MAster assignment
A Well-founded Ontology for Educational Tasks in the Competency-Based Education Paradigm
Type: Master CS or Master BIT
Start date: Research Topics no later than Q3
Start date: Final Project (Thesis) no later than Q4
Student: Unassigned
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Background:
This assignment consists of a classical investigation of an ontology of educational tasks, and its main reference is the following research paper: “A Typology of Task Characteristics and Their Effects on Student Engagement”.
Expected outcomes:
Your research work on the “Research Topics” should result in a 15-page report (excluding references) featuring preliminary scientific results from a narrowed-scope, theme-focused literature review. This is typically obtained by following the protocol for a systematic literature review, but you can use alternative approaches provided that they are well justified and agreed upon (beforehand) with your supervisors.
- One way to know whether your work during the research topics presents scientific results properly is to submit this work for external validation, for instance, to a scientific conference. The result of this submission (acceptance or rejection) does not influence your grade on Research Topics.
- With or without external validation, your supervisor will review and grade your research topics report according to the Assessment Report provided by the BIT Programme in accordance with the EEMCS Assessment Policy and the BIT-EER (Education and Examination Regulations). However, external validation enhances your chances of success and pulls your grade towards the highest scores – according to the M-BIT Assessment Form (rubrics for Research Topics); for M-CS, please check the appropriate form with your study adviser.
- The optimal moment to start your research work for the “Research Topics” is Q3 (or before). This is because the literature review is the ‘sine-qua-non’ input for the modeling work done in the systematic development of an ontology. The course “Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling with Applications (202100291)” is offered in Q4. Therefore, by having your literature review ready and approved by the end of Q3, you can leverage the course ODCMwithA to develop your ontology while receiving feedback from relevant experts in the Conceptual Modeling field. This represents a relevant impact on your workload for the thesis and will give you much more confidence in the quality of your work (also most likely reduce a lot of stress).
- Additionally (or alternatively), your research topics report should feature a survey with companies in the Netherlands regarding which tasks are assigned to professionals of a certain profile (for instance, Back-end developers). This enriches the results of your Research Topics report and may be an alternative to ground your claims (results) on data if the literature review proves di>icult to finish due to the excess or absence of relevant references in the literature. This also gives you contact with companies, which can be a refreshing and inspiring experience.
Your Final Project (Thesis) should feature a well-founded ontology (rooted in UFO) on Educational Tasks. This ontology must be developed following a systematic approach, preferably SABiO (this paper is a starting point on SABiO; you can and should look for more up-to-date versions of this methodology).
- Your ontology should preferably be your (individual, not group) project in the course “Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling with Applications (202100291)”, which takes place in Q4. This is because (in this course) you will get feedback from relevant experts in the field while you’re developing your thesis. This helps reduce the workload (because it’s spread and shared with the workload of the course, which also gives you ECs).
- In case your timeline doesn’t allow for you to enrol in the Ontology-driven Conceptual Modeling with Applications (202100291), then you’ll need two supervisors from EEMCS (Dr. Claudenir Fonseca is one suggestion, but you can find others in the SCS Group). If you’re a BIT student, you’ll also need a supervisor from the BMS Faculty, which can be done with the help of your EEMCS supervisors.
- Your ontology must be validated according to the approach you will learn in the “Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling with Applications” course. If you don’t have the means to follow this course (i.e., you didn’t finish your literature review), one expert from SCS should be invited to help with that (Dr. Claudenir Fonseca is one suggestion, but you can find others in the SCS group).
- Your thesis will be graded according to the Assessment Form of your study programme. In the case of the M-BIT programme, you can find the form here.