An Ontology for Representing Information over Social Service in an

Educational Institution

Mireya Tovar

, Juan Carlos Flores

and Jos

e A. Reyes-Ortiz

Faculty of Computer Science, Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla,

Av. San Claudio y 14 Sur Ciudad Universitaria, 72570, Puebla, Mexico

Systems Department, Autonomous Metropolitan University, Azcapotzalco 02200, Mexico

Keywords:

Ontology, Ontological Engineering, Education.

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a method for constructing a manual ontology for the search of information over

social service in a higher level education institution. We use some steps from methodology proposed by

uninger and Fox. The ontology model will be useful to answer the questions of the students interested in

the procedures of the social service. A scenario, competition questions, classes, and relationships are part of

the design process. The answer to these questions leads us to the evaluation of the ontology. The ontology is

made into Prot

e and queries are written in the SPARQL query language.

1 INTRODUCTION

Actually, the continuous increase in the amount of

information produced both on the Web and in local

repositories makes it complex and costly to analyze,

categorize and retrieve information without consid-

ering the semantics of the whole or each document.

This is a challenge for software developers. The

development of technologies and communications in

some sectors of society has triggered the digitization

of large volumes of data or information (Proenza-

Arias and P

erez-Sosa, 2012).

Nowadays universities are a sector that generates

a large amount of data or information from differ-

ent areas of work. This information is in most cases

not managed in an appropriate way and much less

accessible to the public which requires it (Mora and

Segarra, 2016).

However, there are sources of information on the

Web that have search engines that respond to user re-

quests, such engines work syntactically, that is, they

normally return information in which items related to

the query appear, this type of responses may yield un-

expected or unnecessary results.

To solve many of these problems, the Semantic

Web is used, it proposes to overcome the limitations

of the current web by introducing explicit descriptions

of the meaning, as well as a classiﬁcation and struc-

ture of resources with explicit semantics that can be

processed by machines (Castells, 2003).

Given these changes, it is essential to unify the

content through a common language and for this we

use the notion of “ontogy” of the ﬁeld of Artiﬁcial In-

telligence. Gruber (Gruber, 1993) deﬁnes an ontology

as “a formal explicit speciﬁcation of a shared concep-

tualization”. An ontology deﬁnes a hierarchy of con-

cepts and relationships to describe a domain which

will serve for the exchange of information. On the

other hand, the use of ontologies is very common in

areas of business, ﬁnance, internet, medicine and the

industry as data sources integrator’s, as well as, orga-

nization and knowledge representation.

The purpose of this work is the design of an on-

tological model, and its implantation in the Prot

tool (Musen, 2015). The aim is that the users can

use the ontology to query information about processes

that are required to perform and to enroll in the social

service.

This paper is structured as follows: Section 2

describes the related work, Section 3 describes the

methodology used and the proposal of the ontologi-

cal model, Section 4 shows the design of the ontology

developed with the Prot

e tool and ﬁnally, in Section

5 we present the conclusions and future work.

2 RELATED WORK

In this section, the related works to the design of on-

tologies are mentioned.

Tovar, M., Flores, J. and Reyes-Ortiz, J.

An Ontology for Representing Information over Social Service in an Educational Institution.

DOI: 10.5220/0006484703910399

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Data Science, Technology and Applications (DATA 2017), pages 391-399

ISBN: 978-989-758-255-4

391

In Proenza Arias y Prez Sosa (Proenza-Arias and

erez-Sosa, 2012), they create ontologies for classi-

fying and searching audio-visual materials over a me-

dia catalog. Their ontology has been named Onto-

CatMedia. Also, they used the methodology Methon-

tology for the construction of OntoCatMedia. They

employed the semantic reasoners Pellet and FaCT++

for the inference of new knowledge, both integrated

into the Prot

e tool.

In Mora Arciniega and Segarra Faggioni (Mora

and Segarra, 2016) describes the realization of an on-

tological model for the representation of academic

data and its publications with semantic technology us-

ing the concepts of ontologies and linked data. The

proposal contemplates the development of an ontol-

ogy to represent the plans of a course and the publi-

cations of them through the best practices of linked

data.

