The infological approach to develop edutainment systems

There are some issues related to implementing of e-Learning and Edutainment informational systems, such as searching for background text data, definition of the minimal set of notions of problem-oriented subject areas that fully cover an object domain, et al.

The study of an object domain-s terminology for a user - who is not a specialist in certain problem-oriented object domain is a quite complicated task. Therefore, it is needed to create computer information systems which are able to make that task easier for a user.

The most preferable form of interfacing between human and computers is textual form to date. Semiological systems are successfully used for representing notional content of a predefined problem-oriented object domain. Such systems create notional environments for notions of on object domain by revealing interconnections between notions.

The edutainment process is implemented using the interactive visual tools to represent a notional content of object domain. User having such tool can explore a notional content of an subject area at different levels. The top level contains the most important notions and terms of the object domain. Details for notion (selected by user) are represented as notional environment of associatively connected notions (visual glossary). User either moves from one term to another or changes a detail level, thereby to get the notions of problem-oriented subject areas studying process running.

A real problem-oriented subject area is liable to continuous developing. Its terminology is continuously being changed and actualized. In contrast to other systems an infological system is able to take into account an actuality time period of knowledge in a problem-oriented object domain.

The system implementation and testing show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches to support the iterative process of an object domain-s notions learning.