Enabling technologies for developing next-generation learning object repository for construction

Teachers use variety of media to support students’ learning. Though there are many new tools and settlements in learning technologies and their specifications, there has been a fierce debate over learning objects and their development. This research aimed to examine the effect of preservice teachers’ experience in information and communication technology (ICT) use on their learning object development through (1) inspecting type, number and organization of their learning object (LO) components authored in a non-commercial system, (2) evaluating quality of their learning objects using the Learning Object Review Instrument (Nesbitt & Li, 2004), and (3) studying relationship between the components, quality and subject matter of their LOs. Seventysix pre-service teachers were asked to design and develop LOs in a non-commercial learning content development system. Analysis of their learning objects and a usability test data showed that the participants found the system easy to use in general. Novice and experienced information technology users were able to develop learning objects similar in size and features. The analysis showed meaningful correlation between the use of some of the learning object components. There seems to be significant relations between the quality of the LOs measured with the LORI items and some elements of the developed LOs, however, the novice and experienced groups’ LOs did differ neither in overall ratings nor at nine individual items of the LORI. The study suggested some further work for developing quality LOs through collaborative learning resource authoring.

This paper refers to the design and development of learning objects in folklore education using available Web 2.0 technologies, in order to effectively address teaching folk culture in a classroom. More specifically, the role of learning objects as enriching digital resources in e-books is presented along with their role as learning assets that can function independently in the learning process. Moreover, learning objects are classified based on their characteristics either as simple learning objects, namely learning assets, or as complex learning objects in which case they constitute learning resources. At the same time we make a reference to learning objects with educational learning object metadata in accordance with international standards. The paper focuses on a) the development of learning objects in folklore teaching using web 2.0 tools in the context of enriched e-book creation («digital school» framework), b) the implementation of worksheets as part of ICT-enhanced teaching scenarios in folklore teaching along with their interconnection with appropriate learning objects as enriching digital resources. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p104

Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences: a review of the state of the art

Augmented reality (AR) has become widely available to the general public. Diverse real-life AR applications, ranging from entertainment to learning, have been created. In this context, this paper describes a systematic approach to creating learning objects with an AR content. This approach yields seven steps to guide the developer: (i) requirements; (ii) design; (iii) implementation; (iv) evaluation; (v) packaging; (vi) distribution; and (vii) learning evaluation. To evaluate the proposed approach, a case study was carried out. We carried out the development and evaluation of learning objects with AR content in an elementary school. We also conducted a usability test with specialists and an experiment with 40 students, on the usage of a learning object with an AR content. The delivered lecture was compared with the use of learning objects with multimedia content (the traditional type). Post and pre-test evaluations were conducted to record the students’ learning; these indicated that the proposed learning objects are more effective than the traditional type and can play a significant role in improving students’ grades. As a result, we claim that the proposed approach efficiently guides the development of learning objects with AR content. Using the approach presented here, it was possible to conclude the following: (i) it can guide the developer to create learning objects with AR content; (ii) it can integrate learning objects into learning object repositories.

<span lang="EN-US">A number of weaknesses were demonstrated in the E-learning platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic despite the efforts invested. This has negatively influenced learners' motivation and consequently their performance. With the proliferation of technology and the revolution of information and communication technologies (ICT), learning objects have become new epitomes widely used, accessible, and implemented with educational resources and technological support. The integration of learning objects into E-learning has enhanced educational progress, but during critical periods, it is crucial to ensure pedagogical continuity and learner motivation. Based on this observation, we will propose architecture of a personalized learning object model in the context of an adaptive hypermedia learning system (AHS). The objective of our model is to increase the motivation factor which is a determining element in the success of E-learning, our model aims to improve the performance of the learners in order to avoid the abounding of learning and to promote the attendance of the learners. This will be useful later for any design or development of learning objects in hypermedia learning systems that are adaptive to the needs of the learners and in line with their preferences and profiles throughout the learning process offered by the system. </span>

EUROLAN, which has been held biennially since 1993, is one of the most significant European summer schools in the area of natural language processing. Each of the EUROLAN sessions has focused on an area of timely interest to researchers in the field; this year's EUROLAN involved students in tutorials and hands-on sessions concerned with semantic web technologies as applied to language processing, ontology creation and use, and consideration of the semantic web's potential and limitations.

