Deriving Ontology-Based Metadata for E-Learning form the ACM Computing Curricula

Using metadata is very important for achieving best results in finding and reusing e-learning material. Metadata are however effective only if there is a common agreement on the terminology used. Defining an ontology is a way out, but creating a good ontology and reaching a consensus on it is a non trivial task. In this paper, we claim that an ontology for Computer Science can be extracted as a side-result from the work made by an ACM committee on Computer Science curricula. We extracted the ontology, and we suggest that it could/should be used for defining metadata on e-learning material that is concerned with the Computer Science domain. We provide both an XML and a DAML+OIL representation of the ontology. Also, we suggest a possible way to navigate the metadata that allows enriching each lesson with a set of related material automatically extracted from the repository of e-learning material. Finally, we discuss possible additional uses of the ontology, and the exportability of our approach to other disciplines.