Development of the Visualizing System of Knowledge Structure Based on STEM eLearning Website
Kanazawa Institute of Technology Ohgigaoka, Japan
ABSTRACT
Many people have been gradually building the knowledge of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) for a long time and new knowledge is created based on previous knowledge. Therefore, all knowledge is related to each other and structured. Currently, knowledge structure of STEM is huge and complicated. We consider that visualization of knowledge structure is very useful for learning STEM. By acquiring knowledge structure students can understand STEM more deeply and learning speed is accelerated. From this background, we developed the system visualizing the knowledge structure of STEM. We realize visualization of knowledge structure by using a network graph of hyperlink structure of STEM e-learning website which we have been developing. In order to analyze the hyperlink structure we developed crawler software and computed the data for graph drawing. The website contains about one thousand units of knowledge. In the graph drawing a node indicates a unit of knowledge which is allocated to one webpage and a directed edge indicates a hyperlink. The label of the node comes from the title of the webpage. The graph drawing is limited to knowledge within 3 graph distances from noticing knowledge. The graph drawing is opened by just clicking hyperlink on the webpage which you are visiting to study. The noticed webpage is displayed as a red node. In the graph, you can easily recognize some nodes which connect with many other nodes. These nodes indicate very important knowledge which you should know. We can not only easily understand the relation between knowledge through this graph drawing, but also learn basic knowledge and advanced knowledge by just clicking the node in the graph drawing. This graph drawing system enables you to learn STEM efficiently and effectively.
KEYWORDS
STEM, graph drawing, e-learning, hyperlink, knowledge structure