Assisting Learner’s in Monitoring their Conceptual Development

This paper elaborates on the design of a computer-based service to support conceptual development. Our ambition is provide learners a way to compare their conceptual development against different reference models, so they recognize the limits of their expertise. These models are (semi) automatically generated from learning materials and learner text inputs using Latent Semantic Analysis, a technique that can identify the concepts and their relations between the concepts contained in input text materials. The paper explains the envisioned service presenting a scenario that illustrates how it can be used in formal and informal learning context. After, the paper elaborates the theoretical background behind the design of the service and, finally, it draws conclusions and outlines future work.