concept mapping – article in indian journal

I have been always thinking to publish our research work for an Indian audience. Atleast in India, the community of educationists, teachers, etc., get to know what we are working on. With this objective, I had
submitted some preliminary findings of my Ph.D. work to an Indian Journal. The following research paper has been published in the Indian Educational Review (a journal published by NCERT).

Kharatmal M. (2009): Concept Mapping for Eliciting Students’ Understanding of Science. Indian Educational
Review. 45(2), pp.31-43.

The article is on display in our library. I have also uploaded the article which can be downloaded from the publications page of my blog

change in the names of scientific terms in marathi textbooks

Today, discussion over lunch made me curious to find out who decides the changes in the scientific terms that are used in the textbook.

We were discussing about the Marathi Vishwakosh Project that HBCSE is involved in. In the early years of HBCSE, V G Kulkarni (Founder Director, HBCSE)  instigated the project on language in science. Since then, there are a few members who are working in this area.

Deshmukh explained the volumes of work that the project is coming up with. It has been decided to bring a separate volume for biology subject and produce it in three parts. Related to the scientific terminology, he mentioned that a few scientific terminology in marathi textbook has been changed and hence the members have to pay heed to the latest usage of the term. He gave two instances of such change: the marathi term for auricle has been changed from karnika to alind; for ventricle it has been changed from javanika to nilay;  the other instance of marathi term for skull has been changed from kavati to karkara. I was anxious to know why the name of the terms got changed, who decides that such change is required in textbook, what is the rationale behind it. May be the textbook bureau decides about these changes. Jayashree too agreed, and she added that it could be that they want to give a more specific word for a very specialized part.

But i am not yet convinced. Can a name of a scientific term change over a period of time. Well of course, if the meaning that is implied to it changes. But in this case, atleast the meanings of auricle, ventricle, skull  are not yet changed, and their english names of terms are still the same. So what makes the marathi language textbook bureau to change it. Then we thought we should check the bodies/organizations who possibly could be involved in this work. We all headed to the library, and referred a few books related to Vishwakosh, Paribhasha Granth, etc. We could find atleast two bodies who have been involved in this work since the 1970s: Bhasha Sanchalanalay (Directorate of Language); and Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya-Sanskriti Mandal (Maharashtra State Board of Literature and Culture). Perhaps one can write/meet these people and find out more.

As i am also interested in the language of science, all this discussion has made me more curious, and i am into finding out as to who decides the changes in the scientific terms and what is the rationale behind it.

minimal set of relation names in RCM

as part of my ph.d. work in the area of refined concept map (RCM) in biology education, i am working on analyzing the school textbooks of 8, 9, 11 standards on the domain of cell biology. i mapped the domain of each 3 standards using the RCM method i.e. using a fixed and a minimal set of relation names for mapping the concepts.  the hypothesis of the study was that even if the complexity in the domain increases with an increase in the number of concepts, but the relation names that provide meaning to these concepts would be a fixed and a minimal set. the following is a brief summary of the results:

std.          no. of concepts             no. of relation names

8                             75                                        11

9                           195                                        16

11                         500                                        15

the most widely used relation names are: consists of, includes, comprised of, surrounded by, located in, has function, has attribute.

i am also analyzing the other components involved, such as the frequency of relation names, the no. of concepts connected to specific relation names, etc.  across all the 3 standards.

it is really an interesting and exciting exercise which i enjoy working on.

negation of relation names

In the relations ontology we express:
eukaryotes consists of nucleus  ==> consists_of(eukaryotes, nucleus)
eurkaryotic cell enveloped by cell membrane ==> enveloped_by(cell, cell membrane)

as I am representing the school textbook, I find a few sentences to be of the form of negation. These are:

prokaryotes does not consist of nucleus ==> ~consists_of(prokaryotes, nucleus)
prokaryotes not enveloped by membrane  ==> ~enveloped_by(prokaryotes, membrane)

Such negations are useful for students to understand the difference between eukaryotes and prokaryotes and cannot be avoided during representation.

so my query is: can we include the negations of relation names in the relations ontology. how can we represent such negation relation names.

since ~consists_of, ~enveloped_by are negation of consists_of, enveloped_by respectively, does the relation names ~consists_of, ~enveloped_by still fall under the meronymic inclusion and spatial inclusion  respectively.

I think so.  In the above assertions, we know in reality that prokaryotes donot consists of nucleus, but this is equally important for representation. In cases such as something may cease to exist at a particular time t then we still have to represent such assertions even though these would be in negation forms.

But the question that is grappling my mind is the following:

ontology is the representation of types. it represents what exists in reality. now something that does not exist in reality, and yet if we want to represent it then would we still be creating ontology of non-existent entities. and if yes, then would it still be  ontology.

Perhaps, philosophers can  provide a convincing argument for my question.

relations and functions in biology

As we know that functions (1 to 1) are different from relations (1 to many). All functions are relations, but not all relations are functions. In the case of creating an ontology for biology, we use relations. But, in biology, is it possible to apply the functions as well. Can there be any such relation which is a function in the case of biomedical ontology. For example, part-of, composed-of, located-in, surrounded-by, etc. are all relations in the context of biomedical ontology. Or do we have to always understand biology ontology in terms of relations only and not functions.

Prof. Barry Smith (University of Buffalo) clarifies the distinction between ontology of relations and the way relations and functions are treated in a set theory. Further he emphasizes on the functional associations (in mathematical sense) can occur in process relations. For example, process-a regulates process-b.

Now this sounds interesting. In this case, I think, some of the process relations can be functional. Such process relations are : regulates, transforms into, derives from, develops into, preceded by, results into, etc.

