New Ergonomic Metrics for Educational Ontology Design and Evaluation

This article presents an approach aimed at creating teaching strategies for e-learning based on the principles of ontological engineering and cognitive psychology. For the last ten years visual representation of knowledge has been topical in e-learning methodology and it is heavily connected to ontology design and development. The proposed framework is aimed to develop a methodology where the design of ontology is evaluated by assessing its structure with several quantitative metrics. This can scaffold the process of knowledge structuring and orchestrating teaching ontologies for courseware design. The refining procedure is essential for ontology design and development. Illustrative domain ontologies are helpful in learning process. The main idea is to use visual techniques of mind-mapping and concept mapping as a powerful learning tool. Cognitive bias and some results of Gestalt psychology form a general guideline. The ideas of balance, clarity, and beauty are applied to the ontology evaluation procedures. Such approach can be widely used in enterprise knowledge management systems, in education processes, and can help educators and students create ontologies of high quality.