Ontologies And Web Semantics For Improvement Of Curriculum In Civil Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recommended that engineering education becomes more responsive to continual changes in society. We propose to address these challenges of improving engineering education through the application of ontology and web semantics. These fields of information technology allow computers to interpret the vast body of knowledge dispersed throughout the web. The long term objective of our research is to develop an ontological approach for improving curriculum in civil engineering as well as other fields of engineering. In the future, we envision that the curriculum information on university websites will be interpreted by computers through ontological tools for the ultimate benefits of students, educators and engineers. This paper reviews the background and premises of our research and summarizes some preliminary results about the application of ontological concepts for describing, analyzing and improving undergraduate programs in civil engineering. Future work will enhance curriculum using ontological tools using best-practice educational evaluation and accounting for NAE and ASCE recommendations.