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SKOS Relation Triple Builder

Run the SKOS Relation Triple Builder MicroSim Fullscreen

About This MicroSim

SKOS gives you three relations for linking concepts:

Relation Points to Example
Broader A more general concept Depth-First Search → broader → Graph Traversal
Narrower A more specific concept Graph Traversal → narrower → Depth-First Search
Related An associated concept, no hierarchy implied SKOS → related → Dublin Core Metadata

Recognizing those definitions is easy. Applying them is where people slip, because the direction is half the answer. Broader and narrower describe the same hierarchy read from opposite ends. Getting the relation type right while pointing the arrow the wrong way produces a triple that asserts the exact opposite of what you meant — and a validator will happily accept it, because it is structurally well-formed.

This MicroSim gives you six concept pairs from this book's own vocabulary and asks you to build each triple. The Swap button flips which concept the arrow starts from, and the correct answer inverts along with it: broader becomes narrower, while related — being symmetric — stays related whichever way you point it.

How to Use

  1. Read the two concept boxes and the dashed placeholder arrow between them.
  2. Decide whether the arrow, as drawn, should be labeled Broader, Narrower, or Related.
  3. If the arrow points the wrong way for the relation you have in mind, click Swap first.
  4. Click a relation button to commit. The arrow solidifies gold (correct) or red (incorrect), labeled with the relation you chose, and the feedback banner shows the correct triple plus a one-sentence explanation.
  5. Click Next Pair to advance. After all six, you get a scorecard showing which pairs you answered correctly on the first try.

The progress dots along the top fill in green for a first-try correct answer and red otherwise, so you can see your run at a glance.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

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<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/learning-graphs/sims/skos-relation-triple-builder/main.html"
        height="492px"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Audience

Instructional designers, curriculum developers, and educational technologists working with concept dependency graphs.

Duration

10–15 minutes

Prerequisites

Learners should know what SKOS is and have seen the definitions of broader, narrower, and related from Chapter 22.

Activities

  1. First run, no help (5 min): Learners complete all six pairs without discussion. Record the first-try score.
  2. The swap discussion (5 min): Focus on pair 2. Ask half the room to answer it as drawn and half to swap first. Both can be correct — with different relation labels. Ask what that implies about storing a SKOS triple in a database: is broader a property of the pair, or of the ordered pair?
  3. Why related is different (3 min): Pairs 3 and 6 are related. Ask what happens to those when you swap, and why symmetry makes related cheaper to store but weaker to reason with.

Assessment

Learners can:

  • Select the correct SKOS relation for an unseen concept pair.
  • Orient the arrow correctly, and recognize that a right label on a backward arrow is wrong.
  • Explain why broader and narrower are inverses and related is symmetric.
  • Distinguish a hierarchical relation from an associative one for a pair of sibling concepts.
  • SKOS — the vocabulary these three relations come from
  • Broader / Narrower — inverse hierarchical relations
  • Related — the symmetric associative relation
  • Dublin Core Metadata — a sibling standard, used in pair 3
  • Concept Taxonomy — what a well-formed set of broader/narrower triples builds up to

References

  1. Chapter 22: Concept Metadata and Semantic Labeling - The chapter this MicroSim supports.
  2. SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System - Wikipedia's overview of the W3C standard.
  3. SKOS Reference - The W3C specification defining skos:broader, skos:narrower, and skos:related.
  4. Dublin Core - The metadata standard used as the related example in pair 3.
  5. vis-network Documentation - The graph rendering library used to build this MicroSim.