An Ontological Approach to Chemical Engineering Curriculum Development

Continuous reflection and evolution of curricula in chemical engineering is beneficial for adaptation to evolving industry requirements, novel technologies and enhances student experience by being up to date and inclusive of effective teaching strategies. To this end it was necessary to develop a method to enable a holistic reflection on the curriculum and to examine the effect and potential areas of improvement and change. The curriculum was modelled using semantic knowledge modelling through the development of an Ontology, ChEEdO in the Protege 3.5 environment. ChEEdo models topics within the domain of chemical engineering (Topics), modules taught in chemical engineering courses (Modules) and the learning outcomes of these modules (LearningOutcomes). The learning outcomes were related to the topics using verb properties from Bloom's taxonomy and using the context of each learning outcome. The functionality of semantic reasoning via the ontology was demonstrated with a case study based on curriculum development. The output of the modelling results demonstrated that the ontology could be successfully utilised for curriculum development and this is discussed in relation to practicality and future direction.