=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1262/paper3
|storemode=property
|title=A Knowledge-Based Model for Instructional Design
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1262/paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-1262
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/semweb/Koceva14
}}
==A Knowledge-Based Model for Instructional Design==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1262/paper3.pdf
A knowledge-based model for instructional design
Frosina Koceva
Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy
frosina.koceva@edu.unige.it
Abstract. This thesis will discuss a knowledge-based model for the design and
development of units of learning and teaching aids. The idea behind this work
originates from previous theoretical work on ECM - Educational Concept Map
(a logical and abstract annotation system, derived from the theories of instruc-
tional design), from the open issues in designing instructional authoring system,
and from the lack of a well-defined process able to merge pedagogical strate-
gies with systems for the knowledge organization of the domain.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Topic Maps, Instructional Design, Se-
mantic technologies
1 Problem Statement
Teaching and learning have undergone profound changes in recent years, partly a
consequence of the evolution of learning theories, in part dependent on the develop-
ment and evolution of network technologies. The emergence of constructivist theories
of learning models [1] was accompanied by the evolution of the management of learn-
ing processes that have facilitated the dynamics of sharing and co-construction of
knowledge. The evolution of this scenario prepared the ground to new challenges to
research on issues such as interoperability and reusability of learning materials, acces-
sibility, personalization, the definition of standards, quality, etc.
The basic idea that drove this PhD thesis starts from this awareness. The final goal
is the definition and development of a knowledge-based model for instructional de-
sign with specific focus on educational content designed, to be used in e-learning
environments, taking into account the perspectives of development that appears to
promise the web today, grounded also on a pedagogical reflection and scientific
knowledge we have today.
The approach proposed in this thesis finds its foundation in the work of those who
in recent decades have addressed the problems underlying the processes of learning
on the one hand and the other knowledge representation, with particular attention to
the area of research that goes under the name of the semantic web.
The specific problem I address is a knowledge-based model for the design and de-
velopment of units of learning and teaching aids. The idea originates from the analy-
sis of the open issues in instructional authoring system, and from the lack of a well-
defined process able to merge pedagogical strategies with systems for the knowledge
adfa, p. 1, 2011.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
organization of the domain. In particular, the plan is to ground the work on the ECM -
Educational Concept Map - model: a logical and abstract annotation system, derived
from the theories of instructional design, developed with the aim of guaranteeing the
reusability of both teaching materials and knowledge structures [2]. By means of
ECMs, will be possible to design lessons and/or learning paths from an ontological
structure characterized by the integration of hierarchical and associative relationships
among the educational objectives. Within this context, I will address also the problem
to find a “suitable” teaching and learning path through an ECM, i.e., a sequence of
concept characterizing the subject matter under definition (a lesson or an entire
course), and how these maps can be implemented by means of semantic web stand-
ards and technologies [3, 4, 5, 6].
An ECM has a two level structure: the level of concept, i.e. a model of representa-
tion of the subject matter where each topic can be associated (level of resources) with
one or more resources describing the topic itself (documents, pictures, movies, ...).
The plan is therefore to use the level of concept to automatically search relevant re-
sources that are, in turn, associated to each topic of the level of concept in semi auto-
matic way (by approval of the teacher). That is planned to do translating the ECM
structure in RDF triples and activating web search extracting data from educational
datasets by means of a combination of triples (see research questions).
2 Relevancy
The problems I address in this thesis are still open issues in instructional authoring
system, and there is still a lack of a well-defined process able to merge pedagogical
strategies with systems for the knowledge organization of the domain. By means of
the logical and abstract annotation model of ECMs, it will be possible to design les-
sons and/or learning paths (see previous section). Once an ECM for a subject matter is
defined by a teacher, the design of a lesson (for the teacher) and the surfing through a
learning path for a student become a problem of topological sorting (on a graph) [7].
The possibility to make adaptive topological sort on an ECM become a powerful tool
both for teachers, during the instructional design phase, and for students, during the
learning phase.
