Personalization of web-based information systems based on specialized user models has become more important in order to preserve the effectiveness of their use as the amount of available content increases. We describe a user modeling approach based on automated acquisition of user behaviour and its successive rule-based evaluation and transformation into an ontological user model. We stress reusability and flexibility by introducing a novel approach to logging, which preserves the semantics of logged events. The successive analysis is driven by specialized rules, which map usage patterns to knowledge about users, stored in an ontology-based user model. We evaluate our approach via a case study using an enhanced faceted browser, which provides personalized navigation support and recommendation.

Abstract. Personalization is becoming more important if we want to preserve the effectiveness of work with information, providing larger and larger amount of the content. Systems are becoming adaptive by taking into account characteristics of their users. In this paper we describe our work in the field of automatized user characteristics acquisition based on capturing user behavior and its successive rule-based analysis. We stress on re-usability aspect by introducing rules used for the analysis of logs. Resulting user characteristics are stored in an ontology-based user model. 1

Abstract. This paper presents the prototype of an adaptive faceted semantic browser – Factic. Factic implements our novel method of navigation in open information spaces represented by ontologies based on an enhanced faceted browser with support for dynamic facet generation and adaptation based on user characteristics. It is developed as part of a modular framework that supports personalization based on an automatically acquired ontological user model. We describe software tool design and implementation together with discussion on several problems mostly related to the general immaturity of current Semantic Web solutions. 1 Concept overview The Semantic Web as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee aims to solve some problems of the current Web related to its constant change and growth by incorporating shared semantics i.e. “meaning ” thus e.g. significantly improving interoperability between systems [1]. Although this idea was proposed several years ago, it still remains largely unrealized due to various reasons such as the lack of standards

Abstract. Learners have different knowledge, interests and also goals in any educational process. If all the learners are provided the same content the process will probably not meet expected goals. A personalized approach to a learner increases the efficiency of the learning process. It is based on information about the learner that is subject of change. Several adaptive educational systems exist. However, they usually do not consider changes in user behavior and relationships that may exist among contents in order to maintain learner characteristics. In this paper we present a novel method for maintenance of user’s characteristics based on spreading activation. 1

Abstract. Many keyword-based approaches to text classification, information retrieval or even user modeling for adaptive web-based system could benefit from knowledge on relations between various keywords, which gives further possibilities to compare them, evaluate their distance etc. This paper proposes an approach how to determine keyword relations (mainly a parent-child relationship) by leveraging collective wisdom of the masses, present in data of collaborative (social) tagging systems on the Web. The feasibility of our approach is demonstrated on the data coming from the social bookmarking systems delicious and CiteULike. 1

Abstract. In this paper we deal with personalized navigation in an open information space. Our aim is to support effective orientation in increasing amount of information accessible through the Web. We present a method for personalized navigation based on social navigation where the information space is represented by an ontology. Navigational information is obtained by following user footsteps. It is attached to information fragment mapped to the user goal and to description of this goal using an ontology. This information is used later to show the way to similar goals. We use ontology representation of the information space that supports the effective navigation and the navigational ability to deal with frequent changes of information content in open environments. We demonstrate the proposed method in the context of developed software tool PENA for personalized navigation support in labor supply domain.

In this paper we describe a framework dedicated to evolving methods supporting adaptability in e-learning applications with the use of current Semantic Web technologies. Adaptability based on user’s characteristics (personalization) requires mechanisms that can work with meanings and uncover consequences based on the user’s (learner’s) behavior during studying. Our goal is to design and verify methods and techniques for the presentation of and navigation in knowledge presented for learning purposes utilizing ontologies for content representation. The design is validated in a domain of learning programming with program examples. We describe a web-based portal that enables the creation, personalized search and recommendation of program examples.

In the last two decades, the World Wide Web has become the universal, and — for many users — main information source. Search engines can efficiently serve daily life information needs due to the enormous redundancy of relevant resources on the web. For educational — and even more so for scientific information needs, the web functions much less efficiently: Scientific publishing is built on a culture of unique reference publications, and moreover abounds with specialized structures, such as technical nomenclature, notational conventions, references, tables, or graphs. Moreover, many of these structures are peculiar to specialized communities determined by nationality, research group membership, or adherence to a special school of thought. To keep the much-lamented “digital divide ” from becoming a “cultural divide”, we have to make online material more accessible and adaptable to individual users. In this paper we attack this goal for the field of mathematics where knowledge is abstract, highly structured, and extraordinarily interlinked. Modern, content-based representation formats like OpenMath or content MathML allow us to capture, model, relate, and represent mathematical knowledge objects and thus make them context-aware and machine-adaptable to the respective user contexts. Building on previous work which can make mathematical notations adaptable we employ user modeling techniques to make them adaptive to relieve the reader of configuration tasks. We present a comprehensive framework for adaptive notation management and evaluate it on an implementation integrated in the e-learning platform panta rhei.