How can wikipedia be used to support the process of automatically building multilingual domain modules? a case study.

Abstract The goal of the research here presented is to identify which aspects of Wikipedia can be exploited to support the process of automatically building Multilingual Domain Modules from textbooks. First, we have defined a representation formalism for Multilingual Domain Modules that is essential for Technology Supported Learning Systems which aim to serve a globalized society. To our knowledge, no attempt has been made at achieving domain models that consider multiple languages. Our approach combines Multilingual Educational Ontologies with Learning Objects in different languages. Wikipedia is a valuable resource to accomplish this purpose. In this scenario, we have developed LiDom Builder, a framework that uses Wikipedia as an additional knowledge base for the automatic generation of Multilingual Domain Modules from textbooks. The framework includes domain-independent term extraction methods to identify which topics of Wikipedia are related to the domain to be learnt and, also, extracts their equivalents in other languages. In order to complete the Educational Ontology, we have defined a method to extract pedagogical relationships from Wikipedia and other general-purpose knowledge bases. From this task, we highlight the extraction of relationship that will allow the sequencing of the topics in Technology Supported Learning Systems. In addition, LiDom Builder takes advantage of the structured contents of Wikipedia to identify text fragments that can be used for educational purposes, classifies them and generates their corresponding Learning Objects. The interlanguage links between topics of Wikipedia are used to create Learning Objects in other languages.