Ontology-based Models for Personalized E-learning Environment

Students who use educational web-based applications aim at learning knowledge in chosen area. However, their level of knowledge and interests are different. For effective learning it is necessary to provide an individual approach to each student. Educational application should recommend students learning materials that are easily understandable according their level of knowledge and are interesting enough to keep the students’ attention. A solution is personalized approach to the student learning process by development of adaptive web-based applications. Personalization requires reasoning on knowledge related to each user and application domain. In this paper we describe a proposal of three main parts of adaptive web-based application – domain model, user model and adaptation model that we designed for the course of programming learning. We employ Semantic Web technologies in order to be able reuse existing educational materials and add a semantic layer responsible for personalization.