Abstract:

Educational-purpose modeling languages such as the languge EML or object-typed knowledge modelling software tools such as MOT are widely used in e-learning to describe didactic meta-models for IMS Learning Design or graphical knowledge-models of collaborative groups. The e-didactic knowledge representation capacity of these graphical tools are just as important as their role played in building reference models for e-learning architectures and in the more recent representations of Learning Network Services.
Graphical representations of knowledge in the framework of Concept Maps became as important didactic tools in class work as the Venn-diagrams, while standardized Topic Maps support the students semantic abstraction and the findability of information on the gradually developing Semantic Web.
These representations usually describe pre-designed situations, express fixed learning scenarios, given relations of learning objects, and in case of subject matters are normally used to show static semantic relations between linked terms. Their level of abstraction and standard use is setting the limits of expressing the development of knowledge in collaborative learning processes. The first part of the paper gives a short review of the logical and semantic properties of these tools and analyses their capacities to represent the dynamics of knowledge from the point of view of e-didactics.
Collaborative models of learning and serious games challenge us to represent dynamic learning situations, processes of collective problem solving, and temporal properties of information flow. Recent developments in the Logics of Communication and Dynamic Epistemic Logic provide tools to represent the changing knowledge state of participants of a communicative situation who obtain factual information and perform various epistemic actions. Collaborative learning situations and games require that we consider the knowledge of other participants and reason about the possibilities in light of information exchange. Card games, puzzle solving, and social situations can be modeled in Dynamic Epistemic Logics, and the comparison of various modeling tools such as DEMO, LYS or MCK is an important experimental field in the educational context. The utilization of these tools requires first a characterization of the “learning game” and a translation of the situation into the corresponding logics. Without loss in the details of logical formalism some standard, well elaborated examples will be given in the text. On the basis of these examples the advantages of the analysis of the dynamics of learning situations is compared with discourse representation and modeling of legal texts or case simulations of rule based learning.

References:
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Keywords:

e-learning, technology-enhanced learning, knowledge representation, knowledge models, dynamic epistemic logic.