Application of ontologies in higher education: A systematic mapping study

Universities and higher education institutes continually create knowledge. Hence it is necessary to keep a record of the academic and administrative information generated. Considering the vast amount of information managed by higher education institutions and the diversity of heterogeneous systems that can coexist within the same institution, it becomes necessary to use technologies for knowledge representation. Ontologies facilitate access to knowledge allowing the adequate exchange of information between people and between heterogeneous systems. This paper aims to identify existing research on the use and application of ontologies in higher education. From a set of 2792 papers, a study based on systematic mapping was conducted. A total of 52 research papers were reviewed and analyzed. Our results contribute key findings regarding how ontologies are used in higher education institutes, what technologies and tools are applied for the development of ontologies and what are the main vocabularies reused in the application of ontologies.