Ismail, Amirah (2009) A metametadata framework to support semantic searching of pedagogic data. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Abstract

This thesis focuses on a novel method for semantic searching and retrieval of information about learning materials. Metametadata encapsulate metadata instances by using the properties and attributes provided by ontologies rather than describing learning objects. A novel metametadata taxonomy has been developed which provides the basis for a semantic search engine to extract, match and map queries to retrieve relevant results. The use of ontological views is a foundation for viewing the pedagogical content of metadata extracted from learning objects by using the pedagogical attributes from the metametadata taxonomy. Using the ontological approach and metametadata (based on the metametadata taxonomy) we present a novel semantic searching mechanism. These three strands – the taxonomy, the ontological views, and the search algorithm – are incorporated into a novel architecture (OMESCOD) which has been implemented, and results of using OMESCOD have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of the metametadata approach, and the recall and precision of the search algorithm are compared with search algorithms based on metadata and on ontologies. The results support the research hypothesis that using metametadata can effectively represent the semantic relationships between learning object metadata.

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