Using semantic web technologies to describe an educational domain

Abstract

This research presents a method to describe Learning Objects as Semantic Web compatible Ontologies. The proposed method divides the Ontologies among three layers. The first is composed by the knowledge domain, the second by the LOs and their relations, and the third is responsible for knowledge inference and reasoning. As study case, it is presented the Ontologies of LOM and OBAA metadata standards as part of the Layer One. The layer two is composed by the description of sample Learning Objects based on the properties and restrictions defines by the layer one ontologies. The layer three describes the knowledge inference axioms, which we defined as Application Profiles. Our current results can be resumed as a contribution to Ontology Engineering for Semantic Web applied to Digital Education.