Enhancing access to open corpus educational content: learning in the wild

ABSTRACT

The World Wide Web (WWW) provides access to a vast array of interconnected educational content on almost every subject imaginable. A great deal of this content is ideal for incorporation into personalised eLearning experiences. However the discovery, harvesting and incorporation of appropriate educational material have proven to be complex and arduous tasks.

Traditional educational hypertext systems are based upon the generation of links and anchors between content objects [1]. However the dynamic incorporation of open corpus educational content in eLearning requires the generation of a relationship between educational concepts and the hypertext documents. One approach to create this overlay between concept and content is to use a Mindmap interface to allow learners to explore and associate hypertext content with knowledge maps of their own creation.

This paper presents the Open Corpus Content Service (OCCS), a framework that uses the hypertext structure of the WWW to provide methods of educational content discovery and harvesting. The OCCS semantically examines linked content on both the WWW and in digital content repositories, and creates concept specific caches of content. The paper also introduces U-CREATe, a novel user-driven Mindmap interface for supporting the exploration and assembly of content cached by the OCCS, in a pedagogically meaningful manner. The combination of these systems benefits both the educator and learner, empowering the learner through ownership of the educational experience and allowing the educator to focus on the pedagogical design of educational offerings rather than content authoring.

REFERENCES

• 1: Henze, N. Open Adaptive Hypermedia: An approach to adaptive information presentation on the Web. First International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction (UAHCI 2001), held jointly with HCI International 2001, 5-10 August, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 2001.
• 2: Brusilovsky, P. & Peylo, C. Adaptive and intelligent Web-based educational systems. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 13(2-4), 159--172, 2003.
• 3: Brady, A., Conlan, O., Wade, V. Towards the Dynamic Personalized Selection and Creation of Learning Objects, E-Learn 05, World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education, Vancouver, B.C. (eds) Richards, G., AACE, 1903--1909, 2005.
• 4: Brusilovsky, P. and Henze, N. Open corpus adaptive educational hypermedia. In: P. Brusilovsky, A. Kobsa & W. Neidl (eds.): The Adaptive Web: Methods and Strategies of Web Personalization. LNCS 4321, Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer-Verlag, 671--696, 2007.
• 5: Brusilovsky, P. Adaptive Educational Hypermedia: From Generation to Generation. In M. Grigoriadou et al. (eds): Proceedings of the 4th Hellenic Conference with International Participation in Information and Communication Technologies in Education, New Technologies Publications, 19--33, 2004.
• 6: Conlan, O. The Multi-Model, Metadata Driven Approach to Personalised eLearning Services. PhD Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2005.
• 7: Merlot, Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. http://www.merlot.org
• 8: Jorum, UK Higher Education Institutions Digital Repository. http://www.jorum.co.uk
• 9: NDLR, National Digital Learning Repository. http://www.learningcontent.edu.ie
• 10: Nicola Henze , Wolfgang Nejdl, Extendible Adaptive Hypermedia Courseware: Integrating Different Courses and Web Material, Proceedings of the International Conference on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems, p.109-120, August 28-30, 2000
• 11: Henze, N., Nejdl, W. Adaptation in Open Corpus Hypermedia. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education: Special Issue on Adaptive and Intelligent Web-Based Systems, 12, 325--350, 2001.
• 12: Doris M. Carey, Teacher roles and technology integration: moving from teacher as director to teacher as facilitator, Computers in the Schools, v.9 n.2-3, p.105-118, 1993 [doi>10.1300/J025v09n02_10]
• 13: Laurillard, D. Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology, Routledge & Kegen, P., 1993.
• 14: Heritrix - The Internet Archive's open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler project. http://crawler.archive.org
• 15: Java Text Categorization Library (JTCL). Java implementation of the TextCat language guesser. http://textcat.sourceforge.net/
• 16: Rainbow - Statistical Text Classification. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mccallum/bow/rainbow/
• 17: Cavnar, W. B.; Trenkle, J. M. N-Gram-Based Text Categorization. In Proceedings of Third Annual Symposium on Document Analysis and Information Retrieval, Las Vegas, NV, UNLV Publications/Reprographics, pp. 161--175, 11-13 April 1994.
• 18: Bow: A toolkit for statistical language modelling, text retrieval, classification and clustering. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mccallum/bow/
• 19: NutchWAX - Nutch and Web Archive Extensions for searching web archive collections. http://archive-access.sourceforge.net/projects/nutch/
• 20: Nutch open source search engine. http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/
• 21: Hadoop framework for running applications on large clusters of commodity hardware. http://lucene.apache.org/hadoop/
• 22: Wayback Machine - Web Archive Search Engine. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
• 23: Wera - Web Archive Access. http://archive-access.sourceforge.net/projects/wera/
• 24: Likert, R. "A Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes" Archives of Psychology 140, 55. 1932
• 25: T. Mayes and S. de Freitas. Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models, JISC e-Learning Models Desk Study, 2004.
• 26: J. Scott. Assessing the relevance of the review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models and the mapping table to designers, JISC e-Learning Models Desk Study, 2004.
• 27: J. Scott. Learning Specifications and Standards, JISC e-Learning Models Desk Study, 2004.
• 28: Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Department for Education and Skills: Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners, 2005. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/5yearstrategy/
• 29: M.S. Knowles,. Andragogy in Action: Applying Modern Principles of Adult Learning. The Jossey-Bass Higher Education Series). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984.
• 30: C. T. Fosnot, Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.
• 31: T. M Duffy and D. J. Cunningham. Constructivism: Implications for the Design and Delivery of Instruction in Handbook of Research for Educational Communication and Technology {ed.} D. H. Jonassen. New York: Simon & Schuster; MacMillan, 1996. pp. 170--198.
• 32: Dagger, D., Wade, V., Conlan, O., Towards 'anytime, anywhere' learning: The role and realization of dynamic terminal personalization in adaptive eLearning. In Ed-Media 2003, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Hawaii, 2003.
• 33: Horton, W., Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone, Anything, Anywhere, Anytime, New York: John Wiley & Sons. 2000.
• 34: Papert, S. & Harel, I., Constructionism - Chapter 1: Situating Constructionism, Ablex Publishing Corporation. 1991
• 35: Harel, I., Software design for Learning: Children's Constructions of Meanings for Fractions and Logo Programming. Doctoral Dissertation. MIT laboratory, Cambridge MA, USA. 1988.
• 36: Crabtree, H., Improving Student Learning Using an Enquiry Based Approach. In Learning based on the Process of Enquiry. Conference Proceedings, Curriculum Innovation, University of Manchester, 2003. pp 77--84.
• 37: Dewey, J., Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education 1916.
• 38: Bruner, J. S., Towards a Theory for Instruction The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass, 1966.
• 39: Edelson, D. C. et al., Addressing the Challenges of Inquiry Based Learning through Technology and Curriculum Design In Journal of the Learning Sciences, 8, 1999. pp 391--450.
• 40: Buzan, T. & Buzan, B., The Mind Map Book New York: Penguin Group, 1993.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human factors
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
      H.5.4 Hypertext/Hypermedia

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory

Keywords:
elearning, information retrieval, open corpus content