Using Ontologies to Design Competency-based e-Learning Applications

Lately, the approaches based on the concept of Competency are widely used in the field of Education as well as in the field of Human Resources Development. Competency Modeling is considered to be essential for any kind of Pedagogical Design within the area of e-Learning applications, adding to them several new possibilities. One of the most popular representations of competencies and learning goals (which are considered a kind of competency) is that of ontologies. This kind of representation allows processing by machines and their incorporation in e-learning applications. The present paper contains the presentation of an ontology-based model for the description of the learners’ competencies, created through the combination and the extension of three existing ones. The ontology that we describe, was created as part of an experimental e-learning application for the description and management of competencies, learning goals and learning material about a specific field of knowledge.