Application of Ontology from Course and Forum Discussion Learning Content

Hazalina Hashim

Abstract


The capability of ontology application to add meaning to information, indexed in such a way that it can be reused, searched, processed and shared has been extensively explored and recognized in e-learning education. As such, it is the interest of this paper to apply the use of ontology from course module and forum discussion learning content in e-learning setting.  Thus, the ontology designed with SKOS specification is used to structure into concepts and relationships in order to develop and highlight the essential learning content. Furthermore, a semantic forum system is proposed as a mechanism to represent the ontology designed into semantic knowledge representation for learner to easily access, search and navigate the relevant knowledge of interest. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the proposed system along with three dimensions namely learners’ perceptions, system design perceptions, and system content perceptions. Accordingly, a close-ended online survey was developed and administered to 74 online learners. The findings demonstrate positive perception that contributes to effective learning system that able to enhance the understanding of course taught.


Keywords


e-learning; ontology;semantic web technologies; SKOS; online forum; course content; semantic forum

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22385/jctecs.v2i0.14