ITS ’ 04 WORKSHOP Applications of Semantic Web Technologies for Web - based ITS in conjunction with ITS 2004

Preface The Semantic Web offers new technologies to the developers of web-based applications aiming at providing more intelligent access and management of the Web information and semantically richer modelling of the applications and their users. An important target for web application developers nowadays is to provide means to unite, as much as possible, their efforts in creating information and knowledge components that are easily accessible and usable by third parties. Within the context of semantic web, there are several hot issues, which allow achieving this reusability, shareability and interoperability among web applications. of components in a standard way. The notion of web services offers a way to make such components mobile and accessible within the wide sea of web information and applications. The research on Web-based ITS traditionally combines research interests and efforts from various fields. Currently, the efforts in the field of Semantic Web and ontologies play an important role in the development of new ITS methods and types of courseware. Starting with the traditional ITS and going towards Web applications, the research on adaptive and intelligent courseware strengthens its positions within this context. Employing Semantic Web technologies seems to be a promising way to improve reasoning, adaptation and flexibility for in single and group users (e.g. instructors, courseware authors and learners). The goal of this workshop is to present the state-of-the-art of the application of Semantic Web technologies and standards for problems in current Web-based intelligent tutoring systems and adaptive courseware. We explore, among others, various architecture trends, reference models, user models and knowledge representation techniques inspired and empowered by the achievements in the field of semantic web. We approach the problems of Semantic Web applications from the perspective of ITS, starting with the traditional view on ITS and their movement towards the web and the implications of adopting the emerging semantic web technologies. The following topics are addressed in the attempt to achieve the Educational Semantic Web: • 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 …