Learning Objects and Ontologies to Perform Educational Data Mining

E-learning systems have established as a strong alternative to traditional distance education. One of the most valuable, but unfortunately, less used in online educational courses is the learning objects (LO) technology. Internet allows the gathering of plenty of information on students? online behavior; however, this information is in raw format, making difficult the knowledge extraction. Moreover, information about the usability of components in the online course, LO, is rarely obtained, and therefore, hardly used in the data mining (DM) process. The knowledge extracted from this information can be used to define personalization strategies tailored to the students? needs and requirements. In this brief study we introduce a platform to perform educational DM process based on gathered information from both, the students? navigational activities in the e-learning system and the information collected from the LO usability. Moreover, the gathered data are structured, organized and formalized by means of an educational ontology.