CogSkillnet: An Ontology-Based Representation of Cognitive Skills

A number of studies emphasized the need to capture learners’ interaction patterns in order to personalize their learning process as they study through learning objects. In education context, learning materials are designed based on pre-determined expectations and learners are evaluated to what extent they master these expectations. Representation of these expectations in learning and assessment objects, on the other hand, is a new challenge for e-learner providers. In order to address this challenge, POLEonto (Personlized Ontological Learning Environment) proposes a new method to separate these expectations by determining domain concepts (ConceptNet) and cognitive skills (CogSkillNet) for expectations via creating cognitive skill and concept ontology for K-12 education. In this paper, we report only the development and design processes of CogSkillNet within POLEonto environment; and, we further discuss how CogSkillNet can be modeled in the e-learning domain. We also describe how ontological representations play a role in creating personalized navigational guidance for allowing visualization of cognitive skills and providing useful navigational feedback to learners.