Hypermedia Learning Objects System - On the Way to a Semantic Educational Web

While eLearning systems become more and more popular in daily education, available applications lack opportunities to structure, annotate and manage their contents in a high-level fashion. General efforts to improve these deficits are taken by initiatives to define rich meta data sets and a semanticWeb layer. In the present paper we introduce Hylos, an online learning system. Hylos is based on a cellular eLearning Object (ELO) information model encapsulating meta data conforming to the LOM standard. Content management is provisioned on this semantic meta data level and allows for variable, dynamically adaptable access structures. Context aware multifunctional links permit a systematic navigation depending on the learners and didactic needs, thereby exploring the capabilities of the semantic web. Hylos is built upon the more general Multimedia Information Repository (MIR) and the MIR adaptive context linking environment (MIRaCLE), its linking extension. MIR is an open system supporting the standards XML, Corba and JNDI. Hylos benefits from manageable information structures, sophisticated access logic and high-level authoring tools like the ELO editor responsible for the semi-manual creation of meta data and WYSIWYG like content editing.

Semantic Linking - a Context-Based Approach to Interactivity in Hypermedia

The semantic Web initiates new, high level access schemes to online content and applications. One area of superior need for a redefined content exploration is given by on-line educational applications and their concepts of interactivity in the framework of open hypermedia systems. In the present paper we discuss aspects and opportunities of gaining interactivity schemes from semantic notions of components. A transition from standard educational annotation to semantic statements of hyperlinks is discussed. Further on we introduce the concept of semantic link contexts as an approach to manage a coherent rhetoric of linking. A practical implementation is introduced, as well. Our semantic hyperlink implementation is based on the more general Multimedia Information Repository MIR, an open hypermedia system supporting the standards XML, Corba and JNDI.