Supporting information access in e‐learning by integrating digital libraries and ontology
| Date | 28 September 2010 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521011084582 |
| Published date | 28 September 2010 |
| Pages | 704-728 |
| Author | Daqing He,Yefei Peng,Ming Mao,Dan Wu |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Supporting information access
in e-learning by integrating
digital libraries and ontology
Daqing He and Yefei Peng
School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Ming Mao
SAP Labs, Palo Alto, California, USA, and
Dan Wu
School of Information Management, Wuhan University,
Wuhan, People’s Republic of China
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the integration of digital library (DL) technologies
with ontology-based knowledge representation in providing semantic rich information access (IA) in
e-learning. DL technologies have powerful and flexible content management and access
functionalities, whereas ontology helps teachers and students to link content materials to their
learning objectives. This paper demonstrates that the integration provides a powerful and meaningful
e-learning environment.
Design/methodology/approach – DiLight is designed as an interactive e-learning system that
integrates DL and ontology technologies. By conducting comparative experiments involving DiLight
in students’ actual learning process, the authors examined the advantages and limitations of DiLight
in e-learning.
Findings – Compared to a widely used e-learning environment, DiLight can provide significantly
better support for students’ complex IA tasks because DiLight is more useful for relationship
discovery and problem solving. DiLight is also effective even when students were either less familiar
with tasks or felt that they were more difficult. There is no single best access method for all learning
situations. Therefore, multiple IA methods should be built into e-learning systems. Although most of
time the search was the first choice of the students, ontology-based methods were useful in supporting
them to complete their tasks too.
Originality/value – This is a comparative empirical study using an interactive e-learning system
called DiLight to explore the usage of integrated DL and ontology in e-learning. The experiment
results demonstrate the value of the multiple IA methods provided by DL, and the usefulness of
integrating DL with ontology.
Keywords E-learning,Digital libraries, Information, Facilities
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
This work is partially supported by the Provost’s Innovation of Teaching Award at University
of Pittsburgh and by the National Social Science Foundation of China under the agreement
09CTQ026.
OIR
34,5
704
Refereed article received
19 June 2009
Approved for publication
10 March 2010
Online Information Review
Vol. 34 No. 5, 2010
pp. 704-728
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684521011084582
Introduction
With the advancement of computer, multimedia and network technologies, alternatives
to traditional classroom learning have been developed. E-learning is one such
alternative where students can access course-related materials via online computer
systems. It is being explored as an effective way of delivering materials to previously
unreachable students with previously unavailable access and presentation methods.
Horton (2000, p. 6) even claims that it is “part of the biggest change in the way our
species conducts training since the invention of the chalkboard or perhaps the
alphabet”.
However, e-learning systems still face several challenges in terms of content
organisation, knowledge representation (KR), and access management. First, the
document collections in e-learning systems contain complex and often mixed-media
materials because of the w idespread application o f digital and presentatio n
technologies in modern learning activities. At the same time, the collections are
constantly updated with materials being added, edited, or removed, often by teachers,
but sometimes by students too if collaborative activities from students are encouraged.
Therefore, the collection organisation side of e-learning systems should be flexible in
content representation, friendly in content management, and intuitive in user interface.
Second, along with the advantage of allowing students to access the learning systems
at any time and in any place, the presence of teachers during the learning process,
which is an important component of face-to-face education, could be missing. How to
retain the knowledge provided by teachers in an e-learning environment and present it
in a straightforward and intuitive way is an important KR challenge that e-learning
systems need to address. Third, although the ways of accessing and interacting with
learning materials have traditionally been dictated by teachers, students in e-learning
systems can choose their own strategies and means to do so. This therefore poses
access management challenges in that it requires e-learning systems to have multiple
access and interaction methods to accommodate students’ various needs and
preferences. Of course, we acknowledge that e-learning systems are facing many other
challenges too. For example, Conlan et al. (2006) talk about the challenges of bridging
the gap between engineering sound e-learning systems with pedagogically appropriate
and effective theories, and Brusilovsky and Peylo (2003) present studies aimed at the
challenges of adding adaptation and intelligence into e-learning systems.
The research presented in this paper aims to address the above three challenges by
integrating into e-learning systems the technologies from one related discipline: digital
libraries (DLs). A DL, in general, refers to a collection of digital objects (such as digital
text, images, and videos) and a set of associated techniques and services that help to
collect, organise, retrieve, and preserve those digital objects for a community of users
(Borgman, 2000). Documents in the collection are self-contained digital materials
accompanied by metadata describing the content and characteristics of the documents.
In DL, the roles of the collection and the metadata are to help to group and organise
fragmented-related materials into meaningful and logical units, and at the same time,
enable access to and presentation of those materials in a dynamic and flexible manner.
Therefore, DL technologies may provide an answer to the content representation
challenge mentioned above. Besides combining DL technologies, our approach also
explores the application of KR technologies – specifically ontology – and information
retrieval techniques in resolving the content organisation and access challenges.
Integrating
digital libraries
and ontology
705
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