Applications of natural language techniques to enhance curricular coherence

An effective and highly efficient curriculum is the foundation of an optimal content delivery to students and may lead to the success of the academic program. Ensuring the effectiveness of curricular processes goes beyond the successful design of individual courses and it is subject to careful planning in accordance to appropriate policies and procedures that enable a high level of curriculum coherence. Such curriculum can guarantee that students are presented with a complete set of interrelated topics related to the area of study that can enable students to connect topics in individual courses and apply them in professional settings. The goal of this article is to evaluate the curriculum coherence of an Information Science program using ontologies and natural language processing techniques. Curricular coherence is evaluated using a possibilistic approach which evaluates academic gaps and overlaps that exist in the core courses offered in the degree. The use of ontologies enables us to perform a qualitative study of curricular coherence at different levels of ontological abstraction using mereotopological principles. The knowledge inferred from this process can be used at the universities to optimize their course offering and content for better academic content.