A Data Model and its Implementation for a Web-Based Language Learning System

Published in: Proceedings of the 12th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW’03), pages 217–225. 20–24 May 2003, Budapest, Hungary At the European Academy of Bozen-Bolzano we are currently developing an adaptive Web-based language learning system for the German and Italian languages. In this paper we focus on the development and implementation of a data model for this system. While in the general context of e-learning the basic building blocks – often called learning objects – represent domain concepts, for our learning material the basic building blocks are words and expressions. Moreover, these pieces of data are highly interlinked. This situation requires a very fine-grained data model which stores metainformation at the word level and below. We present such a data model and discuss its implementation using XML.