(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol.
8
, No.
9
, 2010
.
Adaptive E-Learning System based on Semantic Web
andFuzzy Clustering
Khaled M. Fouad
Computer Science Dep. - Community College - Taif University,Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA);
Central Laboratory of Agriculture Expert Systems (CLAES), Egypt
kmfi25@yahoo.com
Shehab Gamalel-Din
Computers Dept, Faculty of Science, King Abdul-AzizUniversity, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)smostafa@kau.edu.sa
Mofreh A. Hogo
Computer Science Dep. – Computers and Information SystemsCollege - Taif University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).mofreh_hogo@yahoo.com
Nagdy M. Nagdy
Systems and Computers Engineering Dep. – Faculty of Engineering – AlAzhar University, Egypt. prof_nagdy@yahoo.com
Abstract
— This work aims at developing an adaptive e-learningsystem with high performance to reduce the challenges faces e-learners, the instructors and provides a good monitoring systemfor the complete e-learning systems as well as the systemstructure. The work presents the different phases for the systemdevelopment of the adaptive system as: the first stage is thecollection of the e-learners documents, the second stag is thedocuments representation including the frequency count and theweighting of the documents with its frequencies, the third stage isthe prediction and clustering of e-learners interests using thefuzzy clustering method and the statistical K-means clusteringmethod. The results obtained from this work shows that we haveto have different e-learners ontologies using the results of theclustering methods which reflect the e-learners interests. Finallythe work concluded the suggestions as well as therecommendations for the instructors and the systemsadministrators.
Keywords-component; E-Learning; Semantic Web; FuzzyCkustering; User model; User Model Representation.
I.
I
NTRODUCTION
Electronic learning or E-Learning [1] is interactive learningin which the learning content is available online and providesautomatic feedback to the student's learning activities, it ismuch like computer-based training (CBT) and computer-aidedinstruction (CAT), but the point is that it requires Internet for access to learning material and for monitoring the student'sactivities. E-Learners usually can communicate with their tutors through the Internet.Semantic web could offer unprecedented support to thenetwork teaching in semantic query, meaning construction,knowledge acquisition and sharing and collaborative learning.Simultaneously semantic web also provides the support todescribe semantics of learner characteristic in the learner model, and makes it possible to share learner model betweensystems. So we need to construct the learner model andclustering it; to simplify contents search that is based on thatlearner profile, in adaptive learning system based on semanticweb.
A.
A
DAPTIVE
E-L
EARNING
In the context of e-learning [2], adaptive e-learning systemsare more specialized and focus on the adaptation of learningcontent and the presentation of this content. According to [3],an adaptive system focuses on how the knowledge is learned by the student and pays attention to learning activities,cognitive structures and the context of the learning material.The structure of an adaptive e-learning system is shown inFig. 1.The system intervenes at three stages during the process of adaptation. It controls the process of collecting data about thelearner, the process of building up the learner model (learner modeling) and during the adaptation process. It is not feasiblein conventional WBE to create static learning material [1] thatcan be read in any arbitrary sequence, because of manyinterdependences and prerequisite relationships between thecourse pages. However, adaptive hypermedia (AH) methodsand techniques make it possible to inform learners that certainlinks lead to material they are not ready for, to suggest visiting pages the learner should consult, or automatically provideadditional explanations at the pages the learner visits, in order to scaffold his/her progress. Adaptive educational hypermediasystems (AEHSs) apply different forms of learner models toadapt the content and the links of hypermedia course pages tothe learner. AEHSs support adaptive learning, using technologyto constantly measure the learner's knowledge and progress inorder to adapt learning content delivery, presentation, feedback,assessment, or environment to the learner's needs, pace, preferences, and goals. Such systems make predictions of whatthe learner needs to attain his/her goals, respond to such needs,
Data about user
UserModel
System
User ModelingAdaptation
Adaptation
Fig. 1: The Structure of an Adaptive System [2]
308 http://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ISSN 1947-5500
(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol.
8
, No.
