Educational Ontology Development

Abstract

Ontology use in education environments can be explained in three groups: content access and/or retrieval, content creation, and personalization. Use of ontologies helps content creators to design, develop online courses; provide smart searches and content suggestions; and, design personalized learning environments for learners. But it is not always possible for educators to find the best ontology for their needs in their Learning Management System. Since the ontology creation is a complex process, it might not be always easy or even possible to create an ontology for a selected domain and use accordingly. In this paper, first, a review of state-of-the art literature regarding the ontologies in educational domain will be reviewed. Second, the challenges and difficulties in ontology development process for educational domain will be addressed and explained in detail. Finally, design suggestions to the difficulties expressed in the literature and further opportunities in ontology design and development will be presented taking the existing ontology evaluation frameworks into account.