ONTOLOGY-BASED INTERNATIONAL DEGREE RECOGNITION Vagan Terziyan, Olena Kaykova University of Jyväskylä, Finland Oleksandra Vitko, Lyudmila Titova (speaker) Kharkov National University of Radioelectronics, Ukraine Yerevan State University June 2005

Motivation Bologna process and “eurointegration” needs the development of new opened educational standards (there exist substantial differences between Ukrainian and EU standards in higher education ) none (even the best) of the European universities can provide students with the optimal set of courses of the best experts Educational Ontologies

Motivation (2) ECTS – just instrument for credit transfer management of students exchange demands comparison of curricular of host and home universities, bilateral agreements, personal contact of university administrators and takes much time; constant changes in curricular either EU or Ukrainian universities need constant concordance of curricular and constant personal contact of host and home university administartors Educational Ontologies

Compact Project TEMPUS UM_CP “Development of a New Framework for M.Sc. Thesis Work“ Project duration – Consortium: University of Jyväskylä, Finland (coordinating university) Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece Kharkov National University of Radioelectronics, Ukraine One of the Outcomes: Model of accounting ECTS credits in Ukraine

Credit Transfer and Degree Recognition: Tasks How to transfer? Decision: ECTS What to transfer ? (What students knowledge is equal?) Decision: ???

Complexity of Problem Credit transfer should be based on formalized semantics of course (formalized knowledge and skills), it shouldn’t be based only on text annotation of course Formalization of educational standards, and also automated support of degree recognition and finding divergences in study plans of exchanged students by entering semantic annotations in educational standards, curricular Diploma Supplement Courses Semantic Topics Educational Ontologies

The Project Idea and Objective Project Idea: development of formalized educational standards for automation of credit transfer and degree recognition Project Objective: to develop a methodology and technology for the Ontology-Based Transparent Degree concept for degrees’ standardisation and international recognition Educational Ontologies

Methodology Methodology for ontology-based comparison of higher educational standards: a framework for integration of Higher Educational standards in Ukraine with those in European Universities, models of upper and pilot ontologies to support standardization of educational resources ; Technology Technology for creation and comparison of ontology-based information resources in higher education; pilot tool for ontology-based international degree recognition and individual study plan generation; Project Outcomes Educational Ontologies

Web-based Tool Student plans to studу in foreign university KNURE curric ulum Curric ulum ПерезалікРозходження Web service using ontology approach Credit transfer Divergence Educational Ontologies

converting of national educational documents to those by European standards, automatic recognition of courses and degrees of different universities, generation of individual study plans for international mobility students, semantic annotation of national information resources in education, readability of our education for EU countries. The Technology will Ensure Educational Ontologies

Industrial Ontologies Group Using the New Information Technology Semantic Web for Automation of Educational Tasks Scientific supervisor  Vagan Terziyan Prof., Head of Artificial Intelligence Department, KNURE, Ukraine; Visiting Prof., Department of Mathematical Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; Visiting Prof., Department of Artificial Intelligence, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands

Why and Where Semantic Web ? WWW Business Knowledge Management  more then 3,000,000,000 web-pages  “Information” burst  ICT needs comprehensive resource management technology  Needs for integration of businesses  Web Services for e-Business  Standardization and Interoperability problems  Consolidate and reuse experience  Standardize knowledge sharing technology  Needs for the intelligent tools to use human’s knowledge

What is Semantic Web ? “The Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on the Web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications”

Semantic Web: What to Annotate ? Educational resources Web resources / services / DBs / etc. Web users (profiles, preferences) Web access devices Smart machines and devices Web agents / applications External world resources Shared ontology

Ontologies in Education Ontology is the complete formalized specification of domain (description of objects, concepts, knowledge about them and links between them, inference rules, …) The goal of educational ontology development – possibility of total “understanding” of Ukrainian educational standards and documents either by foreign academicians, or by programs for their automatic processing

Semantic Web: Semantic Search user request for semantic search search agent Shared ontology Semantic annotation Web resources / services / DBs / etc.

Semantic Web: Resource Integration Integrated resource Shared ontology Semantic annotation Web resources / services / DBs / etc.

Internationalization of Education Ontology Bologna Declaration Ministry of Education and Science Semantic annotations of demands and documents Automatic procedure of semantic identification Standards of higher education in Ukraine Semantic annotation of standard Principals, demands, recommendations and documents linked to Bologna Declaration

Automatic System Supporting Degree Recognition Automatic procedure of semantic identification Ontology Semantic annotations of documents Educational standard Diploma and Diploma Supplement University 1 University 2

Conclusion technology environment Semantic Web context Semantic Web is not only a technology as many used to name it; Semantic Web is not only an environment as many naming it now; Semantic Web it is a new context within which one should rethink and re- interpret his existing businesses, resources, services, technologies, processes, environments, products etc. to raise them to totally new level of performance… Management and Internationalization of Education are specific fields, in which advances of Semantic Web approach can bring essential effect