%0 Journal Article %1 Kuitunen2008 %A Kuitunen, Pirjo %A Honkaranta, Anne %A Salonen, Kalevi %D 2008 %J WSEAS Transactions on Advances in Engineering Education %K e-Learning %N 1 %P 29-42 %T Ontologies and metadata for E-Learning environments in Ecological and Environmental science %V 5 %X Ecological and environmental science has remained a discipline in which e-Learning has not been widely utilized, possibly due to the complexity and heterogeneity of the e-Learning content available. Traditionally the Learning Objects for ecological and environmental science consist of Web pages, unstructured documents, numerical data files and numerical data in databases. Using metadata attached to Learning Objects and different kinds of data enhances the use of heterogeneous materials. Metadata may be characterized as information about the data required to understand not only the data itself but also its context, quality and structure, as well as to make the data accessible and retrievable. This paper reviews research on metadata, ontologies and markup languages for e-Learning and describes the e-Learning content for ecological and environmental science. The paper describes two common metadata specifications, i.e. the Learning Object Metadata and the Dublin Core as well as two potential markup languages for ecological and environmental e-Learning, i.e. the Ecological Metadata Language and the Geography Markup Language. Metadata provides means to organize the major topics of e-Learning courses and for visualize the semantic connections between concepts. It is possible to extend and reuse metadata specifications by utilizing ontologies and ontology languages (e.g. Web Ontology Language). A semantic e-Learning environment for ecological and environmental science gives a student a possibility to build mental structures and learn in a constructive, self directed and activity oriented way.

@article{Kuitunen2008, abstract = {Ecological and environmental science has remained a discipline in which e-Learning has not been widely utilized, possibly due to the complexity and heterogeneity of the e-Learning content available. Traditionally the Learning Objects for ecological and environmental science consist of Web pages, unstructured documents, numerical data files and numerical data in databases. Using metadata attached to Learning Objects and different kinds of data enhances the use of heterogeneous materials. Metadata may be characterized as information about the data required to understand not only the data itself but also its context, quality and structure, as well as to make the data accessible and retrievable. This paper reviews research on metadata, ontologies and markup languages for e-Learning and describes the e-Learning content for ecological and environmental science. The paper describes two common metadata specifications, i.e. the Learning Object Metadata and the Dublin Core as well as two potential markup languages for ecological and environmental e-Learning, i.e. the Ecological Metadata Language and the Geography Markup Language. Metadata provides means to organize the major topics of e-Learning courses and for visualize the semantic connections between concepts. It is possible to extend and reuse metadata specifications by utilizing ontologies and ontology languages (e.g. Web Ontology Language). A semantic e-Learning environment for ecological and environmental science gives a student a possibility to build mental structures and learn in a constructive, self directed and activity oriented way.}, added-at = {2011-12-21T01:05:11.000+0100}, author = {Kuitunen, Pirjo and Honkaranta, Anne and Salonen, Kalevi}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/26f791d74de3504ee66491b0b8209b129/fairybasslet}, interhash = {014babd8af3cb730c3866eb76aa63a52}, intrahash = {6f791d74de3504ee66491b0b8209b129}, journal = {WSEAS Transactions on Advances in Engineering Education}, keywords = {e-Learning}, number = 1, pages = {29-42}, timestamp = {2019-03-11T21:06:37.000+0100}, title = {Ontologies and metadata for E-Learning environments in Ecological and Environmental science}, volume = 5, year = 2008 }