Title:

PhiloSURFical: An Ontological Approach To Support Philosophy Learning

Year:

2009

Abstract:

As the Semantic Web is increasingly becoming a reality, the availability of large quantities of structured data brings forward new challenges. In fact, when the content of resources is indexed, not just their status as a text document, an image or a video, it becomes important to have solid semantic models which avoid as much as possible the generation of ambiguities with relation to the resources’ meaning. Within an educational context, we believe that only thanks to these models it is possible to organize and present resources in a dynamic and contextual manner. This can be achieved through a process of narrative pathway generation, that is, the active linking of resources into a learning path that contextualizes them with respect to one another. We are experimenting this approach in the PhiloSurfical tool, aimed at supporting philosophy students in understanding a text, by presenting them ‘maps’ of relevant learning resources. An ontology describing the multiple aspects of the philosophical world plays a central role in this system. In this chapter we want to discuss some lessons-learned during the modeling process, which have been crystallized into a series of reusable patterns. We present three of these patterns, showing how they can support different context-based reasoning tasks and allow a formal conceptualization of ambiguities that are primarily philosophy-related but can be easily found in other domains too. In particular, we describe a practical use of the ontology in the context of a classic work in twentieth century philosophy, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Full reference:

Michele Pasin, Enrico Motta. PhiloSURFical: An Ontological Approach To Support Philosophy Learning - Semantic Web Technologies for e-Learning October 2009 D. Dicheva, R. Mizoguchi, J. Greer (Eds.), vol. 4 The Future of Learning, IOS Press. PDF



See also:

2015


paper  Learning how to become a linked data publisher: the nature.com ontologies portal.

5th Workshop on Linked Science 2015, colocated with ISWC 2015., Bethlehem, USA, Sep 2015.




2014


paper  Factoid-based Prosopography and Computer Ontologies: towards an integrated approach

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Dec 2014. doi: 10.1093/llc/fqt037


2013


paper  Moving EMLoT towards the web of data: an approach to the representation of humanities citations based on role theory and formal ontology

New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, (forthcoming). (part of the 'Envisioning REED in the Digital Age' collection)


2011


paper  Semantic Web Approaches in Digital History: an Introduction

Lecture slides from the Course on digital history, part of the master in Digital Humanities at King's College, London., Oct 2011.



paper  An Ontological View of Canonical Citations

Digital Humanities 2011 , Stanford, USA, Jun 2011.



paper  Ontological Requirements for Annotation and Navigation of Philosophical Resources

Synthese, Volume 182, Number 2, Springer, Jan 2011.


2009


paper  PhiloSURFical: An Ontological Approach To Support Philosophy Learning

Semantic Web Technologies for e-Learning, Oct 2009. D. Dicheva, R. Mizoguchi, J. Greer (Eds.), vol. 4 The Future of Learning, IOS Press




paper  Ontological Requirement for Supporting Smart Navigation of Philosophical Resources

PhD Thesis, Milton Keynes, UK, The Open University, Jul 2009.


2008


paper  Approach and ontology in PhiloSURFical

COST EU Workshop, Ancona University, May 2008.


2007


paper  Capturing Knowledge About Philosophy

Fourth International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP07), Whistler, BC, Canada, Oct 2007. pp. 47-54



paper  PhiloSURFical: browse Wittgensteinʼs Tractatus with the Semantic Web

Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information - Proceedings of the 30th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg, Austria, Aug 2007. pp. 319-335



paper  Supporting Philosophers’ Work through the Semantic Web: Ontological Issues

Fifth International Workshop on Ontologies and Semantic Web for E-Learning (SWEL-07), held in conjunction with AIED-07, Marina Del Rey, California, USA, Jul 2007.






2006



paper  A Task Based Approach to Support Situating Learning for the Semantic Web

International Workshop on Applications of Semantic Web Technologies for E-Learning (SWEL-06), held in conjunction with Adaptive Hypermedia 2006, Dublin, Ireland, Jun 2006.



paper  Paving the way towards the e-humanities: a Semantic Web approach to support the learning of philosophy

Poster paper presented at the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC-06), Budva, Montenegro, Jun 2006.


2005


paper  Semantic Learning Narratives

International Workshop on Applications of Semantic Web Technologies for E-Learning (SWEL-05), held in conjunction with KCAP-05, Banff, Canada, Oct 2005.