Let me illustrate with a few assertions:
Larva transforms into pupa
zygote develops into foetus
blastula transforms into gastrula

What I am trying to point out is that the domain and range for these process relations will always be of  1 to 1 mapping. So, these process relations can be of functional type.

But the structural relations such as part of, surrounded by can not be of functional type as a domain can have many ranges in such relations.

P.S. This post is based on my discussion on relations and functions in biology on the OBO mailing list.

what is so different about GNOWSYS

Gnowsys can be used to represent structural knowledge, process modelling, as far as scientific knowledge is concerned. But then there also exists several other modelling tools such as—OBO-edit, Protege, OPM, KEGG, Virtual Cel, Cell Designer, Reactome, GO, etc. which can as well represent knowledge. So then, an obvious query that comes to my mind is  what is so different about Gnowsys? Isn’t it just an addition to the existing modelling tools. Nagarjuna explained that the differences are in the form mentioned below:

One of them is the architecture of Gnowsys itself being different with the other tools. As per the gnowsys architecture, everything that goes in is a node for e.g. concept, concept type, instance, relation, relation type, attributes, attribute type, are all stored as nodes, but in the form of networked nodes. A node cannot have meaning on its own. Its meaning is established only by its neighborhood. For instance, X is related to Y, and it can have many such simple relations.  This is in accordance, with the theory that knowledge exists in a network. If we want to understand what is force, then its understanding can be acquired depending on what relations does the concept force shares with other concepts like, mass, inertia, acceleration, etc.

Gnowsys can create versions even if there is a single (simple) change to a node. This change can be in the form of either adding a node, editing a node, adding a relation, editing a relation, deleting a relation. From this list even if there is change in just one kind, then also it can create versions and record the history. This kind of change is accordance with the degrees of conceptual change that Paul Thagard explains in his book Conceptual Revolutions. According to Thagard,  conceptual change can occure when there is addition of concepts, addition of relations. With this model of versioning, gnowsys can record the changes that ocurs in people’s conceptual framework, thus enabling to trace the conceptual changes.

Another difference is that gnowsys does not store knowledge in any kind of file system. It is on the web, in another way to put it, gnowsys does not ask in which file format should it save the knowledge created. But at the same time, it can possibly exchange to various formats that of OWL.

The other difference is that gnowsys can store multiple ontologies. Using just one application of Gnowsys, it would be possible to store structural knowledge, process, metabolic pathways, etc. It will be interesting to see the multiple ontologies by importing a few of the existing ontologies (can be cell division, gene ontology, metabolic pathways, environment ontology,  etc.)  from the public domain and from several different places and allow these ontologies to store in gnowsys.

It would be useful to know, if there are other differences.

This excerpt is based on discussion over tea.

conceptual change and learning

As part of my Ph.D. work, I am reviewing various models of learning, conceptual change for learning. I am planning to review the works of Piaget, Carey, Thagard, Nersessian, Keil, Chi, Vosniadou, Ausubel, etc. and trying to characterize their models of learning.

I shall post the review, once an initial draft is ready.

visit to somaiya college for depmap workshop

Today I planned a visit to K.J.Somaiya college of science, vidyavihar with regard to plan for organizing depmap workshop for teachers. I met the faculty from physics, chemistry, biology, botany, microbiology, education departments of junior as well as senior college.

I explained about the objectives of the depmap workshop and since it is to build a teaching sequence, it would be useful if teachers themselves create their dependency maps using the web based portal in the hands-on workshop to be conducted in gnowledge lab, hbcse.  Teacher have got a fair understanding as I also showed them some featured maps picked out from the portal.

Overall, all the teachers whom i met are interested to participate in the depmap workshop. Teachers from each department will be participating in the workshop in april, may, june.

Initially the visit was planned for about an hour, but my visit got extended for more than 2 hours. Actually I have studied for H.S.C., B.Sc. & M.Sc. from Somaiya college. When i was meeting the teachers, i too got nostalgic and to my surprise, most of the teachers could remember me as their student. So my visit got extended as I met my teachers in the corridor, labs, and was talking about my work and research. A few teachers also were keen to know about my Ph.D. work in the area of biology education. My teachers were glad to know about my progress, i being an alumni of somaiya.

I was thrilled to go back to my college, to my teachers and convey my contribution to science education.

depmap on activity—who got the food

i was mapping the topic who got the food from chapter 4- looking at
animals from the small science curriculum for class III. and this is
the route that i followed to map.

depmap on food eating habits

an interesting depmap to build a thread as :
inorder to understand the concept of animals, one need to first
observe some animals, their food eating habits. the latter can be
understood in the context of an activity. once these activities are
performed one can categorize and classify which animals eat what kind
of food and then may be understand the concept of a dog, cat, and then progressively the concept of an animal.

Small Science Curriculum is an activity based curriculum developed by
HBCSE. It focusses on teaching science through activities.

“what the learner already knows” & depmap

I have been reading Ausubel’s classroom assimilation theory (1978) from time to time as his theory has form the basis of the prevailing science education research especially in the area of concept maps.

Ausubel’s principle, “what the learner already knows” means that students come to the classroom with a prior understanding of science through their everyday experience, commom sense knowledge, etc. He further goes ahead and suggests that we as science educators need to ascertain this fact first and “teach the learner accordingly”.

Now that we are creating a network of pre-requisite concepts or a dependency network for a teaching sequence, we are claiming that there are certain concepts which the learner should understand first and then progressively learn the further depending concepts.

I am just trying to make connections with the depmap work and Ausubel’s principle.

People are welcome to create dependency network (depmap) atwww.gnowledge.org.

One can view some featured maps. A few sample of depmaps from physics, chemistry and biology are featured for providing a glimpse of the depmaps.