A Semantic View-based Portal Utilizing Learning Object Metadata

Abstract

This paper presents a case-study of converting the content of an existing eLearning portal based on the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) format into a semantic portal. It is shown how the content can be provided for the end-user from different semantic perspectives (views) based on a set of ontologies whose concepts are extracted from the original metadata. A semantic recommender system based on the same ontologies and metadata enhances the system usability further. This recommender system links the learning objects of the portal with each other with short labels that explain to the end-user the reason for the links, which is especially important in the eLearning domain. Furthermore, the system links the material also with the content of another cultural semantic portal, providing interportal semantic links. The application, consisting of some 2200 video and audio clips as learning objects, is available on the web where it can be compared with the original portal.