Semantic Technologies to Support Teaching and Learning with Cases: Challenges and Opportunities

Visions of a ‘semantic web’ and the technologies, standards and services associated with it have the potential to support and enhance teaching and learning. As yet, this potential has not been practically demonstrated in ways that are accessible to teachers and students. ‘Ensemble: Semantic Technologies to Support the Teaching and Learning of Case Based Learning’ is currently exploring the potential of semantic technologies to support and enhance teaching and learning in fields in higher education where knowledge is complex, changing or contested, and where as a result case based learning is the pedagogy of choice. This paper describes how the wide range of case based learning approaches has informed the selection, development and deployment of semantic technologies, and identifies a number of key challenges and areas for development which would enable more widespread adoption of semantic technologies by teachers and students.