An adaptive learning system using plug and play ontologies

The terminology used by a particular educational institution is usually specific to that institution. Therefore, it is not possible to directly deploy a learning system that has been developed for one institution at another institution. Semantic interoperability among learning systems has been proposed as a solution to overcome terminological and structural differences. However, semantic interoperability is difficult to achieve in an educational environment since it requires a common ontology that is based on a shared understanding of the learning domain. To circumvent this problem, we introduce an adaptive learning system that relies on a domain-specific ontology that can be plugged into the learning system. In order to demonstrate the plug and play architecture of our system and its reasoning services, we compare two instances of the learning system we have created: one for Macquarie University and one for Charles Sturt University. We show how user queries can be answered over the domain-specific ontology at each institution using a description logic reasoner.