Representation of Latin American University Syllabuses in a Semantic Network

The syllabuses describe relevant information about the teaching and learning process. Syllabuses should be created in such a way that allows automatic processing of their content to avoid typical problems of manual processing. In order to make the syllabuses intelligible to machines, firstly was necessary to create a structure based on the terms that are used in the Latin American Syllabuses. This study carried out a content analysis to extract the common terms in the syllabuses from the best universities in Latin America. Besides, we added principal aspects to make a syllabus fulfill its three core functions according to previous research. We combined automatic and manual techniques to infer the structure of a syllabus into a semantic network. The semantic network allowed describing the knowledge content of a syllabus into a graphical representation. With the representation of a semantic network, is possible to transform the network into an ontological model, whereby it is conceivable to accomplish automatic processes.