9
, 2010
.
allocate resources, implement change, and thus improve personalization of the learning process. The system can bedesigned to use predictive strategies prior to instructiondelivery and learning sessions, during the instruction (based onthe learner's interaction), or both.The open adaptive learning environment [4] is in whichlearners dynamically select a learning route suitable to their needs and profile. The proposed environment is based on theIEEE/IMS learning object metadata (LOM) standard. Thenature of adaptations provided by this environment are centeredon the learner, and allow the LO to adapt to the evolvinglearner’s model in terms of background, learning modalities,and learning styles. It was summarized [1] the role of personalization in learning environments as follows:
•
Personalized learning environments enable one-to-one or many-to-one learning paradigms (one teacher - one learner,and many teachers – one learner), contrary to traditionallearning environments that always adopt one-to-manylearning paradigm (one teacher, many students);
•
Personalized learning environments impose no constraintsin terms of learning time, location, etc., whereas traditionalones are fairly restricted by the learning setting;
•
Personalized learning environments recognize the hugevariety in the learner's characteristics and preferences interms of the learning style, media, interests, and the like,and adapt instruction according to them; traditional ones areusually designed for the "average learner";
•
Personalized learning environments tailor instruction to suitthe learner's requirements (self-directed learning); intraditional learning environments, the curriculum, learningunits, and the selection and sequencing of learning materialare determined by the tutor.
B.
E-L
EARNING AND
S
EMANTIC
W
E
B
It is generally agreed that credible evidence for mastery of learned material [5] is the goal of instructors. While educatorsand domain experts agree that decoding meaning from text plays a critical role in the acquisition of knowledge across alldisciplines, what particular evidence of mastery is required andwhat lends credibility to such evidence are the subjects of alively debate among experts in the learning community. Theneed for new methods for semantic analysis of digital text isnow widely recognized in the face of the rising tide of information on the Web. The layered model [6] for theSemantic Web as shown in Fig. 2 puts the relationship amongontology description languages, RDF and RDF Schema, andXML in a better perspective. The bottom layer offers character encoding (Unicode) and referencing (URI) mechanisms. Thesecond layer introduces XML as the document exchangestandard.The third layer accommodates RDF and RDF Schema asmechanisms to describe the resources available on the Web. Assuch, they may be classified as lightweight ontology languages.Full ontology description languages appear in the fourth layer as a way to capture more semantics. The topmost layer introduces expressive rule languages. The semantic web [7] is aspace understandable and navigable by both human andsoftware agents. It adds structured meaning and organization tothe navigational data of the current web, based on formalizedontologies and controlled vocabularies with semantic links toeach other. From the E-Learning perspective, it aids learners inlocating, accessing, querying, processing, and assessinglearning resources across a distributed heterogeneous network;it also aids instructors in creating, locating, using, reusing,sharing and exchanging learning objects (data andcomponents). The semantic web-based educational systemsneed to interoperate, collaborate and exchange content or re-use functionality. A key to enabling the interoperability is tocapitalize on (1) semantic conceptualization and ontologies, (2)common standardized communication syntax, and (3) large-scale service-based integration of educational content andfunctionality provision and usage. The vision of the semanticweb-based E-Learning is founded on the following major premises:
•
Machine-understandable educational content
•
Shareable educational ontologies, including:
Subject matter ontologies
Authoring ontologies (modeling authors’ activities)
•
Educational semantic web services, for supporting:
Learning, e.g., information retrieval, summarization,interpretation (sense-making), structure-visualization,argumentation, etc.
Assessment, e.g., tests and performance tracking
Collaboration, e.g., group formation, peer help, etc.
•
Semantic interoperabilitySemantic interoperability, the key promise of the semanticweb, is defined as a study of bridging differences betweeninformation systems on two levels as following:
•
on an access level, where system and organizational boundaries have to be crossed by creating standardizedinterfaces that share system-internal services in a loosely-coupled way; and
•
On a meaning level, where agreements about transporteddata have to be made in order to permit their correctinterpretation. Interoperability requires the use of standard SW languages for representing ontologies,educational content, and services.
C.
T
HE
O
NTOLOGIES
The word ontology comes from the Greek ontos, for being,and logos, for word. In philosophy, it refers to the subject of existence, i.e. to the study of being as such. More precisely, itis the study of the categories of things that exist or may existin some domain [1]. Domain ontology explains the types of things in that domain. Ontology [8] comprises a set of knowledge terms, including the vocabulary, the semanticinterconnections, and some simple rules of inference and logic
Fig. 2: The Architecture of the Semantic Web
309 http://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ISSN 1947-5500
(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol.
8
, No.
