Future Research Directions

In addition to the research issues which arose in the experiment, the following section recommends the future research direction this work could take.

• Authoring Tools Development

The authoring tools could reduce the authoring effort for the system developer in links creation in MDLs. For instance, a concept graph editor could be implemented to provide a visual view of the interconnection between concepts in the domain ontology. Rather than a user seeing the result of his search for a particular topic of interest in a textual representation, as shown in Figure 9-1, the user would be offered a visual illustration. This would ideally help users understand how each of the concepts related to another concept better. Furthermore, it would also diminish the authoring attempt for the system developer in adding new items, deleting, drawing and viewing the semantic relationships of all concepts. Another vision is to implement this idea in all MDLs, so that the user could see how links reside in each contextual dimension in graphical form. This would assist the user in deciding on which contextual links in the MDLs they are seeking.

• User Interface Enhancement

One of the future works could be looking at how the user interface could be improved so that the implementation of the MDL concept could be more usable and user-friendly, for instance, the use of ‘mouse click’ instead of users highlighting a keyword or phrase for following links.

• The Use of Ontologies

The use of ontologies requires further exploration. At present, the author employed a semantic network to represent the interconnection between concepts (associations) of the subject domain in the form of a ‘taxonomy-based’ ontology, whereby a concept relates to another concept by means of established relationship type. New relationship types for use in FOHM were created. This results in the provision of the Inquiry links interface to serve links matching a user’s search for a topic or concept of interest.

• Integrating into the Web Service Environment

Despite the MDL concept and its IPNS application was implemented in a domain specific; one of the possible research directions this work could take is to continue its development in a Web Service environment to faciliate shareability and reusability issues. Figure 9-2 demonstrates the transformation of the MDL concept and the extension of its operational components in a Web Service environment. It describes how these functional services could work in collaboration, in operational order. Each layer represents the communication between the services from the outermost (the Link Service) to the innermost (systems that could benefit from the implementation). The

Presentation layer deals with the links presentation to a user via a Web Browser. The Data Extraction layer concerns capturing a user trail (e.g. lists of user-related information such as user model, domain model, terms or concepts users are interested in, etc.). The Adaptation layer involves link query, rules and inferencing mechanism, link augmentation. The Link Service layeris where the link processors reside (FOHM- based structures in MDLs, Auld Linky, and Link Editor).

Figure 9-2: Incorporating the MDL concept into a Web Service environment

• Incorporating the MDL concept to support Personalised Web Learning Environment

The learning environment could rightly gain benefit from the MDL concept. Considering different expertise as diverse contextual dimensions would allow the learner to be presented with personalised links or contents particularly right for their levels of expertise. For instance, one of the expertise dimensions could be Learning Style (e.g. visual, auditory, or tangible), or Pedagogy (e.g. instructional design, inquiry- based learning, etc.), where the student could be provided with the contents and links according to their learning style and preference. With the implementation of the rules or inference engine, the system’s decision-making can be automatic, based on the result of the individual user model.

In addition, the user’s knowledge of each of the concepts in the domain model needs to be kept (De Bra et al., 2004) and in order to assess their knowledge, the user would be required to accomplish some forms of assessment, where the result could indicate the learner’s level of understanding (i.e. learning performance).

• New Approach on Evaluation

One aspect of future work is to extend the evaluation study to a larger scale. A new approach could be introduced. For instance, once the MDL implementation incorporates with the inference engine, the benefits of layered evaluation of adaptive applications and services (Brusilovsky et al., 2001) could be experienced, i.e. the evaluation can be performed at two distinct layers – interaction assessment and

adaption decision-making. In addition, since not only the quantity of links, but also the quality aspect of the links, are of the author’s interests; other quantitative evaluation methodologies, as well as qualitative methodologies, need to be explored. As Gena (2005) described and proposed, less explored methodologies such as “Grounded theory” needs thorough investigation.

In addition, current evaluation studies produce results for their own particular system; however, as Weibelzahl (2005) remarked, universal criteria would allow integrating the results between different systems in a wider perspective.