Publications

The learning of programming languages requires the student to develop systematic representations of the lexical constructs and semantic principles of the languages. At the same time, tutors are expected to develop the appropriate training content. In this paper we propose the combination of two techniques to make the above tasks more efficient.  Firstly, we propose to use Learning Objects (LOs), for the organization of educational content. At the same time, ontologies are rich knowledge representation structures that can be utilized for modeling the domain concepts. We then present how we can take advantage of the ontological models for two very popular programming languages – that is Java and C – in an attempt to provide tutors with the possibility to better organize their educational material.

Java is a very popular programming language and many study programs in Informatics worldwide include courses particularly designed for its learning. It is considered as the best paradigm for introducing students with object-oriented programming and concepts. Considering Javatextquoterights popularity, we initially make an attempt to model this language by using a quite expressing and rich knowledge representation structure, like is ontology. Our aim is to capture the semantics of Java concepts in a way that would render them utilizable by intelligent e-learning applications. Because the construction of an ontology is not an easy task, we follow very specific steps when building the Java ontology. We then take advantage of an already implemented model describing the structure of learning outcomes and combine it with our ontology, with a view to offer a more effective way in organizing the course of Java in the Hellenic Open University.