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

We propose a new computational method for generating learning paths in educational texts. The method relies on forming vocabulary co-occurrence networks among articles of Wikipedia online encyclopedia and exploiting random explorations to generate route weighting parameters to form pedagogic co-occurrence networks. Motivated by previous research about scale-free small-world networks we suggest our networks to offer efficient and intuitive properties for knowledge representation and learning. In the context of cell biology we provide experimental results about the properties of the linkage emerging in the vocabulary co-occurrence networks in a set of 175 Wikipedia articles and contrast it with the linkage emerging in the corresponding hyperlink network in Wikipedia. Furthermore we describe formation of the pedagogic co-occurrence network that can be exploited to recommend learning paths for the student.