Developing a Collaborative E-Learning Environment Based upon Semantic Wiki: From Design Models to Application Scenarios

The knowledge society requires life-long learning and flexible learning environment that enables fast, just-in-time and relevant learning, aiding the development of communities of knowledge, linking learners and practitioners with experts. Based upon semantic wiki, a combination of wiki and Semantic Web technology, this paper designs and develops a flexible e-learning environment aiming to motivate active collaborative learning and maximize resource sharing and reusing. Compared with general e-learning environment, the proposed environment has three outstanding features. First, it supports learning resource modeling with semantic link network to deal with structural incoherence and content isolation. Second, it motivates learners to be actively involved in the collaborative learning process by allowing flexible resource authoring and semantic annotation in an easy-to-use manner. Third, it enables proactive resource and companion recommendation based on discovery of closely-related learning-peers and supports user role analysis for learning enhancement.