CFP: SWEL'08@ITS'08 - Workshop on Ontologies and Semantic Web for Intelligent Educational Systems

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Please send to interested colleagues and students.

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SWEL'08: ONTOLOGIES AND SEMANTIC WEB FOR INTELLIGENT EDUCATIONAL 
SYSTEMS

in conjunction with ITS 2008:

The 9th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Montreal, Canada, June 23-27, 2008

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http://compsci.wssu.edu/iis/swel/SWEL08/ 
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PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: APRIL 20, 2008

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This workshop will focus on Semantic Web based knowledge representation 
and engineering approaches and methods for the design, development and 
experimentation of intelligent educational systems. It will discuss 
issues related to the use of ontologies and Semantic Web standards for 
learning content structuring, retrieving, and delivery, services and 
knowledge components specification, effective intelligent courseware 
construction, and learner modeling. 

SWEL@ITS'08 will be the sixth in the series, following the successful 
workshop on Concepts and Ontologies in Web-based Educational Systems, 
held in conjunctions with ICCE'2002 in Auckland, New Zealand, the three 
sessions of SWEL'04 (in conjunction with ITS'04, AH'04, and ISWC'04), 
the three sessions in 2005 (in conjunction with AIED'05, ICALT'05, and 
K-CAP'05), the session in 2006 in conjunction with AH'06, and the 
session in 2007 in conjunction with AIED'07. It has an established 
audience and a wiki hosting related resources - the Ontologies 
for Education (O4E) Wiki (http://o4e.iiscs.wssu.edu/xwiki/bin/view/Blog/Articles ).


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Workshop goals
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* To discuss the current state-of-the-art in using ontologies and 
Semantic Web standards in intelligent and distributed educational 
systems; 

* To attract the interest of the related research communities to the 
problems in the educational Semantic Web and serve as an international 
platform for knowledge exchange and cooperation between researchers.  

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Important Dates
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Paper submission: 20 April 2008 
Notification: 15 May 2008
Camera-ready submission: 24 May 2008
Workshop: 23-24 June 2008

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Workshop topics
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Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:

* Building ontologies for e-learning:
- ontology development;
- theoretical issues in ontology engineering;
- lightweight & participatory approaches (e.g. tagging).

* Using ontologies and Semantic Web standards in e-learning 
applications:
- to represent learning content (knowledge); 
- to organize learning repositories / digital libraries;
- to enable sharable learning objects and learner models;
- to allow integrated learning scenarios using several content 
objects/tools/activities;
- to support authoring of intelligent Web-based educational systems;
- to support adaptive modularized and standardized architectures. 

* Using Semantic Web-based contexts for adaptation and personalization 
of e-learning applications: 
- to support personalized information retrieval; 
- to support adaptive information filtering; 
- to support mobile learning applications personalization.

* Using Semantic Web services in e-learning:
- information retrieval services;
- learning object/learning design services;
- learner modeling services;
- instructional services;
- Web-based educational systems authoring services;
- interoperability of and with these services. 

* Educational Semantic Web standards:
- what should be included, e.g. formal languages, rules, metadata, 
educational modeling  languages;
- exploring possible combinations of existing Semantic Web and/or 
educational standards and mappings between them;
- moving educational standards such as LOM, SCORM & IMS-LD closer to 
the Semantic Web;
- methods and tools for annotation and reusability of learning objects;
- role of RDF(S), OWL or TML as a basis for educational metadata 
specification languages. 

* Real-world systems, case studies and empirical research for Semantic 
Web-based educational systems:
- lessons learnt;
- best practices;
- case studies for improved learners, instructors and authors 
experience.


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Workshop Format
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* Keynote talk - Jim Greer, University of Saskatchewan.
* Paper presentation sessions - 20 minutes per paper including 5 
minutes for discussion. 
* Poster and Software demonstration and discussion session - 2 hours.
* Discussion Panel (panelists will be invited to present key questions 
for discussion and their positions on them) - 1 hour.


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Submission
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High quality research papers are encouraged, including position papers 
and work in progress, in order to present the current state of the art 
on various perspectives of intelligent educational systems within the 
context of educational Semantic Web. They will serve as an input for a 
scientific discussion to identify main problems and to set the basis 
for novel solutions. Participation of young researchers is encouraged. 
All submissions will be reviewed by at least two PC members.

The participants can submit full papers up to 10 pages and short and 
position papers and posters up to 5 pages. Paper should be formatted 
according to the Springer LNCS formatting instructions 
(http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,,5-164-2-72376-0,00.html). 

Submit your papers in electronic form to the workshop organizers at:   
swel.workshop AT gmail.com


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Workshop proceedings
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The accepted workshop papers will be printed in the ITS 2008 workshop 
proceedings. After the workshop, they will be also made available 
online at the SWEL workshop website. Possibilities will be investigated 
to publish the best workshop papers in a special issue of a refereed 
journal.


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Workshop Organizers
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Darina Dicheva, Winston-Salem State University, USA
Andreas Harrer, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Riichiro Mizoguchi, University of Osaka, Japan


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Workshop Committee
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Lora Aroyo, Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Paul Brna, University of Glasgow, UK
Cyrille Desmoulins, University of Grenoble, France 
Vladan Devedzic, University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro 
Paloma Diaz, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain 
Vanja Dimitrova, Univeristy of Leeds, UK
Martin Dzbor, Knowledge Media Institute, UK 
Peter Dolog, Aalborg University, Denmark 
Erik Duval, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium 
Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada 
Monique Grandbastien, LORIA, France 
Jim Greer, University of Saskatchewan, Canada 
Marek Hatala, Simon Fraser University, Canada 
Nicola Henze, University of Hanover, Germany 
Judy Kay, University of Sydney, Australia 
Kinshuk, Athabasca University, Canada
Gordon McCalla, Uniersity of Saskatchewan, Canada 
Dave Millard, University of Southampton, UK 
Tanja Mitrovic, University of Canterbury,New Zealand 
Ambjörn Naeve, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden 
Hiroaki Ogata, Tokushima University, Japan 
Niels Pinkwart, Clausthal University of Technology, Germany 
Demetrios Sampson, Center for Research and Technology - Hellas, Greece 
Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcalá, Spain 
Sergey Sosnovsky, University of Pitttsburgh, USA 
Maria Felisa Verdejo, Univ. Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain  

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Received on Friday, 15 February 2008 16:59:38 UTC