Intelligent content discovery within e-learning Web services

The various e-leaming platforms that have been developed in recent years share a variety of functionalities. Recent standardization efforts in e-leaming have concentrated on the reuse of learning material, but not on the reuse of these system functionalities. To fill this gap, Web service-based e-leaming systems build on the assumption that a typical learning system is a collection of activities or processes that interact with learners and suitably chosen content, and that can be obtained from various sources when it comes to execution. In addition, content typically comes in the form of learning objects that are also accessible via a Web service. This scenario leads to a number of challenges, including the provision and the discovery of services; on the other hand, it has potentials such as the ability to directly integrate e-leaming services into business applications or to communicate with a knowledge management system. This paper focuses on the discovery process of content Web services; it first analyzes limitations of traditional discovery mechanisms and then presents an ontology for content services that enables intelligent search and appropriate classification of results.