9
, 2010
.
for some particular topic. Ontologies applied to the Web arecreating the Semantic Web. Ontologies provide the necessaryarmature around which knowledge bases should be built, andset grounds for developing reusable Web-contents, Web-services, and applications. Ontologies facilitate knowledgesharing and reuse, i.e. a common understanding of variouscontents that reaches across people and applications.Technically, an ontology is a text-based piece of reference-knowledge, put somewhere on the Web for agents to consult itwhen necessary, and represented using the syntax of anontology representation language. There are several suchlanguages around for representing ontologies, for an overviewand comparison of them. It is important to understand thatmost of them are built on top of XML and RDF.The most popular higher-level ontology representationlanguages were OIL (Ontology Inference Layer) andDAML+OIL. An ontology developed in any such language isusually converted into an RDF/XML-like form and can be partially parsed even by common RDF/XML parsers. Of course, language-specific parsers are necessary for full-scale parsing. There is a methodology for converting an ontologydeveloped in a higher-level language into RDF or RDFS. Inearly 2004, W3C has officially released OWL (Web OntologyLanguage) as W3C Recommendation for representingontologies. OWL is developed starting from description logicand DAML+OIL. The increasing popularity of OWL mightlead to its widest adoption as the standard ontologyrepresentation language on the Semantic Web in the future.Essentially, OWL is a set of XML elements and attributes, withwell-defined meaning, that are used to define terms and their relationships (e.g., Class, equivalent Property, intersection Of,union Of, etc.).
D.
L
EARNER
M
ODEL AND
P
ROFILE
The behavior of an adaptive system [9] varies according tothe data from the learner model and the learner profile. Withoutknowing anything about the learner, a system would perform inexactly the same way for all learners. It was described theapplication of learner models as follows:An extensive learner model must contain information aboutthe learner’s domain knowledge, the learner’s progress, preferences, goals, interests and other information about thelearner, which is important for the used systems. Learner models can be classified according to the nature and form of information contained in the models. Considering the subjectdomain, the information stored in a learner model can bedivided into two major groups: domain specific informationand domain independent information.We examined two of the most important and well-developed standards - the PAPI standard [10] and the IMS LIPstandard [11]. Both standards deal with several categories for information about a learner. These standards have beendeveloped from different points of view. The PAPI standardreflects ideas from intelligent tutoring systems where the performance information is considered as the most importantinformation about a learner. The PAPI standard also stresses onthe importance of inter-personal relationships. On the other hand the LIP standard is based on the classical notion of a CVand inter-personal relationships are not considered at all.
E.
K-
MEANS
C
LUSTERING
M
ETHOD
Clustering of objects is as ancient as the human need for describing the salient characteristics of men and objects andidentifying them with a type. Therefore, it embraces variousscientific disciplines: from mathematics and statistics to biology and genetics, each of which uses different terms todescribe the topologies formed using this analysis.The simplest and most commonly used algorithm,employing a squared error criterion is the K-means algorithm[23]. This algorithm partitions the data into K clusters (C1,C2,. . . ,CK), represented by their centers or means. The center of each cluster is calculated as the mean of all the instances belonging to that cluster. The algorithm [23] starts with aninitial set of cluster centers, chosen at random or according tosome heuristic procedure. In each iteration, each instance isassigned to its nearest cluster center according to theEuclidean distance between the two. Then the cluster centersare re-calculated. The center of each cluster is calculated as themean of all the instances belonging to that cluster:Where
N
k
is the number of instances belonging to cluster k and
µ
k
is the mean of the cluster k.A number of convergence conditions are possible. For example, the search may stop when the partitioning error isnot reduced by the relocation of the centers. This indicates thatthe present partition is locally optimal. Other stopping criteriacan be used also such as exceeding a pre-defined number of iterations. Figure 3 presents the pseudo-code [23] of the K-means algorithm.The rest of the paper is organized as following: Section 2 isreserved for the related works; section 3 introduces the proposed system structure architecture, section 4 presents theexperiments design and results analysis, section 5 presents theconcluded suggestions and recommendations to improve thesystem performance, finally section 6 concludes the work andintroduces the future work.II.
RELATED
WORKSAn accurate representation of a learners interests [12],generally stored in some form of learner model, is crucial tothe performance of personalized search or browsing agents.Learner model is often represented by keyword/conceptvectors or concept hierarchy. The acquired model can then be
Input
:
S (instance set), K (number of cluster)
Output
:
clusters
1: Initialize K cluster centers.2: while termination condition is not satisfied do3: Assign instances to the closest cluster center.4: Update cluster centers based on the assignment.5: end while
Fig. 3. K-means Algorithm.
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Adaptive E-Learning System based on Semantic Web and Fuzzy Clustering
This work aims at developing an adaptive e-learning system with high performance to reduce the challenges faces elearners, the instructors and provides a good monitoring system for the complete e-learning systems as well as the system…
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