Context-aware search inside e-learning materials using textbook ontologies

Abstract

One of the main problems of delivering online course materials to learners lies in a deficiency of search capability. We propose a method for querying inside lecture materials exploiting a textbook ontology, which is automatically constructed from a back-of-the-book index and table of contents. The use of a textbook ontology is two-fold: (i) to help users formulate query more efficiently, and (ii) to discriminate query results that are relevant to user information needs from those that merely contain query terms but are not informative. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.