The domain of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) has experienced significant improvements with the advent of building information modelling (BIM) applications, which allow AEC specialists to model all information concerning a building design into one three-dimensional building model. Much of these improvements are however generated by the mere availability of such an environment, whereas many more improvements were expected by achieving an appropriate interoperability of information. We are investigating why such an interoperability is not reached fully and consider the semantic web as an alternative approach to reach the targeted interoperability. In this paper, an AEC description framework based on semantic web technology is presented and compared to the BIM approach, after which we indicate how it might solve the issue of interoperability more appropriately. Our evaluation of this investigation indicates the semantic web approach as a valid alternative approach, although considerably more research is needed to show it capable of providing the targeted interoperability of information in the AEC domain.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore useful Semantic Web technologies and ontology-based applications for digital libraries. It also investigates the perceptions of university librarians and academicians in Pakistan about Semantic Web technologies and their use in digital libraries.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory research design based on Delphi research strategy was conducted to answer the research questions. Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 50 key informants including university librarians and academicians to explore their perceptions about Semantic Web technologies and their use in digital libraries. Thematic analysis of interview data was conducted to obtain results.FindingsThe results of this paper showed that DuraCloud, Semantic information mashup, OntoEdit and resource description framework (RDF) are the various Semantic Web applications which are useful for digital libraries to develop semantic relationships among digital contents and increase their accessibility in the web environment. Findings revealed that Semantic Web provides precise results and meets user information needs in an effective way. Results also showed that next-generation digital libraries use context-awareness technology, intelligent agent software and detecting sensors to analyze user information needs and provide dynamic information services. This paper recommended that librarians should embrace the use of emerging web technologies in libraries and offer library services through the medium of the web.Practical implicationsThis paper envisaged the future of digital library services and Semantic Web applications that can be used to re-structure metadata of digital library. This paper has practical implications for librarians to consider the useful applications of Semantic Web for digital library and enhance the interoperability of metadata among heterogeneous information systems. Practically, results obtained from this paper are highly useful for library schools and LIS teachers to up-date their curriculum by incorporating new contents related to web languages and Semantic Web applications for digital libraries.Originality/valueThis paper identifies various Semantic Web applications which are useful for developing Semantic Digital Libraries.

Future information, knowledge and content infrastructures which provide highly automatic support in fulfilling users goals will most likely rely on some form of Grid computing. In combination with Semantic Web technologies and Semantic Web services, this infrastructure will be much enhanced to form the Semantic Grid. Last but not least, one of the major driving forces for the Web and its future derivatives is actual content which can range from multimedia data (with some meta data) to "intelligent objects" i.e. content that itself, can either exhibit behavior or at least, carry semantic information that can (and must) be interpreted by the services of the Semantic Grid. This paper proposes GRISINO, an integrated infrastructure for Semantic Web Services, Intelligent Content Objects and Grid that are brought together in the search for an emerging solution that cope with rapidly increasing demands and complexity of next generation distributed applications.

Advent of technologies like semantic web, multi-agent systems, web mining has changed the internet as knowledge provider. Web personalization offers a solution to the information overload problem in current web by providing users a personalized experience, considering their interest, behavior, context and emotions. Semantic web technology is based on use of software agents, ontologies and reasoning to add meaning to web information. An important technology for achieving personalization is the use of independent intelligent software agents. This work reviews, web personalization in the light of semantic web and software agent technology. A comparative study of recent works in the domain of web personalization has been carried out for this purpose. This review highlights ample scope for application of intelligent agents in the web personalization domain for solving many existing issues like personalized content management, user profile learning, modeling and adaptive interactions with users.

Exploiting tourism destinations’ knowledge in an RDF-based P2P network

Semantic mashup of biomedical data

On the web, several key emerging technologies are shaping the landscape and creating for members of web-based communities a whole new experience. In particular the semantic web, web services, The Grid and related technologies are on their way to transform the way users interact on the web. As an illustration of this potential transformation, we propose in this article the application of the semantic web technology to a new breed of web-based community called weblogs. For convenience, parts of the content of blogs are described in the Rich Site Summary (RSS) format to be automatically read by an aggregator called a feed reader. However, the enormous number of blogs on the web makes it difficult for a single person to track down all documents of interest on a particular subject. To assist a blog user, we developed a search service based on the semantic web technology.

