Instructional Design for the Semantic Web

Instructional Design for the Semantic Web By: Reuben Tozman [email_address]

What are you talking about?

www.visualthesaurus.com

How does it work?

What are you talking about?

At the heart of the matter, what is the benefit of the semantic web?

“ the Semantic Web approach instead develops languages for expressing information in a machine processable form." This is perhaps the best way of summing up the Semantic Web -- technologies for enabling machines to make more sense of the Web, with the result of making the Web more useful for humans .

Ed Dumbill, 2000

Poll

How many people think that instructional design needs to look at the “Semantic Web” to evolve?

How many people think that instructional designers need to be good writers?

How many people think instructional designers should forget about designing instruction and take media production classes?

I Think Instructional Design Is?

I'd submit that the main value I bring to the table as an "Instructional Designer" is identifying goals that really aren't instructional at all.

There are many people out here practicing in the trenches who call themselves 'instructional designers', and yet we all seem to do so many different things. It's become a catch-all term for, perhaps, much more than it was intended.

In my opinion, for an Instructional Designer, good writing skills and understanding the Instructional Design theories and concepts is a prerequisite

Is there a Problem?

Learning 2007 and 2006(Masie Conference)

Topic: Is Instructional Design Dead?

thecrawford.blogspot.com

“ If by instructional design, we mean somebody designing a classroom or e-learning session, then if it's not dead already it's certainly breathing pretty hard.”

The Learning Circuits Blog

Are ISD / ADDIE / HPT relevant in a world of rapid elearning, faster time-to-performance, and informal learning?

What is Instructional Design? (By the Book)

Instructional Design as a Process:

Instructional Design is the systematic development of instructional specifications using learning and instructional theory to ensure the quality of instruction. It is the entire process of analysis of learning needs and goals and the development of a delivery system to meet those needs. It includes development of instructional materials and activities ; and tryout and evaluation of all instruction and learner activities.

What is Instructional Design? (By the Book)

Instructional Technology:

Instructional technology is the systemic and systematic application of strategies and techniques derived from behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist theories to the solution of instructional problems.

Instructional technology is the systematic application of theory and other organized knowledge to the task of instructional design and development.

Instructional Technology = Instructional Design + Instructional Development

Why Must Instructional Design Evolve?

Enable the “Pull” paradigm

Go beyond creating one off instructional materials. Look at performance support

Accommodate new paradigms of learning (Ex: user generated content)

‘Feed the web’

Evolution of Web Technology

Web 2.0

User generated content

Semantic web

Web 2.0 websites typically include some of the following features/techniques:

rich Internet application techniques, often Ajax -based

semantically valid XHTML and HTML markup

microformats extending pages with additional semantics

folksonomies (in the form of tags or tagclouds , for example)

Cascading Style Sheets to aid in the separation of presentation and content

REST and/or XML - and/or JSON -based APIs

syndication, aggregation and notification of data in RSS or Atom feeds

mashups , merging content from different sources, client- and server-side

weblog -publishing tools

wiki or forum software, etc., to support user-generated content

Evolution of Web Technology Web 3.0 Web 3.0, a phrase coined by John Markoff of the New York Times in 2006, refers to a supposed third generation of Internet-based services that collectively comprise what might be called 'the intelligent Web'—such as those using semantic web, microformats, natural language search, data-mining, machine learning, recommendation agents, and artificial intelligence technologies—which emphasize machine-facilitated understanding of information in order to provide a more productive and intuitive user experience.

Evolution of Web Technology

“The next 5000 days of the web”

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html

(12:54)

Evolution of e-Learning

Do we follow the evolution of the web or do we continue to build segregated media rich applications?

What role will instructional designers play in semantically defining content for the new web?

Evolving Instructional Design

Its only in truly understanding our value in light of technological evolution can we grasp what our role as instructional designers should be.

The skill that an instructional designer possesses that writers, teachers, programmers, technical writers, etc don’t is the ability to systematically break down content so that it is applicable to learners and their learning styles. This is our value.

Why is it, that regardless of the library, the size of the library, the people in the library, that I can find the one book out of thousands, sometimes millions of books in a matter of minutes?

Develop system for defining and classifying learning types and events.

Create common meta-language to provide semantic meaning to various forms of learning.

Able to view content using whatever display device can read the language.

As new tools develop, enable them to read the language.

Examples

OASIS – DITA for Learning

Adopted RLO – RIO

Adopted IEEE LOM Metadata

Created generic flow to content

Learning Plan

Learning Overview

Learning Content

Learning Summary

Created meta-language for content

Learning Content

( ( lcIntro) (optional) then ( lcDuration) (optional) then ( lcObjectives) (optional) then ( lcChallenge) (optional) ( lcInstruction) (optional) )

Concept, Task, Reference

Learning Interactions

Multiple Choice, True Flase, Matching, Sequencing, Hotspot

Examples

Example: Bloom’s Taxonomy and DITA

Vision

What if organizations had a network of semantically defined learning content?

“ The net is a possibility factory, churning out novel opportunities by the diskful. But unless this explosion is harnessed, it will drown the unprepared. What the computer industry calls "standards" is an attempt to tame the debilitating abundance of competing possibilities. Standards strengthen a network; their constraints solidify a pathway, allowing innovation and evolution to accelerate. So central is the need to tame the choice of possibilities that organizations must make the common standard their first allegiance . Companies positioned at the gateway to a standard will reap the largest rewards. But as a company prospers, so do those in its web. “ Kevin Kelly (1997)

Conclusion