Content authoring system to personalize e-learning

The essence of e-learning lies in the personalization of learning experiences. While many learning systems are proclaiming 'e-learning compliance', these systems are only in the league of online training. This paper sees effective knowledge personalization, synthesis and its transfer as the key competitive differentiator that separates e-learning from online learning. Although learning personalization is an important aspect of e-learning, it is not realized. Most e-learning systems cannot deal with the open problems of learning personalization as learning demands are massive, extensive and diversified. However, this paper argues that learning in an open environment not only requires personalization support, it demands an even more effective approach to provide learner's orientation and individualized access support. Hence, this paper proposes a novel content authoring system that incorporates learning personalization issues into content authoring. Through an elaborated process of identifying the learners' learning preferences, current knowledge level and learning needs, the content authoring system aspires to provide a personalized learning experience that is able to customize and synthesize new knowledge into the learner's existing 'cognitive structure'.