ontology engineering, Knowledge methodology, Topic Maps, Omnigator

1. Introduction The term e-learning implies a shift in emphasis in
education: we talk about “computer assisted
In the last three decades numerous approaches
learning”, not about “computer assisted teaching”.
have appeared which have tried to adopt

information and communication technologies for
This implies an effort to stimulate the student’s
the purpose of learning and education. The term
own activity, and de-emphasises the role of the
“e-learning” was accepted for expressing the effort
teacher. The objectivist approach where the
to transform educational processes through
educational process was conducted by teachers,
application of different up-to-date electronic media
and students demonstrated their knowledge level
and to customize learning to student’s needs in
in tests, where they reproduced facts and
terms of study style, time and space. The
information, is replaced by a constructivist theory,
dramatic growth of local and wide area computer
based on the opinion that students have to
networks accelerated the evolution of the
develop their own approaches to understand and
phenomenon of online education (also Internet-
organize knowledge. Accentuation of knowledge
based education, web-based education, education
structures, their internalization by students and
via computer-mediated communication, virtual
the environments that must enable this
education).
internalization – it all makes us think about

adaptation of knowledge management (KM)
Online education is realized in virtual study
principles into the educational area and to
environments (also online education systems),
understand e-learning solutions as pure KM
e.g. WebCT, Blackboard or LearningSpace.
solutions.
Virtual study environments can be used within the

context of the traditional education system, in
The paper is focused on the need for an
part-time education, or to facilitate distance-
innovative virtual study environment, developed in
education and therefore they are interesting for
accordance with the Semantic web idea and
different kinds of educational institutions. Through
reflecting the theories of student’s internal
virtual study environments, e-courses are
processes of knowledge organization. We
managed and provided to students. The general
describe a novel solution, an ontology-driven
shift of emphasis towards the Semantic web idea
Topic Maps portal that mainly addresses tasks of
has to be reflected by the developers of particular
content management of e-courses and which
web-based applications. In the educational
integrates different information and knowledge
context, it means thinking about the next
resources of the educational institution.
generation of virtual study environments that
would overcome insufficiencies of current systems
2. Topic maps technology
such as information overflow, lack of
customization, necessity of manual management Topic maps (TM), the ISO/IEC 13250 standard,
and updating of stored instructional e-content, are designed to facilitate the organization and
high set-up costs etc. navigation of large collections of information
objects by creating meta-level perspectives of
their underlying concepts and relationships. The
underlying structure of concepts and relations are