In Cadena et al. (Cadena et al., 2013), proposes a

methodology for the comparison of geographic data

through ontologies. In this methodology, the four

stages are considered, in the conceptualization stage

the speciﬁc domain to which the data correspond and

describes this conceptualization in an application on-

tology. This ontology describes the properties and re-

lations that are presented in the geographic data sets

to compare.

In B

aez et al. (Baez et al., 2016), proposes an on-

tology that contains information related to teachers,

students, administrative personnel, curricula, infras-

tructure, projects, lines of research, of a higher educa-

tional institution. It is intended that said information

is being in a structured form and that can be consulted

by humans and other computer systems. The pro-

posed ontological model is divided into an approach,

description of the entities and classes of equivalence.

In Rose G

omez et al. (Rose-Gomez et al., 2016),

presents the use of the natural language for the search

of information of an academic organization. For the

creation of the knowledge model, they use the KoFI

methodology, which consists of four stages: Identiﬁ-

cation of knowledge sources, Identiﬁcation of knowl-

edge types/themes, identiﬁcation of knowledge ﬂows

and identiﬁcation of problems affecting the ﬂow of

knowledge. With the analysis of the four stages, they

obtain a model goal that is the basis of the knowl-

edge model which considers a data repository and a

knowledge repository. The data repository includes

a database for the documents and for the repository

of knowledge use an ontology designed through the

Methontology methodology and implemented with

the Prot

e tool.

In Rosell Le

on et al. (Rosell et al., 2016) describes

the development of an ontology named UH-Ontology

for the management of data of a university. The

methodology that is used for the elaboration of UH-

Ontology consists of seven steps; 1) Determine the

domain and scope of the ontology, 2) Reuse exist-

ing ontologies, 3) List important terms, 4) Deﬁne

classes and class hierarchy, 5) Deﬁne class properties

(SLOTS), 6) Deﬁne facets of Slots and 7) Create in-

stances. The tool used for the modeling and imple-

mentation of the ontology is Prot

e 4.3.

In Bravo et al., (Bravo et al., 2016) describes a

methodology for the design of ontologies, the work

focuses on clarity and coherence criteria, having as

main objective the creation of consistent ontologies.

In Tabares Garc

ıa and Jim

enez Builes (Tabares

and Jim

enez, 2014) present the construction of an

ontology for the process of evaluation in higher ed-

ucation, for this work they use the methodology of

Methontology and the tool of Protg 3.4.8.

In Bravo, Mart

ınez Reyes and Rodr

ıguez (Bravo

et al., 2014) describes an ontological model for the

representation of academic and institutional context.

The system offers a basic content that provides an-

swers to academic questions such as tutorials, the-

sis supervision, as well as the location of people,

libraries, buildings, highways, class schedules and

program of events. The main objective of the on-

tological model is to show the advantages of so-

lutions based on ontologies, this model is imple-

mented in the Spanish language. The ontological

model integrates three ontologies which are Geo-

graphicArea (“AreaGeograﬁca”), Person (“Persona”)

and Academic (“Academica”). They also present the

evaluation of the ontology by means of answers to

questions of competency through SQRWL. This onto-

logical model is implemented through a mobile inter-

face and desktop interface where the user can interact

with the model, it shows an example where a student

can get the ofﬁce and the classrooms of a teacher.

In this paper, we propose the creation of an on-

tological model following the methodology of Gru-

ber and Fox’s that consists of the phases of identiﬁca-

tion of scenarios, analysis through a set of questions

of competency, determination of main concepts and

their properties, as well as of relations and axioms

formal. The purpose of our ontological model is to

obtain information, as we mentioned in the previous

works, it is intended that the information is structured

on the model, it will facilitate its later retrieval. The

design of the ontology is created through the Prot

tool (Musen, 2015).

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392

3 ONTOLOGY DESIGN

The construction of systems based on ontologies re-

quires a clear methodology since it is not only the

construction of a system but also the generation of a

model of experimentation and research. The method-

ology of Gr

uninger and Fox’s is used for the accom-

plishment of this work. It is developed in 1995 at the

University of Toronto and is inspired by the develop-

ment of knowledge based on systems using ﬁrst order

logic. The methodology proposes to identify the main

scenarios, that is, possible applications in which the

ontology will be used.

