The Semantic Web, Knowledge and Implications for Education

1. The Semantic Web, Knowledge and Implications for Education Alan McLean Postgraduate student, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysia (UNITAR)

2. Presented at The International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM) 2005 on 7 - 9th July 2005 at Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (http://www.ickm.upm.edu.my/) Full text available from: http://www.angelfire.com/linux/alan1/semantic.html

3. My contact details & aims: • http://www.angelfire.com/linux/alan1 • 016 636 0754 My aims:Outline some main ideasGet some constructive criticismPossibly find collaboratorsIdentify expertise useful to my research

4. … I don’t know so much … • My experience is in Higher Education and the last two years of secondary education. What I say today may not be applicable to primary education – or the middle years. • I am looking for guidance and correction from you on: Semantic Web

5. … I don’t know so much … • My experience is in Higher Education and the last two years of secondary education. What I say today may not be applicable to primary education – or the middle years. • I am looking for guidance and correction from you on: Semantic Web, Theories of Learning,

6. … I don’t know so much … • My experience is in Higher Education and the last two years of secondary education. What I say today may not be applicable to primary education – or the middle years. • I am looking for guidance and correction from you on: Semantic Web, Theories of Learning, Cognitive Architectures

7. … I don’t know so much … • My experience is in Higher Education and the last two years of secondary education. What I say today may not be applicable to primary education – or the middle years. • I am looking for guidance and correction from you on: Semantic Web, Theories of Learning, Cognitive Architectures, Educational Design.

8. Education needs to change • The Semantic Web (Tim Berners-Lee www.w3.org/). • Ubiquitous Computing (Mark Weiser www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/) • Second generation KnowledgeManagement • The Explicit Recruitment Needs of Employers www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CER/publications.htm

9. The Semantic Web & Ubiquitous Computing • Descriptive technologies such as RDF and data-centric markup languages such as XML, ontologies such as Owl.

10. The Semantic Web & Ubiquitous Computing • Descriptive technologies such as RDF and data-centric markup languages such as XML, ontologies such as Owl. • Ubiquitous computing, computers everywhere in the real environment which can interconnect, exchange data and work together

11. The Future of these Technologies • It will neither be appropriate to carry a significant quantity of information in human memory nor to know how or where to find information. • The Semantic Web will allow individuals to access the information they need in almost any place, effortlessly and without delay. … so, you simply don’t get paid any more for knowing things! (What are we going to do with all this useless knowledge?)

12. Second Generation KM • People construct and use new and valuable knowledge. • Storing information, disseminating information and imitating past performance seem less important. Information is not seen as an important organizational asset. • Learning capability, problem solving and innovation capability are seen as capital. • Effective Knowledge Management is about social factors such as team building, personal professional development, and appropriate working environments • Learning, problem solving and innovation are seen as social, not administrative activities. …. So is that what major international companies are saying?

13. The Explicit Recruitment Needs of Employers • West, Noden and Gosling, based on interviews and surveys conducted in Australia, Malaysia, the UK and the USA identified the attributes sought in graduates. These attributes included the key skillsteam work, analytical/thinking skills, communication/presentation skills, interpersonal skills and the personal attributes motivation/drive, business awareness, independence, creativity/innovation and leadership/management West, A., Noden, P. & Gosling, R. (2000) Quality in Higher Education: An international perspective. The views of transnational corporations, Clare Market Papers 17, Centre for Educational Research, LSE: London

14. Conclusion so far … • Secondary education focuses on the acquisition of declarative knowledge. (and HE too!) • Education is not delivering what employees and employers need. On a national and international basis, individuals, organizations and governments are spending vast sums of money without coming close to maximizing the human capital created.

15. How should education respond? Two changes, the inception of the Semantic Web and changing perceptions of Knowledge Management, seem to demand educational reform of a broadly similar type, a move away from the acquisition of declarative knowledge and towards capabilities of analysis, critical thought, communication and creativity. … and at this point, it would be really nice to have a theory of learning that would guide our decisions on how to change educational design.

16. Theories of Learning operant conditioning developmental psychology cognitive psychology constructivism situated learning theory Approaches to Educational Design My Central Claim: There is no overarching theory of learning and there is no coherent prescription for educational design How should education respond? … so is the situation hopeless?