ISSN 1479-4403 59 ©Academic Conferences Ltd

Reference this paper as:
Olsevicova K (2006) “Topic Maps e-Learning Portal Development” The Electronic Journal of e-Learning Volume 4 Issue
1, pp 59-66, available online at www.ejel.org
Electronic Journal of e-Learning Volume 4 Issue 1 2006 (59-66)
expressed by domain ontologies, or by other or more topics are in an association, if there is
modeling formalisms, e.g. subject categorizations, some relationship between them. Each topic
classifications or schemas, relational or object- plays a role in a particular association.
oriented schemas, indices and thesauruses. (cid:131) Scopes express the range of validity of topics'
characteristics, especially they establish
Topic maps promise to solve the following tasks:
context for the validity of topics' names and
(cid:131) The problem of metadata – the TM application
their roles in associations. Through scopes,
operates with metadata records on available
TM applications can be divided into semantic
information resources. These records are not
slices based on different criteria (langauge,
a part of resources, but are stored and
prerequisite knowledge, access rights etc.).
managed independently.
(cid:131) Themes are defined as sets of topics used to
(cid:131) The network structure of links –
specify the scope.
interconnection of topics (and so, also
(cid:131) Published subjects are entities, placed and
resources) minimizes the risk of being lost in
maintained in an advertised place, to
the information space, although the search
standardize and reuse non-addressable
possibilities are maximized.
subjects in various TM applications and to
(cid:131) The structure of knowledge in the domain –
facilitate merging different TM applications.
the TM standard was developed for explicit
Agreement is up to the humans defining and
modeling of knowledge and simple navigation
using published subjects.
in knowledge resources, therefore it visualizes
the terminology of the domain and allows
3. e-Learning portal
each user to view the terminology in scopes
which reflect the needs and abilities of the Our basic idea is to use a TM application (more
user. precisely, a web portal based on the TM standard)
The Topic Maps model defines three basic as a gate to all information, and if possible, to all
building blocks: topic, association and occurrence knowledge resources of the educational
which together form "TAO of Topic Maps", as institution. This idea has two main advantages.
(Pepper, 2000) humorously says. Other concepts (cid:131) Integration of currently separated resources of
which extend the expressive power of TM are information and knowledge at the university,
those of scope, theme and published subject: such as scheduling applications, students’
(cid:131) Topics are computer representations, either of agenda information systems, digital and
particular subjects of our world, or abstract classic libraries, shared directories etc.
categories that exist in this world. Through the (cid:131) More user friendly, more intuitive navigation of
topics, subjects transform to computerized the info-space, enabled by ontologies which
objects, about which any statements can be are the core of TM applications and whose
linked to the TM. A particular structure of application is innovative in contrast with
topics depends on the application domain, websites organized using predefined
authors and users of the TM application. Each categories and sections.
topic has three types of characteristics:
In virtual study environments, TM technology is
names, occurrences and roles in
applicable in the following way. Each e-course is
associations.
focused on certain discipline which has its own
(cid:131) Occurrences of topics are relevant information terminology. This terminology is conceptualized
sources about topics. The occurrences are by the discipline (domain) ontology. The TM
characteristics of topics and are true in the application of study resources can be built above
context of the particular scope. The this ontology. Such TM application visualizes the
occurrence is a string value - either a discipline terminology, which helps students to
statement about the topic, or a link to the understand the structures of studied disciplines.
resource (monograph, article, image, sound Together with the discipline ontologies, used for
file etc.). The occurrences are inserted to the subject categorization of resources, it is possible
TM using suitable identifiers (URI, HyTime to apply a kind of course ontology for arranging
addressing etc.). Through the occurrences, units and elements that together form the course
information resources are included in the TM content. Therefore through the TM-based portal,
application, although they are not changed teachers can define the recommended order of
inside, i.e. no additional internal tags are resources (presentations, documents, exercises
necessary to be inserted into the resources to etc.) to be studied as well as in the e-course’s
describe their content. study content module in current virtual study
(cid:131) Associations are essential for establishing the environments. Also, all other parts of the e-course