Then a set of questions in natural language called

competency questions will be used to determine the

scope of the ontology, these questions and their an-

swers are used to extract the main concepts and their

properties, relationships and formal axioms in the

construction of the ontology (G

omez-P

erez et al.,

2004).

Then, the proposed ontology model is presented

following the methodology, and it is divided into the

scenario, classes description, properties identiﬁcation

and design.

3.1 Scenario

The model will provide information about the steps

to follow to inscribe and to release the social service,

and it will solve some doubts of the user. In the case

of the required documentation, a list of the neces-

sary documents will be displayed to the user, divid-

ing them into sections so that it is easy for them to

identify what they need to carry in each type of pro-

cedure. The types of procedures considered are the

inscription and the release of social service. The doc-

uments required in the registration procedure are the

letter of acceptance provided by the person in charge

of the program, the registration form, and a folder.

In addition, the student must have at least 180 credit

approved. In the case of the documentation required

in the release, the student must submit to the social

service coordinator the activity report signed by the

person in charge of the program, the letter of termina-

tion of the social service, the appointment sheet, the

report stored on a CD, and performance sheet.

The user will be able to see a list of the different

dependencies that offer the social service divided into

three types such as education, business, and commu-

nity (programs).

In addition, each program shows the related in-

formation, for example, the location, the name of the

responsible for the social service program, the type of

student grant, the start date, the completion date, the

duration, the current status of the program, etc.

A section will be dedicated to the different conse-

quences that the student may have in case of infringe-

ment in any rule, such as dropping out of social ser-

vice after the period of withdrawing, or that the stu-

dent does not comply with the guidelines established

by the program.

3.2 Competency Questions

In order to carry out this work, a series of questions

were elaborated. These questions are elaborated with

the purpose of having an idea of how the user could

perform a search of information within the system.

Some questions are as follows:

1. In what period can I register the social service?

2. How many credits are needed to register the social

service?

3. What documentation do I need to register the so-

cial service?

4. Where is the ofﬁce of the social service coordina-

tor?

5. What are the types of programs that exist in social

service?

6. How many hours are you in social service?

7. What is the ofﬁce hours of the social service co-

ordinator?

8. How many credits does the social service give

me?

9. Who is responsible for registering social service

programs?

The questions of competency allow us to deﬁne

the classes and the relations that exist between them,

besides that they were a fundamental piece for obtain-

ing the class properties or attributes.

3.3 Classes Description

In this section, the analysis is performed considering

mainly the scenario and the competency questions, in

this way we get the classes that contain the ontology

model.

In principle the classes that deﬁne the ontology

model are obtained. Table 1 describes the classes that

have been carried out so far, and the Figure 1 shows

the hierarchy class.

3.4 Data Properties Deﬁnition

In addition, we get the relationships that exist between

the classes and their properties, which are called

An Ontology for Representing Information over Social Service in an Educational Institution

393

Figure 1: Hierarchy class.

“Data Properties” in the ﬁeld of ontologies. Table 2

shows the data properties for the Person (“Persona”)

concept and its subconcepts.

Table 3 shows the data properties for the Social

Service (“Servicio Social”) concept and “Programa”

(Program) concept.

3.5 Object Properties Deﬁnition

The classes have relations between them. The Fig-

ure 2 shows object properties diagram. The Table 4

describes the object properties.

Figure 2: Object properties diagram.

4 RESULTS

In this section presents the formatization of the com-

petency questions (see Table 5) presented in Section

3.2.

The design of the ontology model is created in the

Prot

e tool, which is an open source software that

allows building an ontology through its interface that

helps the developer in the process.

Subsequently, the evaluation of the ontology is

done through the response that it produces when an-

swering the competency questions. In this case we

use the SPARQL query language. Below are the

answers to the competency questions.

1. In what period can I register the social service?

(See Figure 6)

Figure 3: Answer to question 1.

2. How many credits are needed to register the social

service?

Figure 4: Answer to question 2.

3. What documentation do I need to register the so-

cial service?

4. Where is the ofﬁce of the social service coordina-

tor?

5. What are the types of programs that exist in social

service?

6. How many hours are you in social service?

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394

Figure 5: Answer to question 3.

Figure 6: Answer to question 4.

7. What is the ofﬁce hours of the social service co-

ordinator?

