Deploying Semantic Web Technologies for Work Integrated Learning in Industry - A Comparison: SME vs. Large Sized Company

Modern businesses operate in a rapidly changing environment. Continuous learning is an essential ingredient in order to stay competitive in such environments. The APOSDLE system utilizes semantic web technologies to create a generic system for supporting knowledge workers in different domains to learn@work. Since APOSDLE relies on three interconnected semantic models to achieve this goal, the question on how to efficiently create high-quality semantic models has become one of the major research challenges. On the basis of two concrete examples – namely deployment of such a learning system at EADS, a large corporation, and deployment at ISN, a network of SMEs – we report in detail the issues a company has to face, when it wants to deploy a modern learning environment relying on semantic web technology. Although we describe the experiences related to a specific system, we think that our reports are of interest to a wider audience, as APOSDLE relies on many “standard” semantic web technologies and consequently inherits both their advantages and disadvantages.