A learning ontology with metadata and user profiles for enhancing accessibility of resources

Current e-learning systems are database-driven; this makes it hard for users to find information in a direct way using the domain terminology they are familiar with from daily use. In order to alleviate this problem we propose the use of a learning ontology that uses an intuitive naming convention and combines learning concepts with user profiles and learning object metadata (LOM) for the easy access of learning resources. To understand the application domain, we analysed the undergraduate course handbook and the unit guides of a computing department. This helped us to identify the domain concepts, the relations between them and the constraints of the domain. Using this domain knowledge, we built an institution specific learning ontology. We show how an ontology-driven approach can be used in an e-learning system to guide the construction of user queries in an unobtrusive way and shield the user from the backend representation. We illustrate how questions can be answered successfully by the e-learning system; and how the learning resources can easily be accessed by using the learning ontology with metadata and user profiles.