Constructing a Learner Centric Semantic Syllabus for

Automatic Text Book Generation

Guide:Dr. Kannan Moudgalya

Course Cordinator:Dr. Sahana Murthy

Aliabbas Petiwala114380003Education Technology Dept, Semester IETS 801

Purpose of Syllabus(Jay Parkes 2002)

Three Features of a Learner-Centered Syllabi

Create a collaborative active learning environment.

(R. M. Palloff 1999.) (P. Dillenbourg 1996) (M. Warschauer 1997)

Problem• syllabus documents are designed for human

readers, not computers(PDF,HTML)• Inconsistency leads to chaos:– difficulty in browsing, managing and evolving the

syllabus • Even when a CMS is used, the course contents

are not structured in a consistent manner which makes the task of reusing or splitting the existing syllabus difficult and tedious

• The syllabus does not specify the exhaustive list of topics that need to be covered in the course.

A Good Syllabus…Important Elements Miscellaneous Elements

– Course Title

– Course Description

– Course Prerequisites

– Topics Covered

– Knowledge Units

– Learning Objectives

– Reading List

• Books

• Book Chapters

• Articles and Papers

• Other Scholarly Publications

– Classroom Material

• Presentation Slides

• Instructor’s Notes

•Assignments

– Information about:

• Instructors

• Teaching Assistants

– Course Calendar

(Jay Parkes 2002)

Studies Regarding Benefits Of A Well-defined Syllabus And Its Importance To Students

• studies conducted in Taiwan found that, most syllabi in the sciences included only brief outline of the course

• An exhaustive list of subject topics to be covered was not present (Tung 2010).

• Studies have showed that students do refer to the syllabus contrary to the usual grievance of the instructors that students don’t read it, loose it or have no interest in it (Calhoon and Becker 2008)

• Studies suggest that students often enroll a course based on a their own perception arising out of the course name (DiClementi and Handelsman 2005)

• Conclusion: well-defined and exhaustive syllabus would help in eliminating wrong or incomplete impression about a course from students minds

State of Art

• A learner centric syllabus stresses on collaborative learning (R. M. Palloff 1999.) (P. Dillenbourg 1996) (M. Warschauer 1997)

• Learner-centric syllabus is vital to the process of collaborative active learning communities.

• Vygotsky social development theory (1978) • Thus in a learner centric syllabus the content and

the teacher adapt to the students feedback and suggestions rather than expecting the students to adapt to the content.

State of Art:Learner Centric Syllabus

Among other things an effective learner-centered syllabus should provide a clear statement of intended goals , student outcomes and include difficult-to-obtain materials such as readings, complex charts, and graphs(J. Grunert 1997)

State of Art :Open syllabus format in XML

• Open Syllabus Model(O. Gerbé, J. Raynauld 2009)

• Not semantic web ready • The schematics of the open syllabus model do

not address the exhaustive syllabus content requirements of our proposed book authoring tool.

XML Syllabus Structure

Why Semantic Syllabus

11

Model Example Format Data Metadata Identifier Query Syntax Semantics (Meaning)

Relational MS SQL, Oracle, MySQL

Table Cell Values

Table Column Definitions

Primary Key (Data Column) Value

SQL N/A

Hierarchical XML Tag/Attribute Values

XSD/DTD e.g. Unique Attribute Key Value

XPath N/A

Graph OWL/RDF/XML, Turtle

RDF RDFS/OWL URI SPARQL Yes, using RDFS and OWL

1. Syntax independent (specifies Semantics\Knowledge Model)• Some existing serializations: OWL/RDF/XML, N3, Turtle• Focus on semantics

2. Consistent semantics• Based on URIs

3. Great for data integration problems

State of Art : CDIO Syllabus• CDIO is proposed by four leading universities of

the world which includes MIT.• The CDIO Syllabus is a taxonomy that represents

a long list of desired knowledge and skills required by graduating engineers.

• “Graduating engineers should be able to Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate complex value-added engineering systems in a modern team-based environment” (E. F. Crawley 2011).

• Thus the CDIO taxonomy assists the syllabus maker in designing a CDIO inspired syllabus.

ITU matrix to classify Course Topics

• (I:Introduce) if the topic is of introductory nature and requires no assessment.

• (T:Teach) for topics that need to be taught systematically and assessed

• (U:Utilized) for prerequisite topics that are assumed to be known.

