Abstract
The efficient authoring of learning content is a central problem of courseware engineering. Courseware authors will appreciate the benefits of tools which automate various authoring tasks. We describe a system, OntAWare, which provides an environment comprising a set of software tools that support learning content authoring, management and delivery. This system exploits an opportunity provided by the emerging technologies of the Semantic Web movement, most notably knowledge-representation standards and knowledge-processing techniques. The system represents a combination of these newer developments with earlier work in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). A key feature of the authoring environment is the semi-automatic generation of standard e-learning and other courseware elements (learning objects). Widely available standardised knowledge representations (ontologies) and ontology-structured content are used as source material. Standard courseware elements are produced by the application of graph transformations to these ontologies. The resulting products can be hosted by standards-compliant delivery environments. Adaptivity is an important characteristic of the system as a whole. Authors can select and customise new or existing subject ontologies and employ an appropriate teaching/learning strategy in the generation of learning objects. Instructors can configure the delivery environment either to offer strictly sequenced presentations to students, or to allow also varying degrees of free student navigation, based on the the runtime incorporation of domain ontologies. Students in turn can take the generated courses in the preconfigured delivery environment, and this delivery is dynamically customised to the individual student's preferences and constantly monitored learning track. The combination of the semi-automatic generation of learning objects with an adaptive delivery environment is a central feature of this new system. Keywords: courseware generation, Semantic Web, ontology, learning object, adaptivity.