Indeed, once an ECM is defined, the teacher can design a lesson adapting it on the
previous background of its class, and a student can personalize the learning path de-
pending on its specific knowledge and skills.
3 Related Work
This thesis addresses the problem of instructional authoring system from different
point of view trying to integrate into a same model distinct aspects. From the peda-
gogical point of view, the framework of reference is that depicted by Stelzer and
Kingsley in [8] and later revised in [9]; from the point of view of the representation of
the subject matter the reference model is that of subject centric networks with specific
focus on the Topic Maps model [10]; from the point of view of technology related
works are that carried out by projects and research consortia working on Topic Maps
[3, 4, 5, 6]. The real difficulty is the integration between pedagogical and technological
aspects in a common tool easy to be used by teachers and students.
4 Research Question(s)
The goal of this thesis is to development a system that assist the teacher for the design
of a course by proposing a pliable model of domain knowledge on the base of a
course (see relevancy) with the aim of guarantee the reusability of both the teaching
aids and knowledge structure of a single disciplines. As to reusability, the ECM are
designed to maintain the concept layer separate from the resources, making it possible
to provide courses with the same CCM from the ECM but with different resources.
Furthermore. for the implementation of efficient information search, metadata will be
a central component and an pedagogical ontology describing the characteristics of the
didactic resource will be defined. In TM metadata can be isolated and stored separate-
ly from the object, but still closely connected to the object. Since we need a represen-
tation of domain that can be seen from different points of view, each view showing a
different structure, different set of parts, differently related [Prietula and Marchak,
1985] it seemed to us that TM are an appropriate abstraction for designing units of
learning. Once an educational objective is define the system will assist the design of
the course by automatically identifying the “prerequisites”, in other words the concept
that a student must know before attending a given unit of learning and the learning
outcomes, on base of the relations (see approach). Still in assisting the teacher it re-
mains an open problem how to propose and identify automatically resources to
him/her. Accessibility, readability and searchability of web information are crucial for
the semi-automatic extension of the knowledge base of our ECM. Integrating infor-
mation from the two coexisting semantic web exchanging formats (RDF and TM) it’s
not a straightforward process, but our idea of web information retrieval is based on
simplificate mapping of topics to RDF triples for RDF extraction of data from educa-
tional datasets. In order to propose to the teacher a possible sequence of topics where
each topic can appear only once and cannot be preceded by any of his successors the
systems implements a topological order modified algorithm that provides all the pos-
sible sequence of topological sorting (see approach). This is possible since between
the units of learning and between the topics there could be a propedeutic relations (is-
requirement-of) which is unidirectional relation that impose a precedence relationship
that makes the unit of learning an acyclic graph.
5 Hypotheses
The availability of “sound” knowledge-based tools increases the productivity of
teachers (time and quality) in the daily process of instructional design.
6 Preliminary results
The system is in the initial stage of implementation. The decision on the implementa-
tion framework to use for the development was conditioned on the usage of an open
source framework that implements the TM standard possibly with active community.
One further requirements was the mapping functionality of TM to RDF and vice ver-
sa. At first we focused on testing two open-source tools, Ontopia [5] and Wandora [6];
then we opt for building the system on top of Ontopia as being a well-established
topic maps creation tool, with good reputation and with a powerful and flexible
graphical presentation tool. The system besides the Ontopia engine for the creation of
the TM and TM repository has a Resource Engine that handles the versioning and the
metadata of the resources. Also further functionalities should be implemented for the
topological ordering (see next section) and the assistance in the building of the CCM.
7 Approach
Educational Concept Maps (ECMs) are a formal representation of the subject matter
structure in the context of learning environments, and a formal definition of the model
is available in [2]. To understand the work of this thesis it is necessary, however, re-
port here some concepts. An ECM is a logical and abstract annotation model created
with the aim of guaranteeing the reusability of teaching materials, as well as of
knowledge structures, and designed taking into account the pedagogical requirements
defined by Educational Modeling Language research group [14]. It has been devel-
oped by means of an ontological structure characterized by the integration of hierar-
chical and associative relationships. Firstly, it asks teachers and instructional design-
ers to focus their attention on learners’ profile (in particular educational background,
learning and cognitive styles) and objectives. Taking into account these elements, the
model suggests how to identify, within the discipline’s subject matter, the key con-
cepts and their relationships so as to identify effective strategies of contents presenta-
tion and to support the activation of meaningful learning processes.
