Abstract:

Personalized e-learning is related to delivery of learning content, instructions and knowledge according to the needs and aspirations of individual learners. The present Learning Management Systems (LMS) and e-learning environments propose a few tools and functionalities for personal learning space organization, empowering different technological solutions. Ensuring a personalized learning that proposes to all students to meet high standards and acquire the knowledge they need to pursue their own cadences is still a challenge for educators, researchers and developers. In this paper we present a conceptual model of Personalized Learning Environment (PLE) as type of LMS, discuss and classify the affected from personalization LMS functions and tools.
Usually practical e-learning systems (or learning materials) are good for some learners or in some domain and aren’t so good for others, attended the same course. Usage of external learning resources is of various importance for different learners, but almost everyone is needed from additional materials according to his personal abilities and achievements. We believe that to fulfill such needs, the modern e-learning system have to be open. We propose conceptual model of open personalized e-learning system, in which instructional and media content can be generated dynamically, composed for or by the particular learner or retrieved from other e-learning systems or internet dynamically according to his/her personal needs. We use ontologies for user profile, domain knowledge and pedagogical knowledge representation in our system. To achieve needed flexibility, scalability and easy adaptively to the changing learner’s educational needs and personal qualities, we propose agent-based architecture of e-learning system. For prototype implementation we use JADEX Multiagent system, some downloaded from web and adapted for other needs and some developed by using protégé lightweight OWL ontologies (representing mathematical, personal and pedagogical knowledge). Our initial tests show that personalization is important for finding the best for every learner resources, and semantic knowledge representation in some cases improve quality of retrieved from the web additional resources. And using JADEX Multiagent systems software we relatively easy implement a prototype of this complex system and organize communications and collaboration between it components. The advantages and drawbacks our knowledge-based and agent-oriented environment with advanced personalized functions responding to the increasing learner’s demands are discussed.

Keywords:

Agent-based system, personalized e-learning, semantic web, e-learning system, ontology-based e-learning.