Educational Ontology and Knowledge Testing

Abstract

The Bologna declaration aims at providing solutions for the problems and challenges of European Higher Education. One of its main goals is the introduction of a common framework of transparent and comparable degrees that ensures the recognition of knowledge and qualifications of citizens all across the European Union. This paper will discuss an ontology‑based model that supports the creation of transparent curricula content (Educational Ontology) and the promotion of reliable knowledge testing (Adaptive Knowledge Testing System). Beside the description of the evolution of the Educational Ontology, which has been developed within a research project by the Department of Information Systems, role of the ontology in managing, mapping and sharing the knowledge of curricula will be discussed in details as well. The Educational Ontology addresses establishing relation between the requirements of labour markets and the content of curricula through competencies that can be acquired during a given training program. Another critical aspect of this research concerns the measuring of knowledge. The second part of the paper will focus on the possibilities of adaptive knowledge testing and describes how a suitably elaborated ontology model can support adaptive testing of students by enabling a detailed exploration of missing knowledge and knowledge areas.