Semantic Accessibility to E-learning Web Services

Semantic web technologies are all the more relevant in modern e-learning environments that are built upon existing web resources, applications and services, which cannot be completely hosted and managed by a centralised web-based system. This paper shows how semantic web and linked data technologies can improve the interoperability between virtual learning environments and external web resources. The ReST architectural principles were applied and a semantically enhanced access interface was defined to enable a richer exploitation of the services provided by external web applications for the aim of the e-learning environment. Following this methodology, several open source web applications have been integrated with a popular course management system, in order to improve web services accesibility from the e-learning system.