From Conceptual Structures to Semantic Interoperability of Content

Smart applications behave intelligently because they understand at least partially the context where they operate. To do this, they need not only a formal domain model but also formal descriptions of the data they process and their own operational behaviour. Interoperability of smart applications is based on formalised definitions of all their data and processes. This paper studies the semantic interoperability of data in the case of eLearning and describes an experiment and its assessment. New content is imported into a knowledge-based learning environment without real updates of the original domain model, which is encoded as a knowledge base of conceptual graphs. A component called mediator enables the import by assigning dummy metadata annotations for the imported items. However, some functionality of the original system is lost, when processing the imported content, due to the lack of proper metadata annotation which cannot be associated fully automatically. So the paper presents an interoperability scenario when appropriate content items are viewed from the perspective of the original world and can be (partially) reused there.