The Semantic Aspects of e-Learning: Using the Knowledge Life Cycle to Manage Semantics for Grid and Service Oriented Systems

The aim of bringing semantics to learning content and services is to enable large scale collaboration of e-learning activities over the Grid infrastructure. As machines and software applications will be ubiquitously involved in enabling and facilitating this collaboration, it requires a common understanding of the domain, in particular at the conceptual level, so that both computers and human participants of the elearning activities understand and are able to communicate among themselves though a common conceptualisation of the learning domain. In this paper we propose that Ontology is required in this context which is shared as a language to enrich resources with semantics. In line with the pedagogical view of the semantics obtained from experts in the learning domain, we describe a semantics driven knowledge life cycle to address the key phases in managing semantics in e-learning. Service oriented architecture is adopted for the vision of Grid infrastructure, reusable components and easy integration at a later phase.