Need for a killer IT Product in present academic scenario

By:- Dexter Washangbam *

With the present not so good academic results prevailed in schools and colleges, it would be a thoughtful thing to do something. It is not that we are not smart enough to overcome this. Just a systematic approach and commitment is called forth.

In order to address various issues faced by students either it be overcoming learning handicap or systematic rapid way to excellence, an innovative solution is required.

Now it is the right time, a specialized web based killer IT product is introduced with a provision of back up support by a team of teachers, academics, educationist and research activist.

Let it be named as online student lab (OSL) and support team as universal student centre (USC). The centre values to impart should be - integrity, careful reasoning, clarity, accuracy and eloquence to their student expression.

The web based software OSL will not only act as a supplement to various training centers and institutions, it can provide many advantages.

To sum up what it is, it will be a repository of various resources, a knowledge base. With this, a student can submit question about their learning online. In response to their query, an email will be sent off within 24 hrs.

This will be perfect place for those who don’t like boring lectures or those who need immediate answers. Students will be allowed to chat online with anyone free from support team. This chat option is growing popularity in many other web based application as well.

In addition, this software can be configured to offer student additional information in response to certain keyword or question they are looking for. For instance when student type in questions about rapid learning, the software will automatically offer them an opportunity to see USC resource on the said topic awareness and analysis. USC trained consultant will be answering every student specific questions.

An Important thing is that every student using this software is to make sure the trainers gets the result they expect from student.

And the coursework to be integrated here places a strong emphasis on applying theories and concepts to practical problems. The sole objective of this is fostering critical thinking, critical reading and critical writing and practices with complex analysis, synthesis, evaluation and problem solving. With critical thinking, one can identify patterns, apply information, and draw conclusions. All these are immensely needed for every student.

The knowledge based system aka KBS we are discussing would exhibit like an expert system which incorporates artificial intelligence in responding a specific query. It consists of a store database of expert knowledge with proper integration and linkage designed to facilitate its retrieval in response to specific query or to transfer expertise from one domain of knowledge to another.

Basically It is a thing of two main components - a knowledge base which consists of rules ,facts and meta knowledge and a inference engine which does reasoning and provides search strategy for solution and other services.

It can also be thought as intelligent information processing system- a representation of domain interest by symbolic representation, problem solving by symbol manipulation and symbol programs.

The above diagram is copied from an internet resource which shows the structure and characteristics of a knowledge base system.

A component on the right top, case specific database is an auxiliary component which will act as a repository of information of concrete problems and information obtained during various reasoning.

Explanation subsystem which is a closely tight component in left part of the diagram does explanation of system actions according to user request. It facilitates explanation during problem solving like intelligent help, tracing information, gleaning in knowledge-base and case-specific database, finding counter-examples etc.

Knowledge acquisition subsystem in the middle bottom does checking the syntax of knowledge elements, checking the consistency of KB (verification, validation), knowledge extraction, building KB automatic logging and book-keeping of the changes of KB, tracing facilities (handling breakpoints, automatic monitoring and reporting the values of knowledge elements).

And the main tasks of the knowledge engineer is knowledge acquisition and design of KBS, determination, classification, refinement and formalization of methods, thumb-rules and procedures , selection of knowledge representation method and reasoning strategy, implementation of knowledge-based system verification and validation of KB , KB maintenance.

A wiki like component can also integrated which allows to freely create and edit webpage content.

Hope this software is released in soon some short time.

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* Dexter Washangbam writes regularly to e-pao.net . The writer can be contacted at dexterwashangbam(at)gmail(dot)com
This article was webcasted on June 30th, 2009.

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