Ontology Technique and Meaningful Learning Support Environments

Abstract

In this chapter, we present two ontology-driven learning support systems, which intend to provide meaningful learning environment: a customizable language learning support system (CLLSS) and a visualization learning support system for e-book users (VSSE). CLLSS was built to provide an interface for the learning objects arrangement which displays the visual representation of knowledge points and their relations. The intention underlying the development of CLLSS is to encourage instructors to orient their teaching materials to specific knowledge points and even directly to relations between knowledge points. With these orientations, CLLSS is able to provide an environment in which learners can readily distinguish between related knowledge points. In the other hand, VSSE is designed and developed to help e-book learners to effectively construct their knowledge frameworks. Making use of e-book logs, VSSE supports not only meaningful receptive learning but also meaningful discovery learning. In other words, two learning modes are provided in VSSE: (a) reception comparison mode, in which learners are provided directly with complete versions of relation maps; and (b) cache-cache comparison mode, where all information concerning relations is hidden at the first stage of learning, and in the second stage learners are encouraged to actively create them.