LEARNING OBJECTS MANAGEMENT BASED ON A DOCUMENT ONTOLOGY

Abstract

The paper presents a model for describing learning objects based on a generic document ontology. Threating learning objects as documents enables using document management concepts and services for managing learning objects. Learning objects are described using ontology. This ontology is developed as an extension to a more generic document management ontology which is based on the iSO 82045 family of standards. The generic ontology classifies documents according to their type, defines relations between documents, describes document identifier and metadata, and records document life-cycle. every application domain requires a new layer in the ontology, which should describe domain-specific document features and enable development of domain-specific services for document management. extending the generic ontology for the learning objects domain has allowed a formal description of the content, semantic and organization of learning objects. Such an approach facilitates establishment of specialized services for advanced search and machine-processing of learning material, which is a feature that learning management systems commonly lack. As a verification of our model, we described learning material from the Web programming course using the proposed ontology.