#318 Poster/Demo

Monday 16 April 16:45 - 17:00 Bowett Room

iOCW: Improved Navigation of OpenCourseWare

Naoko Tosa, Kyoto University, Japan

Conference Theme: Impact

Summary: We describe the Kyoto University Navigation of OpenCourseWare; teaching myself and self-learning for lifelong education.

Abstract: Open Course Ware (OCW) is continuing to spread among the universities in the world. Each university offers various courses at every level, but it is not easy to grasp all the details of the whole range of information. If all lists of courses of the university were viewed at one time, the list could be  enormous. Users need time to find these courses. With the search function used with the general OCW system, users must input the matching word which must be exactly the same as the web’s courseware subject or statements of contents. This can cause problems and can limit users’ choice.  But iOCW solves this.
The iOCW system delivers a new method of searching courseware information with the expansion of users’ associations by suggesting related and recommended OCW’s course subjects. Users can easily find subjects they may not have considered with iOCW, because other subjects are suggested by the system and this motivates users to explore unexpected subjects.
iOCW uses an inspirational way that is provided by i.Plot system as mentioned in the section below. Inspirational search is entirely different from contemporary searches in that they are not connected to one another in a linear fashion. The user’s input words are analyzed and associatively related words are inspired by the system, and in turn the next set of words are generated.
 “i.Plot” : Inspiration Plot The core engine of this search system is called “i.Plot”. It enables visualization of potential associations through word association. In this system, words form in inspiration space that describes the intersections of them and they are displayed interactively on the screen. Because the relationships of words are categorized based on human thought forms, the associative method of searching reflects human thought processes.
Thought forms consist of five patterns:

1. Concatenation. The same source group is arranged in order of continuity. For example “Hop, step and jump”.
2. Balance. It is the three-sets that we use frequently. Like “Head, body, foots”.
3. Division. Divide one idea into two simple ideas. For example a computer could be divided into software and hardware.
4. Unification. The pattern of combining two ideas into a new idea. Like a radio and cassette become a Cassette Radio.
5. Crisscross. Four ideas derived from a central idea. Like “North, South, West, East”

The algorithm is described below:

1. Users enter own search terms into input field.
2. Associated words are generated by the i.Plot system.
3. If the user Selects an associative word, the tag that matched the associative word from the course-tag database is searched.
4. Each course-tag tags’ weights are calculated and the heaviest one's subject is indicated on the screen.
5. When course-tag tags do not match, another associated word is searched in the Roget Thesaurus database. With this result, one’s course subject is determined. And then, course information is indicated on the screen.