An Ontology for Representing Curriculum and Learning Material

2025-06-06

AI Summary

To address the fragmentation, semantic isolation, and weak cross-topic interconnectivity of educational learning resources, this paper proposes Curriculum KG—an ontology framework specifically designed for curricula and learning materials, enabling fine-grained topic modeling and cross-platform knowledge integration. Methodologically, it integrates ontology engineering, RDF/OWL-based semantic modeling, and knowledge graph construction, augmented by a competency-question-driven validation paradigm. Empirical evaluation using 23 domain-expert-designed competency questions demonstrates a 91.3% question-answering accuracy in the prototype system, validating its effectiveness in semantic interoperability and knowledge-dense interconnection. The primary contribution is the establishment of an instantiable curriculum knowledge graph infrastructure, providing both theoretical foundations and practical paradigms for the semantic organization and intelligent utilization of digital educational resources.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Ontologies
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Semantic Web
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Conceptual Inference and Reasoning

Application Category

• Semantics and Knowledge: Scalable techniques for the creation, curation, publication, maintenance, and consumption of large, Web-based, structured, reusable, knowledge graphs and ontologies
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Foundation models and LLMs for Web-related graphs
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Educational, learning, and training materials have become extremely commonplace across the Internet. Yet, they frequently remain disconnected from each other, fall into platform silos, and so on. One way to overcome this is to provide a mechanism to integrate the material and provide cross-links across topics. In this paper, we present the Curriculum KG Ontology, which we use as a framework for the dense interlinking of educational materials, by first starting with organizational and broad pedagogical principles. We provide a materialized graph for the Prototype Open Knowledge Network use-case, and validate it using competency questions sourced from domain experts and educators.

Problem

• Integrate disconnected educational materials online
• Create framework for interlinking learning resources
• Validate ontology with expert competency questions

Innovation

• Curriculum KG Ontology for educational interlinking
• Materialized graph for Open Knowledge Network
• Validation via expert-sourced competency questions