8. How many credits does the social service give

me?

9. Who is responsible for registering social service

programs?

In Figure 12, the Social Service ontology pro-

posed is shown, it is constructed with the Prot

e tool.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The realization of the ontologies pretends to make the

information search more efﬁcient and of simple form,

and the realization of the ontologies of separated form

helps to ﬁnd the vulnerabilities that the system can

have and in this way to reach the ﬁxed objective.

Figure 7: Answer to question 5.

Figure 8: Answer to question 6.

Figure 9: Answer to question 7.

Ontologies are a powerful tool for information struc-

turing, and, widely used in Knowledge Engineering,

Artiﬁcial Intelligence, natural languaje processing,

An Ontology for Representing Information over Social Service in an Educational Institution

395

Figure 10: Answer to question 8.

Figure 11: Answer to question 9.

Figure 12: The ontology proposed.

information retrieval, education, etc.

The design of an ontology model for the search

of information within an education institution is very

useful as it provides us with clear and concise an-

swers. In addition, there is a more efﬁcient organi-

zation of information and data.

The main contribution of this paper is the applica-

tion of a methodology for the creation of an academic

ontology, which therefore supports the task of search

information about social service in the academic do-

main.

As future work is intended to create a system

which helps users to ﬁnd information about the pro-

cedures and requirements they need to register and to

realise the social service. This system will use the on-

tology model created as a source of information and

it will give answers in a clear and precise form what

the user wants.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research work has been partially supported

by the project CONACyT 257357, PRODEP-SEP

ID 00570 (EXB-792) DSA/103.5/15/10854 and the

project 00478 VIEP-BUAP.

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Table 1: Class description.

Class Description

Person (Persona) This concept includes

any person involved in

the system.

SocialServiceCoordi-

nator (Coordi-

nadorServicioSocial)

Subconcept of person

that keeps track of the

social service of stu-

dents.

ProgramResponsible

(ResponsablePro-

grama)

Responsible for the so-

cial service program.

Student (Alumno) Provider of social ser-

vice. Subconcept of per-

son.

Program (Programa) A project presented to

the students to carry out

their social service.

EducationProgram

(ProgramaEduca-

tivo)

Type of program focused

on the education. Sub-

concept of program.

CommunityProgram

(ProgramaComuni-

tario)

Type of program focused

on the community. Sub-

concept of program.

BusinessProgram

(ProgramaEmpre-

sarial)

Type of program offered

by a company. Sub-

concept of program.

Procedure (Tramite) A procedure that the stu-

dent must carry out to

social service.

Inscription (Inscrip-

cion)

A procedure that the stu-

dent must carry out to

vice. Subconcept of pro-

cedure.

Release (Liberacion) A procedure that the stu-

dent must carry out to

release the social ser-

vice. Subconcept of pro-

cedure.

Requirement (Requi-

sito)

Things that are wanted

for the inscription or re-

lease of social service.

InscriptionRequirement

(RequisitoInscrip-

cion)

Things that are wanted

for the inscription of so-

cial service. Subconcept

of requirement.

ReleaseRequirement

(RequisitoLibera-

cion)

Things that are wanted

for the release of social

service. Subconcept of

requirement.

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397

Table 2: Data properties for the Person (“Persona”) concept

and its sub-concepts.

Data properties Domain Range

hasName Person String

(tieneNombre) (Persona)

hasDirection Person String

(tieneDireccion) (Persona)

hasTelephone Person String

(tieneTelefono) (Persona)

hasGender Person String

(tieneSexo) (Persona)

hasEmail Person String

(tieneEmail) (Persona)

hasEnrollment Student String

(tieneMatricula) (Alumno)

hasCaree Student String

(tieneCarrera) (Alumno)

hasPosition SocialService- String

Coordinator,

ProgramResponsible

(tienePuesto) (CoordinadorServi-

cioSocial,

Responsa-

blePrograma)

hasOfﬁce SocialService- String

Coordinator,

ProgramResponsible

(tieneOﬁcina) (CoordinadorServi-

cioSocial,

Responsa-

blePrograma)

hasWorkerNumber SocialService- String

Coordinator,

ProgramResponsible

(tieneNoTrabajador) (CoordinadorServi-

cioSocial,

Responsa-

blePrograma)

hasOfﬁceHours SocialService- String

Coordinator,

ProgramResponsible

(tieneHorarioA- (CoordinadorServi-

tencion) cioSocial,

Responsa-

blePrograma)

hasFunction SocialService- String

Coordinator,

ProgramResponsible

(tieneFuncion) (CoordinadorServi-

cioSocial,

Responsa-

blePrograma)

Table 3: Data type properties for the Social Service (“Ser-

vicio Social”) concept and Program (“Programa”) concept.

