Automatic annotation of learning content
The web, as an open environment, offers a unique opportunity for learning resources to be shared and reused. However, search within learning object repositories holding information on courses, online tutorials, lecture notes or electronic textbooks is restricted by the proprietary semantics and document-centred interfaces of today's search engines. Distributed e-learning environments not only lack interoperability and transparency, but also do not provide a customisable view of the learning process. Motivated by these shortcomings of the state-of-the-art in learning management systems, the ELENA project worked on the development of an innovative environment to provide learners with enough richness of offered knowledge. Smart Spaces for LearningTM is a novel search and retrieval infrastructure, which provides learners with the option of choosing from a large variety of learning resources made available via a network of repositories. This distributed system allows for the integration of heterogeneous educational nodes in a semantic network and provides 'smart' access technology. Within this context, researchers at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration have developed an annotation tool to automatically build personalised learning content. Users can navigate through topic ontologies to specify learning resources and refine their queries. Their input is then mapped to language-independent ontological concepts for advanced evaluation of full-text queries, which allows for multilingual access to learning resources. Since the annotations are based on ontologies, they are also used for personalisation and ranking of search results. To enhance the techniques deployed so far through further research, collaborative links are being sought by the project partners.
