Can educators develop ontologies using ontology extraction tools: An end-user study

Abstract

The recent research demonstrated several important benefits in the use of semantic technologies in development of technology-enhanced environments. The one underlying assumption for most of the current approaches is that there is a domain ontology. The second unspoken assumption follows that educators will build domain ontologies for their courses. However, ontologies are hard to build. Ontology extraction tools aim to overcome this problem. We have conducted an empirical study with educators where they used current ontology tools to extract ontologies from their existing course material. The results are reported for the IT and non-IT educators. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.