Abstract

Title: Semantic-based FAQ System for Virtual Learning Environments

Citation: Marco Calabrese, Vincenzo Di Lecce, Antonella Giove, Alessandro Quarto, Domenico Soldo, Semantic-based FAQ System for Virtual Learning Environments, Submitted to the 9th European Conference on e-Learning, Porto, Portugal 4-5 November 2010

Abstract: This paper proposes a system, inspired by the Semantic Web technologies, capable of supporting indexing and searching methodologies of semantics associated to learning objects of a virtual classroom. Although computer-aided metadata annotation schemes already exist, the content production activity is still quite tedious, costly and time-consuming for most e-learning content developers. In particular, educational contents are often paired with supplementary materials, like frequently asked questions (FAQs), that help students have a comprehensive understanding of lessons. As a matter of course, the number of FAQs provided by the teacher is generally insufficient, due to the several questions that can arise from the delivered lesson. In this work, an automated FAQ generation system is presented as an additional tool for e-learning content production and management. FAQs are generated after an automated semantic indexing procedure is performed on one or more input HTML texts. The only effort on the teacher’s side is to choose the HTML sources to submit to the semantic-based FAQ processing system.

Keyword: Collaborative learning environment, virtual classroom, Web 2.0, semantic indexing, WordNet