An empirical study of the learning effect of an ontology-driven information system

This paper investigates the effect of an ontology-driven information system on users' learning the content of the domain covered by the system. While there have been quite a number of research studies on ontology systems' design, development and evaluation, its impact on users has not been a popular research topic. An experimental system has been developed and constructed with pluralistic, non-linear representations of metadata and relationships. While the expected learning effect did not occur among differently trained participant groups, previous online search experience showed a positive correlation with the performance of the participants.