Collaborative Research: Developing a Learner-Centered Metathesaurus for Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education

University Of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

This collaborative project (with personnel at the University of California Berkeley) is investigating the creation of a learner-centered metathesaurus based on the analysis of transactions between learners and two learning resources - the Math Forum and www.smete.org. Three modes of interaction are being considered. The first involves data in which many students respond to the same problem (the "Problem of the Week" at the Math Forum). The second interactional mode involves data from transactions between learners and experts (the Math Forum's "Ask Dr. Math" feature). The final interactional mode under study uses collections at a third resource, www.smete.org, where learner usage is more in the traditional library mode of search-retrieve. Additional feedback information in the form of the viewed and selected resources enables the construction of a map between the learners' language and resource metadata, which has potential to permit the extension of the metathesaurus across domain boundaries.