Adaptive web-based courseware development using metadata standards and ontologies

Abstract

Nowadays, the web enormously facilitates the information distribution and communication among teachers and students setting the stage for the development of Web-based courseware. In this context, adaptability is a key feature in order to obtain educational environments capable of giving the adequate instruction for the specific learning profile of each individual learner. Using the Web as the ubiquitous repository of educative content, standards for metadata to describe resources on the e-learning domain must be used in order to enable interoperability and reuse of learning content. To enable intelligent behavior in building complex learning objects "on demand" customized for an intended audience, ontologies can be used to represent the knowledge the system has on the domain to be taught and on the student profile. This paper briefly describes the main steps taken in developing an Adaptive Web Training Environment, delving into the definition of a new application profile of the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard and the Domain and Student Knowledge Models design and implementation as Web ontologies. © Springer-Verlag 2004.