Learning object mediation system based on an ontology model

In this paper, we present a Learning Object (LO) Mediation system which consists of three parts: (1) A Learning Object Repository which collects Learning Objects (LOs) and/or their metadata based on educational metadata standards, (2) a Learning Object Mediator which describes LOs by keywords and concepts based on an ontology model, and, (3) a Concept Repository which collects concept schemes for the annotation, indexation and classification of concepts. We also present a method for classifying similarity of LOs that consists of three steps: (1) To search for index words (2) to compute probability values of LO similarity by (i) keywords, (ii) concepts based on keywords and (iii) concepts based on words or phrases from a semantic network such as WordNet, and, (3) to classify LO similarity by Fuzzy Logic. Finally, we detail an implementation of our LO Mediation system as a prototype. This prototype provides functions for searching and retrieving LOs by keywords and concepts and classifying similarity of LOs by Fuzzy Logic.