Effect of an ontology-based reasoning learning approach on cognitive load and learning achievement of secondary school students

Previous studies show that the concept mapping approach could organize students' cognitive schema,decrease student's cognitive load and help promote meaningful learning in any educational settings. however,concept mapping has its limitation in the representation of knowledge for complex concepts and domain knowledge. thus,in the study,we proposed and implemented an ontology-based reasoning learning system. to examine the effectiveness of the proposed system,a quasi-experimental design method was conducted in the study with three groups. a total of ninety-five seventh graders participated in the experiment. the graders were randomly distributed to three groups,one experimental group and two control groups. the experimental group with 31 students was conducted ontology-based reasoning approach. the first control group with 32 students was managed ontology learning approach,while the second control group with 32 students was guided with concept map learning approach. the experimental findings show the proposed approach could help learners improve students' misconceptions and improve their learning performance; moreover,it could reduce students' cognitive load in the learning process. relevant suggestions are advised in the results of the study. © 2013 pakistan journal of statistics.