A learning-oriented knowledge representation for teaching interfaces

Abstract

This paper presents a formalism for representing knowledge, intended for use in teaching interfaces. The driving concern in developing the formalism was to get an explicit method for sequencing the presentation of materials to be learned. The first criterion for doing the sequencing is that it satisfies a relation of constructability or learning support among the materials. If the relation is restricted to be a function then it is possible to represent it by a directed acyclic graph, as it happens in other constructive processes. The directed acyclic graph representation enables automatic generation of presentation sequences satisfying the learning support relation. It turns out that the formalism suggests other criteria in a natural way. These criteria may be added in a variety of ways to refine the presentation and enhance the responsiveness of the interface to learner needs.