SW-EL'04 Workshop Topics

The SW-EL'04 workshop focused on the use, building and application of semantic web technologies for the needs of e-learning. Each session of the workshop approached this problem from a different perspective, starting with the traditional view on Intelligent Educational Systems (IES) and their movement towards the web and the implications of adopting the semantic web technologies (at ITS 2004), to discussing issues with respect to using adaptive hypermedia as an e-learning medium and to the various ways of constructing courseware and modeling the learner (at AH 2004), and finally to presenting the enabling web technologies for realizing e-learning (at ISWC 2004). Appropriate topics for each of the sessions are listed below, however contributors are free to suggest additional ones. The topics can be approached from different perspectives: theoretical, systems engineering, application, case study and system evaluation, etc.

AH'04 Session Topics:

• Using semantic web technologies to improve personalization, adaptation and user modeling in the context of educational AH.
• Semantic web-based educational hypermedia architectures.
• Using ontologies and/or semantic web technologies to improve information retrieval in the context of educational AH and web-based courseware.
• Using ontologies and/or semantic web technologies to support authoring of educational AH.
• Using Web services for educational AH (i.e. e-learning services, user modelling service, WBES authoring service).
• Web standards and metadata specifications for educational AH (what should be included or extended in the existing ones, e.g. formal languages, rules, metadata, education modeling languages).
• Standardization of the information exchange protocols between educational AHS
• Problems related to consistency in standards evolution
• Exploring possible mappings between existing semantic web and educational standards.
• Using ontologies within AHS (i.e. achieving interoperability between educational AHS, sharable user models and knowledge components)
• Role of RDF, OWL or TML as a basis for educational metadata specification languages.
• Real-world systems, case studies and empirical research for semantic web-based educational AH.

ITS'04 Session Topics:

• Using ontologies and/or semantic web technologies to decrease the complexity of ITS modelling and implementation (e.g. new types of modularized ITS architectures).
• Using semantic web technologies to move from ITS to web-based ITS.
• Using ontologies and/or semantic web technologies to support authoring of ITS (e.g. modelling of authoring and engineering process, authoring feedback, authoring GUI).
• Semantic web and ontologies for user modelling in ITS (e.g. shareability of UM, interoperability between different ITS on the basis of their UM).
• Using Web services for modularization of ITS and web-based systems’ components (e.g. UM service, domain modelling service, etc.).
• Web standards issues for ITS and intelligent web-based systems.
• Real-world systems, case studies and empirical research for semantic web-based ITS.

ISWC'04 Session Topics:

• Using ontologies and/or semantic web technologies within e-learning applications (to achieve interoperability between educational applications, sharable user models and knowledge components, etc.).
• Ontology engineering and knowledge representation in WBES.
• Using ontologies and/or semantic web technologies to support authoring of WBES.
• Using semantic web technologies to achieve better personalization and adaptation in WBES (i.e. modularised and standardized architectures, separation of domain models and application models, flexible user models).
• Using semantic web services for the purposes of e-learning (i.e. e-learning services, user modelling service, WBES authoring service). 
• Web standards issues for WBES (what should be included, e.g. formal languages, rules, metadata, educational modelling languages).
• Exploring possible combinations of existing semantic web and/or educational standards and mappings between them.
• Moving educational standards such as LOM and SCORM closer to the semantic web. 
• Role of RDF, OWL or TML as a basis for educational metadata specification languages.
• Real-world systems, case studies and empirical research for WBES.
• Semantic web-based AH courseware architectures.