University of Bari, Bari, Italy

LO*OP Center, Inc., Guerneville, USA

Functionality and Architecture for a

Platform for Independent Learners:
KEPLAIR

Authors
Stefano Ferilli
Domenico Redavid
Davide Di Pierro
Liza Loop
Table of Contents
• Vision
• What is KEPLAIR ?
• Motivations
• Functionality and Behavior
• Architecture
• Ontology
• What will KEPLAIR be made up of ?
• Conclusions
Vision
• The state-of-the-art in Articial
Intelligence allow to think of Intelligent
Tutoring Systems much more advanced
than their original definition.
• The KEPLAIR project envisages an online
platform, designed to help all players
involved in the educational endeavors in
improving performance and effectiveness
of their activities.
• KEPLAIR is a concept trying to become a
reality.
What is KEPLAIR ?
• KEPLAIR will act as an artificially
intelligent coach, researcher, counselor,
and wizardly computer program which
develops your goals and a pathway to
reach them.
• It has strategies to find out what is more
likely to delight you. Learning should be
fun, easy, fascinating and socially
comfortable.
Motivations
• Not all learning happens in schools.
• KEPLAIR is for everyone. Your learning pathway
should be as unique as you are.
• Your pathway to your goal is unique.
• What you already know, where you’ve been, your
strengths, limitations, accomplishments and
preferences are what make up your personal
profile.
• KEPLAIR helps you identify the right tools at the
right point on your path.
Functionality and Behavior
• KEPLAIR will collect basic information
about a person, to build an initial profile.
This profile will be also updated based on
implicit information.
• Given a goal, KEPLAIR will devise tailored
subgoals to create learning paths.
• KEPLAIR will retrieve, filter and recommend
suitable learning objects for the various steps.
• KEPLAIR will provide a Social Network for
social exchange.
Architecture
• KEPLAIR can find any material
on the Internet that may act as a
LO for some purpose and
include it in its metadata
repository.
• Users interact with KEPLAIR
using the SeaL (Sensors,
Effectors and Applications
Layer) component, that includes
all application interfaces and, in
case, all sensors and effectors
available in the environment.
Ontology
• KEPLAIR's behavior and functionality is
informed by an ontology, that acts as a
schema for the knowledge base.
• Some classes are borrowed from an
ontology of general, widely used
concepts, reusable in most domains.
Then, there are the domain-specific
classes for education.
• KEPLAIR must be able to describe goals
and provides many relationships to
connect instances of these classes.
Ontology
General Concepts Educational Concepts Relationships

• User • Taxonomy • partOf

• Person • Category • mentions
• Place • Descriptor • has
• Activity • Document • leftOf
• Organization • Organization • rightOf
• Event • Page • above
• Subject • Table • below
• Skill • Title • developed
• AssessmentTool • Section • developedBy
… … …
What will KEPLAIR be made up of ?
• KEPLAIR concepts are stored in
an overall ontology.
• KEPLAIR data must be stored
in a graph database.
What will KEPLAIR be made up of ?
• Ontologies and databases can be
handled by GraphBRAIN.
• KEPLAIR is supported by a
variegated team.
Conclusions
• We proposed an architecture for KEPLAIR,
designed to act as a personalised tutor that
helps learners find the tools, resources,
experiences, and connections they need to
learn exactly what they have chosen to
learn.
• KEPLAIR will be able to help students find
their way both through predetermined
curricula, and on their own educational
goals.
• We also proposed the core of an ontology to
coordinate and drive all the system's
activities and modules.
 University of Bari, Bari, Italy
LO*OP Center, Inc., Guerneville, USA

THANK YOU FOR THE ATTENTION