Project Perspectives
Date: Apr 23rd, 2008
Case based learning is the pedagogical model of choice in learning environments in which the subject matter is complex, controversial or rapidly changing, and in which multiple perspectives and interpretations need to be understood. The affordances of the semantic web provide a conceptual and technological basis for the development of flexible tools and associated pedagogies in which knowledge is developed, represented, adapted and then transferred.
While semantic web technologies are revolutionising long-term preservation and enabling the retrieval of data from large and heterogeneous information sources, they have not, to date, been mobilised in advanced education settings that employ case based learning in support of higher order learning. The project will undertake research and development activities which will contribute both to understanding of pedagogical practice in case based learning across disciplines, and to the development of semantic web tools and learning environments. It will therefore provide a framework for developing the potential of the ‘educational semantic web’.
Actor Network Theory (ANT) has been identified as an appropriate framework for analysis and as a basis for interdisciplinary discourse and knowledge building. ANT avoids thinking about ‘context as container’ and reconstructs context as a set of relational connections, which are performed. It goes further by tracing associations between different actants, which include humans (users, developers, researchers and others), physical artefacts (e.g. visualisations, search and navigation tools) and theoretical and semiotic entities (e.g. learning outcomes, cases, and assessments), which are associated in textured relationships (networks).
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