An automatic learning contents selector based on metadata standards

Thanks to technological improvements, distance education represents a real alternative or support to the traditional formative processes. The Internet allows one to design contents able to improve the quality of the traditional formative process. However, the amount of information students can obtain from the Internet is huge and students can be confused. Teachers can also be disconcerted by the content and are often unable to suggest correct content to the students. A solution to these problems derives from a more detailed description of content: this process is defined as creating metadata. We propose a Web based tool for metadata creation and management and automatic selection of contents in order to form a learning path. With this tool the teacher can describe the contents, students profiles, and ontology according to a description model. The proposed tool selects some elements of various metadata and automatically identifies their relationships in order to find the most suitable set of contents for every student profile.