Platform for Computer-aided Harmonization of Informatics Curricula

Abstract

This paper presents a new platform aimed at improving informatics teaching by computer-aided harmonization of the standardized secondary school informatics curriculum and curricula by which teachers of informatics are educated. The platform relies on competency based curricula ontologies and the harmonization method based on ontology alignment. The secondary school informatics curriculum ontology was built to comply with the ACM K12 standard, while the teachers' curriculum ontology was built based on selected existing curricula, due to the lack of explicit standardization in the field. A task-specific method for curricula harmonization was developed that relies on standard ontology alignment algorithms. The prototype software tool was implemented and used by independent experts to verify the proposed method, by investigating compliance of the standardized secondary school informatics curriculum and the domain (informatics) segment of the teachers' curriculum.