J. Bankel 2005

An Example (S. Gunnarsson)

Syllabus Topics

State of Art : The Connexions project

• A repository of educational content.• Rice University’s Connexions and the Community

College Open Textbook Project (CCOTP) • collaborated to develop a proof-of-concept for free

and open textbook (Baker 2009)• Documents a workflow process that would support

adoption of open textbooks. • Open textbooks provides low cost alternative to

traditional publishers’ textbooks and can help to make higher education more affordable.

State of Art : The Connexions project

• Connexions also identified lessons learned about open textbook use by students and faculty, e.g., the value of availability and customizability

• CCOTP recommends using Connexions as the common repository for open textbook content in an effort to provide greater national and international access.

• One major drawback of the open textbook proposal is that the open textbook is not organized as per syllabus requirements and has no mention of the inclusion of syllabus to organize its content accordingly.

• We have seen the importance of Syllabus!.

Proposed Methodology : Active Learner Community

Syllabus in RDF\

OWL

CDEEP TranscriptsCDEEP Transcripts

RDF\OWL ConverterCourse InstructorCourse Instructor

Collaborative Book Authoring ToolCharts, Graphs..Charts, Graphs..

TablesTables

Authored Books Based On SyllabusAuthored Books

Based On SyllabusUI To Enter Syllabus Information

UI To Enter Syllabus Information

Active Learner Community

To b

e re

view

ed

Additional Resources, References, suggestions

Reso

urce

s, R

efer

ence

s

To be reviewed

Presentations,Animations,

Documents...

Presentations,Animations,

Documents...

Discovered Resources

Syllabus Schem

a

Instructor Requirements and goals

Proposed OWL Ontology for syllabus

UML Representation of semantic syllabus OWL ontology

Object properties and Instances of Units and Topics covered

EE

InstructorInstructorAA

BB

DD

CC

Owl:sameAs

Owl:sameAs

Owl:sameAs

Owl:sameAs

Owl:sameAs

LOD Cloud

Owl:sameAsOwl:sameAs

FF

Easier data integration helps in

Collaborative Learning

Benefits of Using OWL for representing the syllabus

Why Semantic Web Ontologies?

-Easier Syllabi(data model) Interoperability and evolution•New syllabi can be easily added.•Real time Schema change seamless.•Old and new data models \syllabi co-exist in merged model.•Relationships between the old and new models are expressed explicitly.

April 10, 2023 21

Example

• Learner A has Topics (Data Structures)

• Learner B has Topics (Data Structures)

April 10, 2023 23

• Step 1: Merge Ontologies• Same nodes (URIs) join automatically

owl:sameAs

April 10, 2023 24

Owl:sameAs

• Step 1: Merge RDF• Same nodes (URIs) join automatically

April 10, 2023 25

Easier data integration helps in Collaborative Learning

• Instructor has its own model making use of A and B

April 10, 2023 26

Owl:sameAs

Future Work And Further Research Directions

• An automated textbook generator which will employ the semantic syllabus ontology.

• Granularity of the information extraction in terms of paragraphs, mathematical equations, Figures, tables needs to be specified in the syllabus ontology.

• Ontology guided information extraction.• A standard format needs to be developed or an

existing standard is to be used to transcribe the IIT Bombay CDEEP lectures(use of a Content Management System?).

• The use of a wiki in aiding the collaborative effort of textbook generation has to be studied and evaluated.

Future Work And Further Research Directions

• Additional Meta data to describe chunking, content sequence and granularity in the syllabus ontology is needed to accommodate articulate textbook generation.

• Personalization and adaptivity in syllabus specification based on learning styles is also an important research direction which will work towards improving the usability and aesthetic appeal of the generated textbook for the learner.

• A survey needs to be designed and conducted among the Indian SMEs like IIT professors to gather more data on the requirements of the professors from this project and further suggestions.

Future Work And Further Research Directions

• The interoperability of this approach with the Connexions project of Rice University can be studied further.

• Connexions project can help the textbook generator to compile content from the education repository guided by the open semantic syllabus

Conclusion• A semantic syllabus is required to guide a book

authoring tool to generate educational content or text books in collaboration with an active learning community.

• The specification of the proposed semantic syllabus ontology was also described.

• The overall methodology for automated textbook generation was also proposed.

• The intricacies and specifications of the book authoring tool and the active learning community to automatically generate learning objects needs to be developed.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Professor Sahana Murthy of Education Technology Dept and Professor Pushpak Bhattacharya of Computer Science Dept, IIT Bombay for providing valuable insights and direction to this this truly interdisciplinary effort

REFERENCES

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