network structure of topics. The associations (students’ agenda, evaluation tools,
simulate human associative reasoning. Two communication tools), can be integrated into the
www.ejel.org 60 ©Academic Conferences Ltd
Kamila Olsevicova
TM portal using the occurrence elements. All Linguistic ontologies (also lexical databases)
these integrations are motivated by the effort to which conceptualize natural languages and help
unify access mechanisms to information. E.g. to understand terms, which seem to be common,
while using WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition, students but in practice can become sources of
have to uncomfortably click through individual e- misunderstanding. The most prominent ontology
courses and check e-mail boxes or assignments of this type is Word Net (WordNet, 2005), a large
evaluation records in each of the e-courses lexical database in English based on
separately. The TM solution enables unified psycholinguistic theories. WordNet attempts to
access to all information of the same type, e.g. to organize lexical information in terms of word
all e-mails, all assignment scores etc. meanings rather than word forms, though
inflectional morphology is also a criterion.
4. Development of the portal WordNet 2.0 contains words organized in sets of
synonyms (synsets), each representing one
No methodology of TM applications creation is underlying lexical concept, with a brief explanation
presented in the basic ISO/IEC Topic Maps of the intuitive sense in English. Synsets are
standard, so the consecution totally depends on interlinked via relations such as synonymy,
authors of particular TM applications and on antonymy, meronymy (part-of relation), holonymy
software used for the implementation of the TM (has-a relation) hyponymy (subclass-of relation),
application. General TM developers’ guides hyponymy (super class-of relation). The lexicon is
suggest starting either top-down (i.e. by defining divided into five categories: nouns, verbs,
the application area (Rath, 2003), or bottom-up, adverbs, adjectives and function words. WordNet
i.e. by summarizing the available information and database is under continuous development.
knowledge resources to be covered by the TM
application (Vatant, 2001). The first approach Domain ontologies which model concepts and
helps to reduce the space of documents and relations in particular areas, so we can use them
resources to be considered with respect to the to describe disciplines which are studied in
application domain, while the opposite approach courses. It means that domain concepts are
promises not to omit any currently available applicable as subject descriptors of resources; the
resources and to enable the TM application to relations between concepts make relations
access these resources and repositories. between resources visible. If we consider using
ontology as an integrative element that would
In both approaches, the next TM application allow us to interconnect educational resources
development contains the following steps: related to the course or the whole study
(cid:131) definition of functional requirements and the programme, optionally prepared by various
purpose of the future TM, authors from different institutions, it is clear that
(cid:131) definition of schema of the TM portal - the such an ontology must not only to cover the
ontology, relevant domain (area, discipline), but must be of
a good quality and must be accepted by all
(cid:131) selection of the tool for implementation of the
authors of resources, especially authors of
TM solution,
applications that make these resources available
(cid:131) population of instances, including evaluation
to users (i.e. to students, teachers, other staff of
of fulfilling all restrictions and constraints,
the faculty). Unfortunately, at the moment there
(cid:131) optional revision of the schema of the TM. are not suitable ontologies available for all
The fundamental task is the selection of reference domains, but only for those areas, where the
vocabularies and ontologies of types, categories, critical necessity to manage large repositories of
relationships etc. which help to coordinate the documents has already prompted the
effort of the team of TM portal developers, development of ontologies. Such areas are e.g.
especially to avoid misunderstandings and medicine, chemistry or law. In disciplines, where
misinterpretations of the skeleton of the TM portal ontological engineering is not so advanced, it is
and to ensure further extension and sharability of possible to think about adopting some of
the portal. developed taxonomies or categorizations and
reusing them for the development of a new
4.1 Reusable ontologies ontology. E.g. in the area of computer science
education, we propose to use the ACM Computer
For our purpose, that is using ontologies in the
Classification System, which is recommended to
description of educational resources and
be used for description of content of all ACM
processes in the context of virtual study
publications (ACM CCS, 2005). Reusable domain
environments, three types of reusable ontologies
ontologies are available in web libraries of
are of interest:
ontologies.

