WP4: Positioning the learner

Objectives
1. Support gap analysis between current standing and the learner’s goals by automatic matching of portfolios and course contents.
2. Determine and diagnose conceptual development of the learner to identify potentially weak knowledge areas and recommend remedial action.

Description of work
This work package focuses on determining the learner’s position with regard to courses and learning objects in a study domain (to locate the ‘best’ suitable material) (Task 1) and determines the conceptual development of a learner related to a particular expertise area (to enable reflection on the learner’s own position in this area) (Task 2). For task 1, the private knowledge of the learner (contained in the learner portfolio) is compared to the domain knowledge (learning material) to assess his position. Knowledge-poor and knowledge-rich approaches, including LSA, pLSA, lexical resources and ontologies, will be applied and compared with regard to their responsiveness (timing and detail) within the constraints of the data available.
The results will be a combination of recommendations on which techniques to use (and in which combination and how) and a service to locate the learner’s position in order to give advice on the ‘best’ suitable material. In task 2 - conceptual development - the development of private knowledge (as articulated through the domain concepts learners use and how they use them) of the learner is measured and compared with the domain knowledge. The effectiveness of conceptual knowledge measurements techniques (categorization methods, graphical methods or language, e.g. essays) will be compared with analysis techniques such as LSA for detecting conceptual knowledge development over tasks/ courses both for final and intermediate products. The results will be a combination of recommendations on which techniques to use (and in which combination and how) and a service to identify potentially weak knowledge area and recommendations for remedial action.
Participants: OUNL, UU, UTU, WUW, UNIMAN, IPP-BAS