Supporting contextualized learning with linked open data

Abstract

The proposed approach generates contextualized learning tasks out of the Linked Open Data.• This approach is applied to the domain of History of Art in the Spanish region of Castile and Leon and it semiautomatically created 16K tasks using three LOD sources.• The assessment of the tasks with 8 teachers showed that 85% of the tasks generated were aligned with the content taught in the classroom and were found to be relevant to learn in other non-formal spaces.

Casual Learn: A linked data-based mobile application for learning about local Cultural Heritage

“…In our previous work [24] we created a dataset of learning tasks about Cultural Heritage by following a semiautomatic process. Specifically, we crawled the Web of Data to retrieve and integrate more than 2,000 descriptions of Cultural Heritage sites from DBpedia, 3 Wikidata 4 and the Open Data portal of Castile and Leon.…”

“…For example, the description of the Palace of Fabio Nelli offered by the Open Data portal of Castile and Leon does not include an image, so we could not state the foaf:depiction relationship for its corresponding context. We created tasks related to these contexts by applying a set of templates [24] to this same data. Each template includes a filter, to select a subset of Cultural Heritage sites descriptions; and a constructor, to generate a task out of each description selected.…”

“…Following this procedure, we created 10,000 instances of cl:Task. More details are provided in [24].…”

“…22 The answer database is implemented using MongoDB. 23 We used Recombee 24 as the recommender server, since we did not find a well-documented and stable open source alternative. Recombee employs collaborative filtering techniques to estimate the rating that a user would give to a task they have not yet completed based on the ratings of those or any other tasks previously provided by all Casual Learn users.…”

“…This type of tasks is needed, as meaningful ubiquitous learning processes require learners an active role when perceiving, exploring, solving problems, or interacting with the environment [16]. Following this aim, in our previous work [24] we created contextualized learning tasks from Cultural Heritage Linked Open Data. Very briefly, we gathered Open Data about Cultural Heritage repositories in the Semantic Web and we applied a set of templates with pedagogically meaningful rules to create more than 10,000 tasks contextualized in the Spanish region of Castile and Leon.…”