Modeling a mobile learning context data ontology

Abstract

One of the aspects brought by the use of connected mobile devices in education is the possibility of learning in different environments, using physical environmental factors in its advantage. These factors are part of what we define as “mobile context”, which is comprised by different information dimensions: temporal, physical, and social. This information can be modelled as an ontology and used in conjunction with existing pedagogical methodologies and educational content to enhance the learning process. In this paper, we propose ontologies to represent and integrate mobile context data and learning objectives. The former represents the dimensions involved in a virtual learning environment accessed by a mobile device and the latter represents learning objectives as part of pedagogical methodologies. Integration of both is achieved by combining them with an existing educational content ontology to establish an information structure to be used by virtual learning environments when accessed from mobile devices. A scenario of application is also provided.