Ontology - Based Software Component Aggregation 1

The topic of Component-Based Software Development (CBSD) has become very important in industry and research in the last 10 years (Allen & Frost 1998; Object Management Group, 2003). In e-learning, an increasing number of organizations have recognized the importance of building learning technologies by aggregating existent pedagogical software components. To support training processes, Web portals and digitized resources need to be provided to actors in each process. This can be done by aggregating, in a process workflow, different kinds of resources accessible on the Web: documents, simulations, videos, software tools, as well as persons interacting through communication tools and services. These resources are all represented by digital components that need to be aggregated in a proper manner. Aggregating software components is also a central dimension of the TELOS system that will be presented in chapter 15. In fact, right from the start, the TELOS conceptual architecture documents (Paquette, Rosca, Mihaila & Masmoudi, 2006) proposed a solution to the general resources aggregation problems, whether these resources are actors, documents, learning objects, learning Gilbert Paquette LICEF Research Center, Canada