Learning Demography in a Web Classroom: Ontological Support

This paper describes steps taken towards introducing Web-based educational technology in teaching demography at the university level. Traditionally, demography is taught by giving lectures to the students, who are then expected to study from textbooks and exercise in demographic calculus. Some students find this way of learning monotonous and exhausting, hence their motivation gradually drops. Modern learning technology can help prevent such a situation, at least to an extent. Of course, using any technology to support teaching and learning requires representing essential parts of the domain knowledge with that technology first. The paper presents initial results in building such a knowledge infrastructure for Webbased education (WBE) in the domain of demography.