Collaborative Courseware Authoring Support

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Collaborative Courseware Authoring Support
Databases Hypermedia Group, Department of
Informatics

• Darina Dicheva, Lora Aroyo Alexandra Cristea

CATE02 May 20-22, 2002
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Keywords

• Ontology
• Collaboration
• Cooperation
• Adaptivity
• Adaptability
• Web-based courseware
• ODL

C2
A2
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Index

• Background, Motivation and Ideas
• AIMS
• Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
  Authoring
• Authoring tasks
• Authoring Interaction C2 support
• Conclusion Future research

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Index

• Background, Motivation and Ideas
• AIMS
• Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
  Authoring
• Authoring tasks
• Authoring Interaction C2 support
• Conclusion Future research

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Paradigm shift in Web learning
courseware
average student
1 author
production
different students
courseware
many authors
production
? C2 , custom design?
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Authoring requirements

• Efficient organization
• Building material from start to make C2 easy
• Implementation/ facilitation of C2 tools
• Domain, course, library authoring
• Custom-design
• Student cognitive styles, motivation, background,
  etc.

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Authoring goals

• (semi)-automatic authoring activities support for
  A2 C2
• other (intelligent) author assistance
• hints, recommendations, guidance, etc.

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Key Ideas

• author support for concept-based Web courseware
• use systems domain concept map (ontology) to
  capture semantics of subject domain terminology
• additional ontology-based layers to courseware
  authoring architecture allow intelligent
  assistance
• support cooperative authoring
• synchronous re-usage of authoring products
  course materials, libraries, ontologies, etc.

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Index

• Background, Motivation and Ideas
• AIMS
• Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
  Authoring
• Authoring tasks
• Authoring Interaction C2 support
• Conclusion Future research

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AIMS domain, library course models

• domain M subject-domain Ontology CM of DC
• DC are linked to documents
• ? link has weight document relevancy to DC
• library M info items collection links to
  courses, domains
• course materials domain-related documents
• course M course structure (topics tasks in
  task library)
• ? course task collection of DC, that student
  must learn

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AIMS indexing

• domain concepts (DC) main linking component
• ? library doc linked to 1, more DC
• ? course task linked to several DC
• user profile overlay DC

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AIMS authoring modules

• Agent based Information Management System
• Authoring concept-based Web courseware for
• Domain Editor,
• Library Editor,
• Course Editor

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Index

• Background, Motivation and Ideas
• AIMS
• Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
  Authoring
• Authoring tasks
• Authoring Interaction C2 support
• Conclusion Future research

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Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
Authoring

• Y-axis main info objects
• library objects, domains, courses
• X-axis systems authoring support
• GUI, Assisting -, Operation -, Information layer

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Y
X
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2 old layers
Y
X
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X-axis 2 old layers

• GUI layer supports user-system communication
• Info layer layered info objects description
  structure in courseware system
• educational metadata
• subject domain ontology
• course ontology

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2 new layers
Y
X
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X-axis 2 new layers

• Assisting layer
• based on domain ontological map
• courseware authoring help hints e.g.
• editing course/domain structure, etc.
• linking documents/course items to ontology, etc.
• Operation layer
• for ontology data modelling (info layer
  operation)
• helps create alternative goal-oriented course
  structures
• handles fct. for info manipulation, consistency
  C2
• 3 modules course -, domain -, library engine
• consistency check and co-operation support

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Index

• Background, Motivation and Ideas
• AIMS
• Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
  Authoring
• Authoring tasks
• Authoring Interaction C2 support
• Conclusion Future research

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Index

• Background, Motivation and Ideas
• AIMS
• Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
  Authoring
• Authoring tasks
• Authoring Interaction C2 support
• Conclusion Future research

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Primitive interaction activities among
participants

•    Planning/Execution/Creation
•    Coordination/Control
•    Initiative/Supervision
•    Observation/Suggesting
•    Data/Idea sharing
•    Dialogue (with Interaction)

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Required Resources

• Individual (personal) workplace
• Collaborative (shared) workplace / object space
• Dialogue channel (implicit / explicit)
• Technologically mediated remote communication
  (audio, visual) optional

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Index

• Background, Motivation and Ideas
• AIMS
• Layered Ontology-based Support to Courseware
  Authoring
• Authoring tasks
• Authoring Interaction C2 support
• Conclusion Future research

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Conclusion

• refined knowledge classif. indexing (AIMS)
• introduced ontology-oriented support for C2
  courseware authoring
• basis of formal semantics reasoning in generic
  authoring tasks
• concept-based structuring
• 2 new layers assisting operation
• opens way for C2 authoring

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Future research

• pure collaborative authoring environments merge
  between re-usage based cooperative environments
  collaborative work
• as in previous researches on collaborative
  learning environments

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Thank you for listening!
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consistency modules

• handling notions of semantic equivalence and
  conflict,
• handling conflict resolution rules,
• handling equivalence comparison rules,
• enhancing the resulting ontology and defining
  additional constraints if necessary.

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co-operation support modules

• offer a set of operations for consistency check
  in alternative (simultaneous) course structure
  built by different authors
• predefined functions (patterns templates) to
  facilitate effective reusability of course
  structures built by different authors.

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Reusability merging ontologies

• extract ontology portions to be merged with
  another,
• Identify frames to be extracted from source
  ontology,
• determine if extracted info has semantic overlaps
  / conflicts with target ontology,
• assist in merging ontologies, record sources of
  inserted sub-ontologies for later reference
  update,
• select patterns, templates in educational
  ontology, to present them as predefined objects
  for other authors.

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Ex. semantic overlaps and conflicts

• semantically equiv. concepts w. different names,
• semantically different concepts with same name,
• semantically equivalent concepts w. same name but
  different definitions,
• semantically equivalent concepts linked to
  different (conflicting) concepts, etc.

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Course Engine supported Tasks
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Course Engine supported Tasks (cont)
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Domain Engine supported Tasks
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Domain Engine supported Tasks (cont)
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Library Engine supported Tasks

• some common authoring tasks trigger interaction
  of library assistant - engine, e.g.
• create/edit-existing-library,
• add/delete-document,
• link/unlink-document-to-domain concepts,
• add/delete-keywords-to-document,
• edit-weights-of-keywords,
• link/unlink-document-to-course topic ,
• link/unlink-document-to-course-task.

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Conclusion 2

• introduced layered approach for Web-based
  courseware authoring, transformed into
  collaborative ontology engineering process.
• integrated our research into main courseware
  authoring research, stressed the need for C2 for
  Web authors,
• based analysis on AIMS system
• cooperation implies dividing course contents into
  re-usable parts. In AIMS concepts, tasks and
  topics.

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Conclusion 3

• shown AIMS authoring tools allows cooperation
  but need improving
• proposed additional semantic layer for
  intelligent authoring assistance
• detailed various support types to provide for
  various authoring types possible in
  ontology-based courseware authoring environment
• Focus re-usage cooperative info sharing
  steps towards collaborative authoring