Multi-faceted vertical semantic search of educational resources

The education-pool ("Bildungspool") is a search platform for learning resources contained in a metadata repository and whose goal is to improve the collaboration and use of electronically available learning materials (eContent) for teaching purposes in Austrian schools. Hence, the technical basis for searching, accessing and exchanging learning resources and their respective metadata is provided. The aim is to develop an Austrian learning network for schools which would allow the exchange of learning resources and thereby promote active knowledge transfer.

The semantic search of the education-pool makes use of faceted classification*.

A recent goal of this project is to make learning assets (e.g. pictures) available, which constitute the base units of courses. The teachers can thus retrieve these learning assets from several different sources and assemble them individually for their courses.

Benefits of this solution at a glance

• Focussed on target groups
• Guided search based on expert knowledge
• Navigational help through predefined structures
• Active support of knowledge transfer
• High quality search results via vertical database
• Preliminary information about the amount of results
• Consolidated presentation of heterogeneous data sources with different structures
• High performance and stability

*Faceted classification | uma`s definition

A faceted classification is a structured and multi-level classification developed from expert knowledge. It helps the user to search and, due to its structure, encourages a sustainable knowledge transfer.