Fig. 1. CADDIE model
According to that model, a profiled learner has a goal identified by an objective (or a
composition of objectives) that is achieved by a Unit of Learning (UoL), or by a com-
position of UoLs. The Course Unit (CU) is the indivisible union of an objective with
its unit of learning and can be composed by creating the tree structure of the course
(learning units, sub-learning units, etc.). The course units may be connected each
other by means of the Educational Associations (EA) that may represent a link or a
propaedeutic relationship the units have (see Fig. 1.). In particular, four types of EA
have been identified:
· is-requirement-of: identifying a transitive and propaedeutic association between two
or more topics (e.g., it may be used with the aim of specifying the logical order of
contents);
· is-related-to: identifying a symmetric association among closely related topics (e.g.,
it may be used with the aim of creating learning paths without precedence con-
straints);
· is-not-related-to: identifying a symmetric relation of indifference between two or
more topics (e.g., it may be used with the aim of making explicit the absence of asso-
ciation among topics);
· is-suggested-link-of: identifying not-closely related concepts (e.g., this relationship
type may be used in order to suggest in-depth resources, internal or external to the
contents repository).
These relation types have been defined with the aim of allowing teachers to create
different learning paths (with or without precedence constraints among topics).
The same types of relationship can be found between topics. The latter are the smaller
granularity of the ECM model. They represent the concepts of the domain: any sub-
jects a teacher may want to talk about. Moreover, the units of learning are connected
to the topics through two relationships:
o has-primary-topic: where a primary topic identifies the “prerequisites”, in other
words the concept that a student must know before attending a given unit of learning;
o has-secondary-topic: where secondary topic identifies the concepts that will be
explained in the present unit of learning (this kind of topics will have specific learning
materials associated).
In the ECM model, a course unit contains an educational objective and a unit of learn-
ing. Connected to the UoL there are the topics of the conceptual map describing the
domain of the course itself. These topics can be both primary or secondary, depending
on the context they are included in, within the unit of learning. Finally the secondary
topics contain the material aid. Such resources, grouped in a unit of learning, enable
to reach the objective connected to the UoL itself. The CUs allow the teachers to cre-
ate complex nested structures using the EA.
The ECM model is the theoretical framework for the design of a system, currently in
the implementation phase, with some innovative features described in the following:
1. The possibility to publish an Educational Concept Map on the Web and the
relationships suggest the different navigation strategies of the underlying
subject matter. The possibility to generate a linearized path, useful, for ex-
ample, for a teacher to produce a lesson or a document about a given subject
matter. In this latter case, a Suggested Paths Strategy is necessary, to be ex-
pressed by means of is-requirement-of relationships.
To explain the strategy behind the Suggested Paths Strategy, let us also consider the
idea of preparing a lesson on a given argument, using the previous ECM model.
The Rreq (is-requirement-of) relationships order the topics T of the lesson according to
the propaedeutics rules, therefore in the graph G=(T, E) there cannot be loops, thus
obtaining a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG), where T are nodes and E arcs, with: (ti,tj) א
(ļ5req(ti, tj).
