The Semantic Web, Knowledge and Implications for Education

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The Semantic Web, Knowledge and Implications for
Education

• Alan McLean
• Postgraduate student, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak,
  Malaysia (UNITAR)

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Presented at

• The International Conference on Knowledge
  Management (ICKM) 2005 on 7 - 9th July 2005 at
  Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• (http//www.ickm.upm.edu.my/)
• Full text available from http//www.angelfire.com
  /linux/alan1/semantic.html

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My contact details aims

• http//www.angelfire.com/linux/alan1
• 016 636 0754

My aimsOutline some main ideasGet some
constructive criticismPossibly find
collaboratorsIdentify expertise useful to my
research
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I dont know so much

• My experience is in Higher Education and the last
  two years of secondary education. What I say
  today may not be applicable to primary education
  or the middle years.
• I am looking for guidance and correction from you
  on Semantic Web

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I dont know so much

• My experience is in Higher Education and the last
  two years of secondary education. What I say
  today may not be applicable to primary education
  or the middle years.
• I am looking for guidance and correction from you
  on Semantic Web, Theories of Learning,

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I dont know so much

• My experience is in Higher Education and the last
  two years of secondary education. What I say
  today may not be applicable to primary education
  or the middle years.
• I am looking for guidance and correction from you
  on Semantic Web, Theories of Learning, Cognitive
  Architectures

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I dont know so much

• My experience is in Higher Education and the last
  two years of secondary education. What I say
  today may not be applicable to primary education
  or the middle years.
• I am looking for guidance and correction from you
  on Semantic Web, Theories of Learning, Cognitive
  Architectures, Educational Design.

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Education needs to change

• The Semantic Web (Tim Berners-Lee www.w3.org/).
• Ubiquitous Computing
• (Mark Weiser www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/)
• Second generation Knowledge Management
• The Explicit Recruitment Needs of Employers
  www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CER/publications.htm

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The Semantic Web Ubiquitous Computing

• Descriptive technologies such as RDF and
  data-centric markup languages such as XML,
  ontologies such as Owl.

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The Semantic Web Ubiquitous Computing

• Descriptive technologies such as RDF and
  data-centric markup languages such as XML,
  ontologies such as Owl.
• Ubiquitous computing, computers everywhere in the
  real environment which can interconnect, exchange
  data and work together

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The Future of these Technologies

• It will neither be appropriate to carry a
  significant quantity of information in human
  memory nor to know how or where to find
  information.
• The Semantic Web will allow individuals to access
  the information they need in almost any place,
  effortlessly and without delay.
• so, you simply dont get paid any more for
  knowing things!
• (What are we going to do with all this useless
  knowledge?)

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Second Generation KM

• People construct and use new and valuable
  knowledge.
• Storing information, disseminating information
  and imitating past performance seem less
  important. Information is not seen as an
  important organizational asset.
• Learning capability, problem solving and
  innovation capability are seen as capital.
• Effective Knowledge Management is about social
  factors such as team building, personal
  professional development, and appropriate working
  environments
• Learning, problem solving and innovation are seen
  as social, not administrative activities.
• . So is that what major international companies
  are saying?

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The Explicit Recruitment Needs of Employers

• West, Noden and Gosling, based on interviews and
  surveys conducted in Australia, Malaysia, the UK
  and the USA identified the attributes sought in
  graduates. These attributes included the key
  skills team work, analytical/thinking skills,
  communication/presentation skills, interpersonal
  skills and the personal attributes
  motivation/drive, business awareness,
  independence, creativity/innovation and
  leadership/management
• West, A., Noden, P. Gosling, R. (2000) Quality
  in Higher Education An international
  perspective. The views of transnational
  corporations, Clare Market Papers 17, Centre for
  Educational Research, LSE London

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Conclusion so far

• Secondary education focuses on the acquisition of
  declarative knowledge. (and HE too!)
• Education is not delivering what employees and
  employers need. On a national and international
  basis, individuals, organizations and governments
  are spending vast sums of money without coming
  close to maximizing the human capital created.

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How should education respond?

• Two changes, the inception of the Semantic Web
  and changing perceptions of Knowledge Management,
  seem to demand educational reform of a broadly
  similar type, a move away from the acquisition of
  declarative knowledge and towards capabilities of
  analysis, critical thought, communication and
  creativity.

and at this point, it would be really nice to
have a theory of learning that would guide our
decisions on how to change educational design.
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How should education respond?

• Approaches to Educational Design
• My Central Claim
• There is no overarching theory of learning and
  there is no coherent prescription for educational
  design

• Theories of Learning
• operant conditioning
• developmental psychology
• cognitive psychology
• constructivism
• situated learning theory

so is the situation hopeless?
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notes on educational theory

• Is the theoretical basis of education too weak
  or are there too many theories of education?
• Theories of education are much more ideological
  and much narrower than we tell our students.
• The fragmentation and incompleteness of learning
  theory is consistent with the experience of
  student teachers and teacher educators. Beginning
  teachers report that they do not really know how
  to apply theory to their classroom experience.
• This fragmentation is consistent with the
  experience of teachers who are successful in
  encouraging critical thinking that successful
  teaching is time-intensive and not scalable.

