Towards a Service-Oriented e-Learning Framework Based on Semantics

e-Learning has gained more and more interest to transform and support the learning process ubiquitously. The design of an e-learning system must consider many different perspectives, ranging from the specification of the adopted learning methodology to the organization of learning objects in Content Management Systems, to the integration of e-learning services in Learning Management Systems, to the customization of learning contents for the involved users. All these perspectives should be taken into account in a consistent manner. We propose an integrated e-learning framework that enables modeling of an e-learning system according to the Software as a Service paradigm. At the heart of the SaaS paradigm there is a catalog of reusable learning services that can be composed into the final system. These services are considered as units of work implementing learning activities and are modeled according to the considered perspectives. The vision of e-learning systems in such an integrated way is not new. Our aim is twofold: (i) to adopt semantics for service annotation to merge and relate in a consistent way different perspectives, in order to support both designers of new e-learning programs and learners for customizing learning contents to their needs and exploiting e-learning services in a more focused way; (ii) to exploit reusable e-learning services for their fast composition in new e-learning platforms.