Learning patterns: A mechanism for the personalization of adaptive E-learning

E-learning through the web began as a service, by publishing some educational materials at websites. At the early stages, the learning process was carried out by browsing such a collection of educational materials and its effectiveness was based on the presentation of content in those materials. Customizing the presentation and interactivity of an e-learning application based on the users (which we call here personalization), should be done based on each learner's knowledge and learning experience. A learning pattern, mechanism presented in this paper, is a meta-level piece of information that can be used to achieve low coupling personalization in an e-learning courseware. A learning pattern, which is modeled on different levels of abstraction, is constructed based on the interaction of a learner with relevant materials and it is depreciated when he/she stops accessing such materials. In this paper, we also present how a learning pattern supports to define domain knowledge in SCORM compatible environment.