Ontological Issues on Computer-based Training

The idea that the next generation computer-based training (CBT) systems should incorporate many innovative concepts in the acquisition, representation, and management of expert knowledge and common-sense knowledge is now widely accepted among the researchers. The system which we call Smart Trainer is a CBT system including a set of simulators for facility of electric power systems. The development of Smart Trainer is partly motivated by the need for a powerful authoring system of Intelligent CBT systems. We think the specification authoring systems should be clarified in many viewpoints, for example, what role each component should play, to what extent the knowledge-bases should cover, to what degree of the fidelity of cognitive model should be pursued, and so on. In knowledge engineering, the research on a system of the concepts appeared in the domain of a knowledge-based system, called “ontology engineering”[Mizoguchi, 1995], attracts much attention of AI-researchers. So, to put the goal of the Smart Trainer in other words, we have been aiming at clarifying the ontology of CBT systems from the knowledge engineering viewpoint. The expected advantages of explicit representation of ontology and its use are summarized as follows. 1. Because the ontology plays a role as fundamental scheme for authoring the contents, it provides authors with a right viewpoint for organizing training tasks of interest.