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Electronic Journal of e-Learning Volume 4 Issue 1 2006 (59-66)
Knowledge management ontologies which are check if the ontology contains enough
included among the knowledge-based techniques information.
for building organizational memory systems. For (cid:131) Consider reusing existing ontologies. The
our broader objective, i.e. description of process of ontology creation can be
information and knowledge resources at the accelerated by refining and extending existing
university, such an approach is of interest. ontologies from public libraries, web
(Abecker et al., 1998) distinguishes three types of repositories etc.
knowledge management ontologies that may
(cid:131) Enumerate important terms in the ontology,
partly overlap in certain concepts and relations:
without worrying about any overlap between
(cid:131) domain ontologies which model the content of
concepts they represent, distinguishing
the information sources (as previsouly
properties and relations.
discussed),
(cid:131) Define the classes and the class hierarchy
(cid:131) information ontologies which describe the
either using the top-down or bottom-up
different kinds of information resources, their
approach, or a combination of both
structure, access rights, format properties,
approaches. One question is whether to start
(cid:131) Enterprise ontologies which model the context
with the most general class and then generate
of an organization, business processes,
more specialized concepts or vice versa.
organization of the enterprise etc.
Class hierarchy automatically assumes
inheritance, which means that if a class A is a
4.2 Creation of the ontology super class of class B, then every instance of
B is also instance of A.
The process of ontology construction is critical,
mainly in complex domains. There are two main (cid:131) Define the properties of classes – slots.
approaches that aid a large-scale ontology Properties of classes can be intrinsic,
construction from scratch: extrinsic, parts (if concept is structured),
(cid:131) The first one facilitates the manual process of relationships with other individuals. All
ontological engineering by providing editors, subclasses of a class inherit slots of the class.
consistency checkers, natural language A slot should be attached to the most general
processing tools, etc. Protégé-2000 is an class that can have that property.
example of this category (Protégé, 2005). (cid:131) Define the facets of the slots. A slot can have
(cid:131) The second approach relies on machine different facets describing the value type,
learning and automated language processing allowed values, cardinality and other features.
techniques to extract concepts and (cid:131) Create instances. Deciding whether a
ontological relations from given databases particular concept is a class or an individual
and texts. This approach, usually called instance depends on what the potential
ontology learning, is explained in great detail applications of the ontology are and takes into
in (Maedche, 2002). One example of such consideration the lowest level of granularity in
system is OntoLearn, presented in (Navigli et the representation. If concepts form a natural
al., 2003). hierarchy, then we should represent them as
Our proposed ontologies for the description of classes.
educational reality are expected to be created
manually. The development methodology would 4.3 Ontology of educational environment
partly depend on the chosen ontology editor. If we
For the description of a university environment
use Protégé-2000, the following steps (formulated
and its information and knowledge resources,
in Protégé-2000 terminology) are recommended
three kinds of ontologies are needed:
(Noy and McGuiness, 2001, Noy et al., 2001;
(cid:131) a general ontology describing the reality of the
Gómez-Pérez et al., 2004):
educational institution,
(cid:131) Determine the domain and scope of the
ontology, i.e. answer basic questions “What is (cid:131) a course ontology that defines the structure of
the domain that the ontology will cover?”, “For the course,
what types of questions should the (cid:131) Domain ontologies that conceptualize
information in the ontology provide answers?”, individual disciplines.
“Who will use and maintain the ontology?” A
(cid:131) The general ontology of the educational
good way to define the scope is to start with
institution contains concepts and relations
so-called competency questions; this means a
referring to information and knowledge
set of queries that will be used above the
resources and processes at the university, but
knowledge base, based on the ontology. The
without direct relation to particular courses. It
list of competency questions can help to
contains:
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Kamila Olsevicova
(cid:131) concepts such as address, article, bachelor relations among users of particular ontology
program, bachelor thesis, conference, application. We expect that these ontologies for
consultation, course, credit, database, the description of an educational reality, courses
department, email, entrance test, and particular disciplines would be reusable for
enrolment, examination, faculty etc., the purpose of different educational institutions, so
(cid:131) And relations such as (course)-is-previous-to- the efforts of educational experts and university
(course), (course)-is-recommended-to- management to develop the ontologies would be
(study programme/semester), (person)-is- very fruitful. Knowledge engineers and ontology
supervisor-of-(course), etc. engineers, skilful in the construction of knowledge
bases, will have to participate on the development
(cid:131) Course ontology defines concepts that
of the proposed TM e-learning portal.
describe parts of individual courses, kinds
of involved learning objects, instructional
5. Pilot application
strategies, learning styles, student
profiles, educational goals, etc. There are: For better explanation of our proposed TM
(cid:131) concepts such as active material, answer, solution, we developed a pilot application using
assignment, difficulty, discussion, Omnigator, a free version of TM software provided
evaluation, exam, exercise, feedback, by (Ontopia, 2005). Our application integrates
glossary, grade, homework, image, information and knowledge resources related to
interactivity, item, learning style etc., several courses on Artificial intelligence (AI), sub
(cid:131) And relations such as (lecture/exercise etc.)– areas which are taught in the Faculty of
Is-previous-to–(lecture/exercise etc.), Informatics and Management at the University of
(prerequisite)–is requested–in (course), Hradec Kralove. These resources are traditionally
(presentation/assignment/question)– separated in different information systems and
assigned-to–(lecture/exercise) etc. repositories, e.g. website of the faculty, student’s
agenda information system of the faculty, digital
Domain ontologies describe terms and their
library of the faculty, university library, private and
relations which are valid in a certain discipline,
shared folders on university computer network
taught in courses. For each field, a different
etc. The underlying ontology of our application
ontology is demanded. If possible, existing
reuses parts of ACM CCS and the WordNet
domain ontology can be adopted. The usefulness
lexical database. The following snapshots
of these ontologies lies in the fact that they can
illustrate what the application looks like and how it
help to structure courses’ contents logically
can be used. (Our version of TM software was
according to structures of disciplines. For
limited in graphic functions; therefore the design
students, it is highly important to gain an insight
of the application is not as attractive and user-
into the terminology of the studied area. If
friendly as the full solution would be.)
concepts of ontologies are used for defining

