Towards an Ontological Learners’ Modelling Approach for Personalised e-Learning

The rapid advancements in the semantic web technologies has enabled personalised learning based on learner’s characteristics in the learning process. We have implemented a Personalised Adaptive e-Learning system (onto-PAdeL) which uses an ontological approach in design-ing learners’ models. Thus, this paper focuses on describing our approach for modelling learners based on their charac-teristics such as abilities, learning style(s), prior knowledge and preferences. The system uses Item Response Theory (IRT) for calculating learner’s abilities. The learning style can be represented according to different theories, each of which supports personalisation in different ways. We show that using ontologies for learner modelling, in addition to many different benefits, enables reasoning for adaptive learning.