17. notes on educational theory • Is the theoretical basis of education too weak … or are there too many theories of education? • Theories of education are much more ideological and much narrower than we tell our students. • The fragmentation and incompleteness of learning theory is consistent with the experience of student teachers and teacher educators. Beginning teachers report that they do not really know how to apply theory to their classroom experience. • This fragmentation is consistent with the experience of teachers who are successful in encouraging critical thinking – that successful teaching is time-intensive and not scalable.

18. Provocative thoughts on educational reformAlthough we don’t have a theoretical overview, some imperatives seem clear. • Primary education seems valuable. Reading, writing, measure , empirical investigation, number and very basic background in the disciplines seem useful. • We need to unlearn the habit of syllabus reform. The content of what we learn and teach does not matter. (Gardner) • The great traditions of detailed teaching of disciplines (Biology, Geography and so on) must be abandoned. • In many countries, the school leaving age should be lowered.

19. That is it • That is as far as I got when I made the presentation at the conference but the remainder of the slides give an idea of where those ideas were leading …..

20. Is there hope? The apparent replacement of one educational paradigm with another can be seen as a shift in focus. There was sometimes little genuine incompatibility between different theories of learning. We may be moving from one type of explanation to another, focusing on different aspects of human behavior and trying to explain and understand learning at different levels of granularity (for example, social versus neural). A situation like this need not lead to the formation of opposing theoretical camps, but could invite attempts to integrate various theories of learning or, perhaps more realistically, to use them eclectically. … which make us think about cognitive architectures

21. Cognitive Architectures: what do they aim to do? • Explain experiments in human psychology. • Explain at least some aspects of learning. • Provide a structure which allows some aspects of human behavior to be reproduced artificially (i.e. support development in AIED) • Support quantitative modeling, for example modeling of human reaction-time and forgetting. • Inform educational practice.

22. theACT – Rcognitive architecture • Cognitive architectures are not committed to any particular theory or group of theories but instead bring together theoretical perspectives, including mathematical models, in an attempt to explain and reproduce human behavior. • Anderson (1990) distinguishes three layers of explanation: the physiological layer which relates to brain function (the subsymbolic layer) ; the cognitive layer which examines thinking on a symbolic level and the 'rational' layer which focuses on the functional adaptation of the person to the environment (I call it interactive).

23. ACT-R 5.0 is incomplete • Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., & Qin, Y . (2004). An integrated theory of the mind.Psychological Review 111, (4). 1036-1060. • (Latest version is ACT-R 6 version 1.0b2) • Looking, for example at standard discourse theory, ACT-R is too weak at the interactive layer to account for the comprehension of text.

24. Learning theory at the interactive layer As far as I know, there are two serious contenders, the situated learning theory advocated by Lave and Wenger and the theory of dialogue advocated by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. So … lets look at Freire’s theory. We begin with the theory of banking education …

25. Banking Education • The teacher is full of knowledge • The student is a receptacle empty of knowledge • The teacher makes deposits of knowledge in the student. • The relationship between teacher and student is therefore not a horizontal one but a vertical one.

26. The teacher-student relationship • The teacher teaches and the students are taught. • The teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing. • The teacher thinks and the students are thought about. • The teacher talks and the students listen – meekly. • The teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined. • The teacher chooses and enforces their choice, and the student complies • The teacher chooses the program content, and the students … adapt to it.

27. Schooling as the abuse of power. It is this relationship which strips learning of its value. The dominating relationship between teacher and student that leaves the student domesticated, powerless and passive. As students become the passive recipients of knowledge, they learn to experience the world and adapt to it. They learn and solve well-defined ‘real life’ problems selected for them by the teacher. They learn not to ‘read the world’ for themselves. They are not critical thinkers.

28. Schooling as the abuse of power. It is this relationship which strips learning of its value. The dominating relationship between teacher and student that leaves the student domesticated, powerless and passive. As students become the passive recipients of knowledge, they learn to experience the world and adapt to it. They learn and solve well-defined ‘real life’ problems selected for them by the teacher. They learn not to ‘read the world’ for themselves. They are not critical thinkers. Students are required to demonstrate that they have stored knowledge in their memories and they are not asked to discover knowledge or engage in innovative problem solving. They become disengagement from the world and from each other.

29. About Dialogue • Dialogue is a horizontal relationship in which one individual is with the other. In Freire's words (Freire, 1974), it is positive, hopeful, trusting and critical. It involves two-way communication. • Banking education is a vertical relationship in which one person is higher than the other. To borrow Freire's words again, it is loveless, arrogant, hopeless, mistrustful, acritical. Broadcast does not communicate but issues communiques; information passes in one direction.