Generation of learning paths in educational texts based on vocabulary co-occurrence networks in Wikipedia and randomness

Abstract

We propose a new computational method for generating learning paths ineducational texts. The method relies on forming vocabulary co-occurrence networks amongarticles of Wikipedia online encyclopedia and exploiting random explorations to generateroute weighting parameters to form pedagogic co-occurrence networks. Motivated by previousresearch about scale-free small-world networks we suggest our networks to offer efficient andintuitive properties for knowledge representation and learning. In the context of cell biologywe provide experimental results about the properties of the linkage emerging in the vocabularyco-occurrence networks in a set of 175 Wikipedia articles and contrast it with the linkageemerging in the corresponding hyperlink network in Wikipedia. Furthermore we describeformation of the pedagogic co-occurrence network that can be exploited to recommendlearning paths for the student.

Copyright by AACE. Reprinted from the Global Learn 2015: Global Conference on Learning and Technology with permission of AACE (http://www.aace.org)