Semantic Web and Distance Learning: Euphoria, Frustration and Restart

In the nineties, two different trends on distance learning research arose. The first one aimed to create systems able to adapt themselves to students’ characteristics, based on instructional and learning theories, while the second aimed to facilitate the creation and management of distance courses, by reusing material. Technologies available so far had hindered the creation of systems able to conjoin the benefits achieved by both groups because adaptive systems were limited to a specific knowledge domain, and almost everything had to be recreated to be used in a different subject. On the other hand, systems able to deal with different subjects could not automatically adapt their content to students’ needs. The emergence of the Semantic Web, as well as Learning Objects, led researchers to develop projects based on them to solve that problem. At last, adaptive and reusable courses based on learning theories could be developed. Learning Object Metadata and other standards for e-learning, as well as ontologies about different knowledge domains, students’ characteristics and learning theories were the tools that researchers were missing to solve such problems. Although much research and publications have been done in that period, few practical results were noticed, frustrating not only the students, but also the teachers and other education-related workers, as they realized that the level of system autonomy they had aimed for had not been reached. This paper describes the euphoria caused by the Semantic Web, problems related to the engineering of ontologies that led to a frustration period, as well as the current period, in which research was resumed with less ambitious objectives. Thus, some considerations about the future of the Semantic Web Based Learning are presented.