Learning Path Generation by Domain Ontology Transformation

An approach to automated learning path generation inside a domain ontology supporting a web tutoring system is presented. Even if a terminological ontology definition is needed in real systems to enable reasoning and/or planning techniques, and to take into account the modern learning theories, the task to apply a planner to such an ontology is very hard because the definition of actions along with their preconditions and effects has to take into account the semantics of the relations among concepts, and it results in building an ontology of learning. The proposed methodology is inspired to the Knowledge Space Theory, and proposes some heuristics to transform the original ontology in a weighted graph where the A* algorithm is used to find the path. The proposed approach is applied to the implementation of a web based tutoring system about the Java programming language.