In this context, a Topological Order is a sequence S = {s1, s2, … s|T|} where each
element T appears only once and cannot be preceded by any of his successors; given
pair of nodes (ti,tj) in S if there exists an arc from ti to tj, it follows that the node ti is
before the node tj in the list: (ti,tj) אS: (ti,tj) ( אĺL M
The algorithm implementing the Topological Order is derived by Topological sorting
algorithm [7] with a main modification in order to get all the possible sequences of
topological sorting. Therefore we let the teacher to chose which of this sequences
better answers the accomplishment of the didactic objectives. For as much as the top-
ics are topologically ordered this doesn’t take into account the distance factor in be-
tween the topics, thus a new element (Topic Aider - TA) is introduced in the sequence
S before the distant topic to recall the subject. The TA could be an exercise, an exam-
ple, a text or a valuation test. This recall is also reported in the final sequence in order
to highlight not only to the teacher, but also to the student the place where s/he should
evoke an determinate argument. The choice to have not a single path but a list of
paths to suggest to the author leaving the final choice to the author him/herself, is also
to answer to the non-equifinality problem posed in [15]. The "suggested" order lists is
on the basis of the principle of reducing as much as possible the distance between two
topics of the list that are contiguous on the graph.
In order to implement such a model, Topic Maps (TM) has been chosen. TM is an
ISO multi-part standard [3] designed for encoding knowledge and connecting this
encoded knowledge to relevant information resources. The standard defines a data
model for representing knowledge structures and a specific XML-based interchange
syntax, called XML Topic Maps (XTM) [4]. The main elements in the TM paradigm
are: topic (a symbol used to represent one, and only one, subject), association (a rela-
tionship between two or more topics) and occurrence (a relationship between a sub-
ject and an information resource).
Therefore, two layers can be identified into the TMs paradigm:
x the knowledge layer representing topics and their relationships, allowing to
construct the ECM model;
x the information layer describing information resources, to be attached to the
ECM topics.
Each topic can be featured by any number of names (and variants for each name); by
any number of occurrences, and by its association role, that is a representation of the
involvement of a subject in a relationship represented by an association. All these
features are statements and they have a scope representing the context a statement is
valid in. Using scopes it is possible to avoid ambiguity about topics; to provide differ-
ent points of view on the same topic (for example, based on users’ profile) and/or to
modify each statement depending on users’ language, etc. Therefore, to solve ambigu-
ity issues, each subject, represented by a topic, is identified by a subject identifier.
This unambiguous identification of subjects is also used in TMs to merge topics that,
through these identifiers, are known to have the same subject (two topics with the
same subject are replaced by a new topic that has the union of the characteristics of
the two originals).
The knowledge layer can also be used, as introduced in the Problem Statement sec-
tion, to automatically search relevant resources that are, in turn, associated to each
topic of the information layer in semi automatic way (by approval of the teacher).
8 Evaluation plan
The system is presently in a first stage of implementation. Particular attention will be
paid to the design and implementation of the user interface. There is a plan during the
second half of the next year of my PhD course to experiment the prototype of the
system within a selected teachers of EPICT community (www.epict.it), a large com-
munity of teachers of the Italian secondary schools. The plan is to measure both the
usability of the user interface and the instrument's effectiveness in terms of improving
the work of the teacher. In particular, it will seek to evaluate the improvement of daily
activities of instructional design carried out by the teacher in terms of both the reduc-
tion of design time, and of increased efficacy of the process of instructional design.
I will prepare questionnaire to collect quantitative data, deepen then the results
with focus groups.
The experience of teachers with this system will be compared with the previous
experience of the same teachers
9 Reflections
The idea behind this thesis has been stimulated by the real “needs” of a community of
teachers to have model and tools that facilitates some phases of instructional design.
Since the concept representation is independent of its implementation, ECM lends
itself for reusability of both teaching materials and knowledge structure. Thus the
knowledge structure could be reused for the design of a different course according to
the learner target, and new resources could be automatically proposed for the infor-
mation layer, hence semi-automatically populating (by approval of the teacher) the
course map. From student point of view, the subject-centric nature of the TM help
learners to identify core concepts, while the extended TM with the learning path as-
sists the student for proper order sequence of studying. Moreover, the underlying
model, ECM, is grounded on pedagogical reflections. For these reasons we believe
that this model will have a good acceptance by the community of teachers we plan to
select for the testing phase.
Acknowledgments.
I would like to express my very great appreciation to my PhD Advisor Prof. Giovanni
Adorni, acknowledging his valuable ideas, constructive suggestions and support dur-
ing the planning and development of the ECM model and this research work.
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