OWL-Based Ontology to Represent Interactions of Students in Educational Virtual Worlds

Abstract

While several studies in the last decade explore the potential benefits of virtual worlds in education settings, less attention has been given to the research of solutions to help overcome implementation barriers. One of the existing areas of concern is related to the difficulties on the exploitation of data obtained from educational virtual worlds. This paper proposes an OWL-based ontology to address a solution to the problem of inconsistency of databases that record information about student interactions with learning objects within these environments. The steps that have been followed for the development of the ontology are described, guided by Stanford’s 101 model. To discuss the feasibility and exemplify the ontology, an instance of an existing virtual world interaction is presented. The conclusion is that the proposed ontology can be helpful to researchers and development groups as it delivers a reusable model to gather data in a uniform way.