keywords or subject descriptors of educational
The first snapshot (Fig. 1) shows how the TM
resources, while searching repository of
application presents information related to
resources, students internalize the discipline
particular AI course (here it is Logic programming
terminology in a natural way.
1.). The page contains:

(cid:131) Name of the course,
These three kinds of ontologies (general, course
and domain) can be merged together. Therefore, (cid:131) Relevant study programs (with hyperlinks to
we get a large collection of concepts and their topic pages),
relations, describing the university with all its (cid:131) Name of the supervisor of the course and of
information and knowledge resources and its teaching assistants (with hyperlinks to their
study programmes on a very detailed level. Above topics pages),
such a large ontology (or above its semantic
(cid:131) String information about prerequisites and
slices), it is possible to implement an application
recommended semester,
which serves as a universal gate to all resources.
Practical realization of this application may reuse (cid:131) List of resources (different kinds of online
TM technology. resources – e-courses, scheduling application
and student agenda system – again with
The presented extracts of general, course and hyperlinks),
domain ontologies are illustrative only. Real (cid:131) Hyperlinks to 4 of 94 scoped occurrences, i.e.
applications would be based on ontologies, which particular resources that are associated with
should result from a detailed analysis and broad the scope of the topic “LP1“.
understanding of all involved concepts and their

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Electronic Journal of e-Learning Volume 4 Issue 1 2006 (59-66)

Figure 1: Topic page of Logic programming course

The second snapshot (Fig. 2) presents a (cid:131) Hyperlinks to html-pages stored in the
particular lecture in the Logic programming 1 WebCT virtual study environment, where
course. Different information and resources are traditional e-courses are still provided,
available on this page, e.g.: (cid:131) Hyperlinks to topic pages of previous and
(cid:131) Brief syllabus of the lecture,
following lectures and exercises where
(cid:131) Note about a PowerPoint presentation file the content of the current lecture is
stored in shared folders, reused.

Figure 2: Topic page of 5th lecture of Logic programming course

The last snapshot (Fig. 3. shows the page of the (cid:131) Internal and external occurrences refer to
topic "Agent", i.e. particular important concept in topic resources: e.g. information about books
AI. available in the university library, hyperlinks to
(cid:131) Associations "ACM CSS category", "Has online web resources, string value information
subcategory" and "Is element of" explain the – here, quotations of definitions from the
position of the topic in the ACM CCS and WordNet lexical database. The scopes
relation to other close topics. assigned to occurrences inform about the
(cid:131) The course association „Studied in“ shows level of prerequisited knowledge, i.e. that a
what courses (lectures) are related to Agent particular book is aimed mostly at experts, or
topic. about language of resources etc.

Figure 3: Topic page of the term "Agent"

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Kamila Olsevicova

6. Conclusion effectiveness of searches in concept-based digital
course libraries. (Schwotzer, 2004) explains how
In this paper we have proposed understanding
Topic Maps can be used for knowledge
virtual study environments as a kind of knowledge
representation in distributed knowledge
management system and integrating them with
management systems and understands the
other information and knowledge resources, both
exchange of Topic Maps to be the exchange of
digital and non-digital, which are available at the
explicit knowledge. In this perspective, we can
educational institution. We see the Topic Maps
consider the interlinking of our proposed Topic
technology as a suitable tool for this proposed
Maps portal of a particular educational institution
integration and we offer a general framework for
with similar portals of other educational
the development of the Topic Maps-driven e-
institutions.
learning portal. The main idea is to interconnect
different information systems, used by students
Acknowledgements
and staff of the faculty and to reuse domain
ontologies for the subject classification of the This contribution was partially supported by the
content. See (Olsevicova, 2005), where the Czech Science Foundation Project No.
presented idea is explained in detail. See also 406/04/2140 KNOMEDIAS
(Dicheva et al. 2004; Dichev and Dicheva, 2005)
for other TM applications in the educational
context, mainly a novel architecture improving the
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