Data properties Domain Range

hasSector SocialService String

(tieneSector) (ServicioSocial)

hasPeriod SocialService String

(tienePeriodo) (ServicioSocial)

hasTypeService SocialService String

(tieneTipoServicio) (ServicioSocial)

hasCredit SocialService String

(tieneCreditos) (ServicioSocial)

hasDurationSS SocialService String

(tieneDuracionSS) (ServicioSocial)

hasNumberProgram Program String

(tieneNoPrograma) (Programa)

hasDateRegistration Program String

(tieneFechaRegistro) (Programa)

hasStatus Program String

(tieneEstatus) (Programa)

hasNameProgram Program String

(tieneNombre- (Programa)

Programa)

hasDateStart Program Date

(tieneFechaInicio) (Programa)

hasDateEnd Program Date

(tieneFecha- (Programa)

Termino)

hasDuration Program String

(tieneDuracion) (Programa)

hasCurrentPeriod Program String

(tienePeriodoActual) (Programa)

hasInscription- Inscription String

Number (tieneNu- (Inscripcion)

meroInscription)

hasMinimumCredit Inscription positive-

(tieneCreditoMinimo) (Inscripcion) Integer

hasInscriptionCredit Inscription positive-

(tieneCredito- (Inscripcion) Integer

Inscription)

hasRelease- Release- String

Requirement Requirement

(tieneRequisito- (Requisio-

Liberacion) Liberacion)

hasInscription- Inscription String

Requirement Inscription-

(tieneRequisito- Requirement

Inscripcion) (Inscripcion,

Requisito-

Inscripcion

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398

Table 4: Object properties.

Object proper-

ties

Domain Range

authorizes SocialService- Inscription,

Coordinator Release

(autoriza) (Coordina- (Inscripci-

dorServicio- on, Libera-)

Social) cion)

performed Student Inscription

(realiza) (Alumno) (Inscripcion)

Responsible

(registra) (Responsable- (Programa)

Programa)

require Inscription Program

(requiere) (Inscripcion) (Programa)

has Release, Release-

Inscription Requeriment,

inscription-

Requeriment,

(tiene) (Liberacion, ( requisito-

Inscripcion) Liberacion,

requisito-

Inscripcion)

isRegisteredBy Program Program-

Responsible

(esRegistra- (Programa) (Responsable-

doPor) Programa)

carryOut Student Release

(llevaCabo) (Alumno) (Liberacion)

Table 5: Compentency questions.

No. Question

1 In what period can I register the social ser-

vice?

∃$x$y (SocialService($x) ∧

hasPeriod($x, $y))?

2 How many credits are needed to register

the social service?

∃$x$y (Inscription($x) ∧

hasInscriptionCredit($x, $y))?

3 What documentation do I need to register

the social service?

∃$x$y (Inscription($x) ∧

hasInscriptionRequirement($x, $y))?

4 Where is the ofﬁce of the social service co-

ordinator?

∃$x$y ((Inscription($x) ∨

inscriptionRequirement($x)) ∧

hasInscriptionRequirement($x, $y))?

5 What are the types of programs that exist

in social service?

∃$x (Program($x))?

6 How many hours are you in social service?

∃$x$y (SocialService($x) ∧

hasDurationSS($x, $y))?

7 What is the ofﬁce hours of the social ser-

vice coordinator?

∃$x$y$n (SocialServiceCoordinator($x)∧

hasName($x, $n)) ∧ hasO f f ice($x, $y))?

8 How many credits does the social service

give me?

∃$x$y (SocialService($x) ∧

hasCredit($x, $y))?

9 Who is responsible for registering social

service programs?

∃$x$y (ProgramResponsible($x) ∧

hasName($x, $y)))?

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