<div><p><em> Machine Translation has been an area of linguistic research for almost more than two decades now. But it still remains a very challenging task for devising an automated system which will deliver accurate translations of the natural languages. However, great strides have been made in this field with more success owing to the development of technologies of the web and off late there is a renewed interest in this area of research. </em></p><p><em> Technological advancements in the preceding two decades have influenced Machine Translation in a considerable way. Several MT approaches including Statistical Machine Translation greatly benefitted from these advancements, basically making use of the availability of extensive corpora. Web technology web3.0 uses the semantic web technology which represents any object or resource in the web both syntactically and semantically. This type of representation is very much useful for the computing systems to search any content on the internet similar to lexical search and improve the internet based translations making it more effective and efficient.</em></p><p><em> In this paper we propose a technique to improve existing statistical Machine Translation methods by making use of semantic web technology. Our focus will be on Tamil and Tamil to English MT. The proposed method could successfully integrate a semantic web technique in the process of WSD which forms part of the MT system. The integration is accomplished by using the capabilities of RDFS and OWL into the WSD component of the MT model. The contribution of this work lies in showing that integrating a Semantic web technique in the WSD system significantly improves the performance of a statistical MT system for a translation from Tamil to English.</em></p></div><em> In this paper we assume the availability of large corpora in Tamil language and specific domain based ontologies with Tamil semantic web technology using web3.0. We are positive on the expansion and development of Tamil semantic web and subsequently infer that Tamil to English MT will greatly improve the disambiguation concept apart from other related benefits. This method could enable the enhancement of translation quality by improving on word sense disambiguation process while text is translated from Tamil to English language. This method can also be extended to other languages such as Hindi and Indian Languages.</em>

Semantic Web technologies play an increasingly important role in the integration of heterogeneous biomedical information as well as the generation of meaningful links between biological and clinical information resources, which are at the basis of both, translational and personalized, medicine. A critical component of the emergence of these technologies is the need to represent domain knowledge, e.g. biological and medical knowledge, in the systems that we build in order to facilitate not just the low level integration of resources, but to enable knowledge-driven analysis and reasoning across them. As is true for many other scientific disciplines, in spite of the potential benefits to be gained, we are still far from seeing a widespread adoption of the Semantic Web for the Life Sciences. Part of the problem is of course the large investment of effort needed to develop sufficiently formal representations of enough Life Science knowledge in the form of ontologies and other knowledge bases, but there are also issues with the maturity of the tools and applications that are currently available to those who want to develop and use Semantic Web applications and tools in the Life Sciences. The purpose of the SWAT4LS workshops http://www.swat4ls.org is to create a space for discussions involving experts from the Computing as well as the Life Sciences, filling the gap between the possibilities and the practicalities of the Semantic Web in the Life Sciences domain. The first of these took place in Edinburgh on 28 November 2008 and at its heart was the question as to what is hindering a more rapid adoption of Semantic Web technologies in this domain. To reflect this, the panel discussion at the Edinburgh workshop was held under the heading of If the Semantic Web is so good, why is everybody using OBO for ontologies and PERL for data integration?. The original call for the SWAT4LS 2008 workshop resulted in the total of 40 submissions which were peer reviewed: 8 were accepted as full papers, 4 as poster papers and one as a demo paper. In addition, a number of posters were accepted. The workshop took place at the e-Science Institute in Edinburgh and was attended by about 80 participants. Following the actual workshop, all contributors to SWAT4LS'08 (papers as well as posters) were invited to submit extended versions of their contributions, resulting in the submission of 21 papers, which underwent another complete peer review cycle. Of these, 13 papers were selected and are included in this BMC Bioinformatics supplement. We are delighted with the collection of high quality papers that are the result of this endeavor and are confident that the readers will find them helpful in their own work on Semantic Web technologies for the Life Sciences. We would like to thank all who have contributed to the SWAT4LS 2008 workshop and this BMC Bioinformatics supplement. Specifically, we thank all the authors for their contributions, all the reviewers who served on the program committee for the original workshop call and then again for the submissions for this supplement, the invited speakers (Prof. Michael Krauthammer, Dr. M. Scott Marshall and Prof. Mark D. Wilkinson) and all the participants who made the workshop a memorable event. The support from the e-Science Institute in Edinburgh, which has hosted the workshop and covered some of the costs for our invited speakers, is also gratefully acknowledged. We also thank our sponsors: OMII-UK, LabAge SA, Leaf Bioscience and Textensor Limited for their support., Finally, we thank the staff at BMC Bioinformatics, specifically Ms. Isobel Peters, for their help with editing and processing this supplement. Albert Burger, Paolo Romano, Adrian Paschke and Andrea Splendiani (SWAT4LS Supplement Editors and Co-chairs of SWAT4LS 2008)