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Provocative thoughts on educational
reformAlthough we dont have a theoretical
overview, some imperatives seem clear.

• Primary education seems valuable. Reading,
  writing, measure , empirical investigation,
  number and very basic background in the
  disciplines seem useful.
• We need to unlearn the habit of syllabus reform.
  The content of what we learn and teach does not
  matter. (Gardner)
• The great traditions of detailed teaching of
  disciplines (Biology, Geography and so on) must
  be abandoned.
• In many countries, the school leaving age should
  be lowered.

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That is it

• That is as far as I got when I made the
  presentation at the conference but the remainder
  of the slides give an idea of where those ideas
  were leading ..

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Is there hope?

• The apparent replacement of one educational
  paradigm with another can be seen as a shift in
  focus. There was sometimes little genuine
  incompatibility between different theories of
  learning. We may be moving from one type of
  explanation to another, focusing on different
  aspects of human behavior and trying to explain
  and understand learning at different levels of
  granularity (for example, social versus neural).
  A situation like this need not lead to the
  formation of opposing theoretical camps, but
  could invite attempts to integrate various
  theories of learning or, perhaps more
  realistically, to use them eclectically.
• which make us think about cognitive
  architectures

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Cognitive Architectures what do they aim to do?

• Explain experiments in human psychology.
• Explain at least some aspects of learning.
• Provide a structure which allows some aspects of
  human behavior to be reproduced artificially
  (i.e. support development in AIED)
• Support quantitative modeling, for example
  modeling of human reaction-time and forgetting.
• Inform educational practice.

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the ACT R cognitive architecture

• Cognitive architectures are not committed to any
  particular theory or group of theories but
  instead bring together theoretical perspectives,
  including mathematical models, in an attempt to
  explain and reproduce human behavior.
• Anderson (1990) distinguishes three layers of
  explanation the physiological layer which
  relates to brain function (the subsymbolic layer)
  the cognitive layer which examines thinking on
  a symbolic level and the 'rational' layer which
  focuses on the functional adaptation of the
  person to the environment (I call it
  interactive).

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ACT-R 5.0 is incomplete

• Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D.,
  Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., Qin, Y . (2004). An
  integrated theory of the mind. Psychological
  Review 111, (4). 1036-1060.
• (Latest version is ACT-R 6 version 1.0b2)
• Looking, for example at standard discourse
  theory, ACT-R is too weak at the interactive
  layer to account for the comprehension of text.

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Learning theory at the interactive layer

• As far as I know, there are two serious
  contenders, the situated learning theory
  advocated by Lave and Wenger and the theory of
  dialogue advocated by the Brazilian educator
  Paulo Freire.
• So lets look at Freires theory. We begin with
  the theory of banking education

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Banking Education

• The teacher is full of knowledge
• The student is a receptacle empty of knowledge
• The teacher makes deposits of knowledge in the
  student.
• The relationship between teacher and student is
  therefore not a horizontal one but a vertical
  one.

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The teacher-student relationship

• The teacher teaches and the students are taught.
• The teacher knows everything and the student
  knows nothing.
• The teacher thinks and the students are thought
  about.
• The teacher talks and the students listen
  meekly.
• The teacher disciplines and the students are
  disciplined.
• The teacher chooses and enforces their choice,
  and the student complies
• The teacher chooses the program content, and the
  students adapt to it.

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Schooling as the abuse of power.

• It is this relationship which strips learning of
  its value. The dominating relationship between
  teacher and student that leaves the student
  domesticated, powerless and passive. As students
  become the passive recipients of knowledge, they
  learn to experience the world and adapt to it.
  They learn and solve well-defined real life
  problems selected for them by the teacher. They
  learn not to read the world for themselves.
  They are not critical thinkers.

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Schooling as the abuse of power.

• It is this relationship which strips learning of
  its value. The dominating relationship between
  teacher and student that leaves the student
  domesticated, powerless and passive. As students
  become the passive recipients of knowledge, they
  learn to experience the world and adapt to it.
  They learn and solve well-defined real life
  problems selected for them by the teacher. They
  learn not to read the world for themselves.
  They are not critical thinkers.
• Students are required to demonstrate that they
  have stored knowledge in their memories and they
  are not asked to discover knowledge or engage in
  innovative problem solving. They become
  disengagement from the world and from each other.

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About Dialogue

• Dialogue is a horizontal relationship in which
  one individual is with the other. In Freire's
  words (Freire, 1974), it is positive, hopeful,
  trusting and critical. It involves two-way
  communication.
• Banking education is a vertical relationship in
  which one person is higher than the other. To
  borrow Freire's words again, it is loveless,
  arrogant, hopeless, mistrustful, acritical.
  Broadcast does not communicate but issues
  communiques information passes in one direction.