What is an ontology?
For our purposes, it is a visual analysis of the essential and desirable elements of a course, and how those elements relate to one another.
Watch the video tour below (11 minutes), or use the sub-page navigation to jump to a shorter ontology branch video. You can also tour around the draft ontology in Mural
. Be sure to read the "business case" below the video, the rationale behind the need for an ontology and the key aspects that it should possess.
- End user support.
In order for HAX to provide course authoring assistance at the point of need, an underlying ontology must be operative for tagging and pulling in associated guidance and examples.
- Enabling dialog and progress.
For HAX to continuously improve, course authors, instructional designers, and developers need to speak a common vocabulary and would benefit from a shared mental model of a course.
- Gap analysis.
Once we can specify the instructional tool set already provided in HAX, we can more easily determine instructional capabilities we are missing.
- Research-informed best practice.
The ontology should be driven by evidence-based teaching and learning strategies and illustrated by annotated examples taken from actual ODL courses.
- Stability supporting growth.
The ontology should be robust, yet capable of organic growth over time; that is, logical enough to serve as a stable foundation, while able to adapt, broaden, and deepen.
- Empowering.
The ontology should permit complete flexibility in the instructional approach used, while also serving to showcase the application of recognized approaches such as Backward Design.