Collaborative Development of Informatics Curricula Based on Semantic Technologies

Abstract

Abstract:In order to keep pace with the ongoing changes in ICT and increasing common IT competencies requirements, informatics curricula at secondary school level and, consequently, curricula educating informatics teachers must be frequently changed to ensure necessary competencies. This paper proposes collaborative development of informatics curricula assisted by a software tool for compatibility analysis of secondary school informatics curricula and curricula by which teachers of informatics are educated. The proposed software tool relies upon semantic technologies, i.e. ontologies for representation of competence-based curricula and ontology alignment for compatibility analysis. The secondary school informatics curriculum ontology was built to comply with the ACM K12 standard, while the teachers' curriculum ontology was built based on the selected existing curricula. The paper presents a brief description of the software tool and the results of the domain (informatics) segment of teachers' curriculum offered by the selected Serbian university and the standardized ACM K12 compliant secondary school informatics curriculum.

Semantic web based platform for the harmonization of teacher education curricula

“…In this section the results obtained by comparing teacher education curricula are analyzed regarding the results obtained by comparing the secondary ACM K12 curriculum model and the teacher education reference curriculum model [16], and regarding the results obtained by comparing secondary ACM K12 curriculum model and the chosen teacher education curriculum model [24] in the manner described in [17]. The values of precision, recall and F-measure for all three combinations of input ontological models are shown in Figure 8.…”

“…From the literature review, it can be concluded that there are a number of papers dealing with curriculum alignment, curriculum ontological representation and ontology alignment. However, to our knowledge, only curricula synchronization platform, presented in [16] [17], is made on the basis of ontology alignment methods. The platform for the harmonization of teacher education curriculum software, presented in this paper, uses a different input ontological model compared to those presented in [16] [17].…”

“…However, to our knowledge, only curricula synchronization platform, presented in [16] [17], is made on the basis of ontology alignment methods. The platform for the harmonization of teacher education curriculum software, presented in this paper, uses a different input ontological model compared to those presented in [16] [17]. Also, the ontology matching process uses (new) algorithms adapted to the specificity of teacher education curriculum comparisons.…”

“…Chosen teacher education curricula model is based on the study program "Informatics and techniques in education" at the Technical faculty, Zrenjanin [24]. The method of mapping the curriculum into the ontological model is analogous to the procedure described in [17]. Also, the ontological models are given in owl format at [25].…”

“…The possible lower similarity values obtained when comparing the parent classes were taken into account in the experimental determination of the threshold value (70%). Thus, pairs of parent classes (shown in rows 11,12,14,16,17,21,23,26,31; Figure 5) have a similarity value below 85%, although they have a similar or identical local name. Such results can be considered as an expected consequence of calculating the similarity of the parent classes which includes the similarities of all subclasses and superclasses.…”