An Semantic Learning Object Web-Editor Based on Ontologies Using a New OWL2SLO Approach

Abstract— Today, we see a strong demand for real-time information, with a rapid growth of m-learning. We also see that there are many educational resources on the Internet. Learning objects (LOs) are designed as a means of reusing these resources. Most of these LOs are built for e-learning systems based on desktop computers, which prevents their use on mobile devices. A LO is an area that is open to research and has a lot of potential in the creation, adaptation and production of learning content. There are standards that describe LOs in general as IEEE LOM, SCORM. Semantic web and its associated technologies are increasingly used in electronic document editing while separating the content from the presentation. Creating a LO with the semantic web is complex and raises difficulties because of the editing tools that require general knowledge of XML syntax and related technologies. In this paper we propose our OWL2XSL approach based on ontologies allowing the generation of XML-Schemas of LOs. We then derive our semantic LO web editor based on our OWL2XSL approach for the generation of a content type enabling the editing of interactive Los with XML technology and which can then be integrated into LMS and adapted to the mobile display

Keywords— Mobile learning;learning objects; XML; XML-Schema; XSD, OWL, Ontology, RDF.

I. INTRODUCTION

Mobile devices have become a crucial part of our daily lives. In recent years, m-learning has been boosted by the continued development of new information and communication technologies, which have become essential elements in education [1].

The design and development of teaching materials adapted to mobile devices may present difficulties for researchers and educators [2]. There is a wide variety of mobile devices and platforms; therefore, the pedagogical design of mobile content requires specific adjustments [3].

Educational content is numerous and consists of various types of media such as video, audio and presentations. Some of these LOs [4] are designed for fixed computers, which prevents their use on mobile devices. Among the problems that can occur are screen size and resolution, supported file type.

Teachers are looking for the best method to represent their courses. Since the LO becomes a smallest basic unit that can be designed to be reused, customized and adapted, teachers prefer to find creative tools to easily create interactive and adaptive LOs.

In order to implement an effective adaptive learning system, a new LO concept is needed. It is the separation of content from the presentation that could create and update a LO for different presentations [5] [6]. XML (Extended Markup Language) [7] is appropriate for implementing this separation. XML is the most promising technology to use specific parts of LOs to adapt them while using XSLT [8] style sheets.

In addition, the research studies related to the development of LOs, found that the ontology can be used to represent the knowledge in the development of LOs and able to support the semantic web development. Thus, the ontology plays an important role in creating standards for accessing to the contents and helpful for the learning management [9]. Moreover, the ontology is applied for constructing the personalized learning contents. The ontology approach can present the LOs, content structures and learning path that are corresponding to the learning environment of each individual [10]. It can also dynamically generate personalized hypertext relations powered by reasoning mechanisms over distributed RDF annotations [11].

In a digital learning environment a number of essential services are supported such as content creation that requires an educational content editor. The use of certain tools is not an easy task for anyone who wants to create specific educational content. In general, LMS / LCMS (Moodle [12], Dokeos [13], Atutor or Calorine [14]) have traditional editing tools. These tools are hypertext based with multimedia features for content creation in HTML format that is not suitable for direct display on small screens of mobile browsers. Importing content from external formats, even standardized (Microsoft Office, Open Office), pose several problems of compatibility, filtering and structuration.

At the present time, there are not really any editing tools that allow the creation of a basic LO adapted to the specific needs of the course designers by using the semantic web and from this the generation of an adaptive presentation to the display of mobile devices. The creation of a new LO with the semantic web raises difficulties because of the available tools that require a general knowledge of semantic web language and its related technologies such as XML technology.

Architecture of our web editor

The architecture of our semantic LO web editor is based on 4 essential elements:

• An environment based on our OWL2SLO approach allowing the automatic generation of an XML-schema using OWL and SPARQL.
• A semantic XML environment based on a content type allowing the creation, storage, modification and dissemination of LOs in XML.
• A storage environment for LOs in a single repository, to separate the contents from its presentation.
• An LCMS / LMS environment enabling authors to create, store, reuse, manage and distribute LOs to associate them, order them to build a coherent course. This solution is based on the choice of free software that complies with the postulates of the LCMS.
• An environment for adapting semantic XML content in a format suitable for displaying mobile devices using XSLT.