A Semantic Based Approach for Knowledge Capitalization in Communities of Practice of E-Learning

Communities of Practice of E-learning (CoPEs) are considered as a virtual framework for exchanging and sharing techno-pedagogic knowledge and know-how between actors of e-learning. However, after analyzing of knowledge management modalities in some CoPEs, the authors noticed that knowledge is often represented in a way that does not facilitate its access and reuse. Accordingly, this paper focuses on knowledge capitalization in CoPEs and proposes an ontology-based framework aiming to facilitate knowledge sharing and reuse. This framework is structured into three layers: (1) the ontology layer, (2) the semantic annotation layer, and (3) the asset layer. It provides respectively, a common vocabulary within a CoPE aiming to enable a shared understanding between its members, a semantic support to annotate its knowledge assets facilitating their retrieval and reuse, and a means of storage and indexing its different assets. The paper is illustrated with a case study related to a semantic adaptive wiki, a service proposed for a CoPE made up of a teaching staff in computer science at the USTHB University in Algeria.