Policy-based HTN planning techniques for Combined Course Programmes generation

A growth of Internet technologies usage in e-Learning leads to the educational content interoperability, to the content sharing and exchange among learning content providers. On the other hand, integration processes in the area of higher education are also intensified. But in the higher education a learning track of a student should be specified for a long period of time, it should satisfy normative requirements and lead to an official qualification. Combined Course Programmes (CCP) are developed by several universities using different student mobility schemes. In order to support the CCP development process a CCP generation mechanism using Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning was introduced. Two novel techniques were implemented to extend HTN planning in order to meet the requirements of the CCP generation task. First technique is policy-based HTN planning that improves the flexibility and expressivity of HTN planning. It gives a possibility for planning in complex, heterogeneous and dynamic environments. Hypergraph-based transformation was introduced to generate policy request from a planner's world state. Second technique is a domain refinement operation that improves the effectiveness of HTN planning in the large multi-domain hierarchical environment.