Demonstration Experiment of a System that Helps Users Select Educational Content Using Terms in Basic/advanced Relationships

Abstract

With a range of learning platforms available on the Internet and the increasing use of video content in education, there have been many studies on using ontologies to support education and learning. However, in many cases, the connections among content systematized in this way are confined within a subject, and there is no learning across subjects or expansion of learners' interests beyond individual subjects. We aimed to connect all educational content in a way that goes beyond school subjects and curricula. In this study, we re-examined the learning sequence of subject matter terms over the course of the learning process, redefined it as a set of basic/advanced relationships among the terms, and proposed a method of estimating the appropriate ordering of content for learning by structuring and utilizing this terminological attribute. We also prototyped a system incorporating our proposed method to help users select educational content and tested it in a proof-of-concept experiment. By comparing the textbook-based presentation of related content with our proposed cross-subject presentation, we identified each method's characteristics and confirmed the proposed method's effectiveness at expanding learners' interests.