On the general structure of ontologies of instructional models Miguel-Angel Sicilia Information Engineering Research Unit [University of Alcalá]

Motivation The status of “pedagogical metadata” – IEEE LOM: InteractivityType/level, etc. – IMS LD: Represents the structure, not the pedagogical rationale behind – Some classifications exist, e.g. Conole. What about intructional design? – ID techniques constraint the universe of possible LD (combinations of resources/activities)

Instructional models – practice-oriented theories offering explicit guidance on how to help people learn that offer situation- specific methods, that in turn are described in terms of components, and that are know to be effective for learning under some conditions (to some extent). Methods can be made operational Result: – Learning resources, e.g. an IMS LD.

Not talking of “Process models” E.g. ADDIE

Design constraints A concrete learning design LD expressed in a digital educational description language is provisionally conformant to the IDModel A if there exist a legal interpretation LI of A in terms of the description language and LD fulfills all the constraints contained in LI.

Ontologies and rules “TheoryOne” – “give abundant examples of the concepts treated” – We assume a IMS LD ontology in OWL. lr:LearningObject(?lo)  lr:hasPart(?lo, ?lo2)  lr:hasPart(?lo, ?lo3)  lr:ExerciseLO(?lo2)  lr:ExerciseLO(?lo3)  hasAbundantExamples(?lo, true) lr:LearningObject(?lo1)  lr:hasPart(?lo1, ?lo2)  lr:hasPart(?lo2, ?lo3)  lr:hasPart(?lo1, ?lo3)

Requirements State the objectives. State the kinds of learning resources. State sequences and relations between them. … these can be found in IEEE LOM to some extent. Use your favorite DL+rules language.

Usage Practical application Search: give me LD that complies with inst. theory X. Methodcheckinggenerating “give abundant examples” Check that the appropriate number of resources of type exercise are included as part of the Environment of the activities. Contrast that those examples illustrate the same concept expressed in the objective of each activity. For each of the concepts identified in the objectives, generate in the IMS LD method an activity to teach the concept, which contains an activity that is specific for exercising, and has in its Environment a KnowledgeObject of type exercise.

Elaboration theory “Teach broader, more inclusive concepts before narrower, more detailed concepts that elaborate upon them”

Conclusions (some)Intructional methods can be (partially) made operational in term of learning resources. – Some are still too abstract (this can be a criteria for validness) (different) sets of rules can be used to check them as an aid in the instructional design process. This is largely unexplored. This has practical applications to design tools and for search!.