The project

The aim of the iSLe project is to study and develop the prototype of a new type of digital book (also known as ‘liquid book’) and multilayer platform, for educational and professional publishing. The iSLe platform will offer new tools to exploit the semantic annotations, to create and manage native digital content resources for cultural and educational study, to support reasoning ability through an inference engine and thus finally, implementing the new learning methods and paradigms in multi-modal applications. ISLe will exploit the potentials of the new digital-native-media and digital-native-channels, it will define new training approaches derived from users creative interactions and will set up innovative methodologies for improving the consolidation of learning and learner experience. The state of the art of digital publishing process is inadequate to the learning needs: current approaches do not take advantage of the native-digital media advantages and of the devices’ tools:  too often the publishing workflows are still anchored to the analog models of lesson consultation bound to the paper editions, which is then digitized and forced and adapted as a literal transposition onto computers and mobile devices. Therefore, the objective of the project is to imagine how edge knowledge based technologies (such as inference engines, ontology learning tools, text mining, semantic annotation of content and artificial intelligence) can be used to plan, create and distribute a new generation of the so called ‘liquid books’, which do not deny the past cultural resources but inclusively adapts them into a new ecosystem: more flexible, easily exchangeable and interoperable, more intelligent and usable.

In the first phase of the project we will define new formats for what concerns the cultural resources, and new specific models of learning for what concerns the methodology and learning approaches (including use of apps for mobile devices -tablets and smartphones-, Web apps and classroom devices -smart boards, touch screens, etc.-) as well as the implementation of semantic content management. iSLE will enable the better performing oc current learning methodologies and the creation of completely new learning models to be proposed to students according to their specific and personalized training needs. iSLe may propose an approach which is is not only cognitive, but also includes implicit teaching techniques by using uptodate interaction of device sensors and media content.

In a second phase of the project we will analyze the typical problems of large publishers and distributors, who need to manage multi-format publications and a large number of users. In this regard we will analyze and statistically compare the data of the users who will be profiled in order to provide personalized multi-disciplinary learning paths. In this phase we will support the publisher in the evaluation of the authors’ performance while using  the tools (i.e. tools for semi-automatic analysis of the readability, the compliance of the style used with the user’s), in order to speed up the production of publishing content.

The project also implies the analysis of new models of distribution: the teaching material will not be a monolithic object anymore, but a set of tabs, articles, chapters, each offered separately through a microdelivery platform. Such liquid book will not be a static “object” but a resource which is constantly being updated and supplemented by other users interaction and knowledge generation.

The service will be provided by subscription, as happens for example in professional publishing.

So the main themes of iSLe are:

  • Definition of specific learning environments for new media.

  • Using reasoning engines for the management of non-traditional learning paths.

  • Semantic annotation of multimedia content.

  • Semantic description of the educational context.

  • Creation of an adaptive system for the generation of exercises

  • Analysis of the style of presentation of the contents on the basis of training needs.

  • Protection and marking of content, also informative one.