Characterization of Educational Resources in e-Learning Systems Using an Educational Metadata Profile

The ability to effectively administrate educational resources in terms of accessibility, reusability and interoperability lies in the adoption of an appropriate metadata schema, able of adequately describing them. A considerable number of different educational metadata schemas can be found in literature, with the IEEE LOM being the most widely known; however, it is often the case where it cannot fully accommodate the characteristics of several types of educational resources, that's why application profiles have been proposed. Each metadata standard and application profile usually comes with a different (either less or more semantically enriched) binding, thus allowing the retrieval and dissemination of resources with varying degrees of effectiveness. In this work, we propose an application profile of the IEEE LOM standard having special focus on distance learning material, while being generic enough so as to be applicable to any educational material and application. We then present an ontology model for this profile that aims to improve the potential discovery and retrieval of educational resources within intelligent e-learning environments.