A Metadata Framework for Description of Learning Objects

The growing use of the Internet and the Web has been transforming the styles of learning. The large amount of learning resources available on the Web enables people to access learning materials of various subjects. Large enterprises can make use education materials from the Web and their internal network to maintain education and training for their employees and customers. Small and medium enterprises rely more on the Web for distribution of their product instructions and training books. Furthermore, learning styles are changing. Thanks to the applications of the Web, enterprises can allow their employees to attend training courses at home through connecting to the Internet and Employees can select training materials according to their preferences. Due to the huge amount of information supplied and the bad-defined structures for the learning information, it is difficult for the learners to find exact learning resources and to find the information easily. Based on the metadata model, we have to define a search model, which takes the users’ search goals and users’ preferences into consideration. Only by integrating the metadata model for learning resources and the search model for the users’ search goals, can the users obtain a collection of learning materials best meeting their searching goals.