As digital technologies continue to evolve rapidly, Serious games (SG) have emerged as powerful tools for education, training, decision-making, and other diverse domains that leverage game-based mechanics to enhance engagement and learning outcomes. However, their effectiveness is often limited by the lack of structured knowledge representation and adaptability to various learning contexts. Ontologies offer a solution by providing a formalized, machine-readable structure that enhances content organization, reasoning, and personalization within SGs. This paper presents a cross-domain ontology for SGs that aims to provide a unified framework for representing the key concepts, relationships, and dynamics within SGs across various domains. It also aims to bridge gaps between different fields by formalizing the diverse aspects of SGs, such as learning outcomes, player engagement, interactivity, and feedback mechanisms. By integrating concepts from multiple domains, the proposed ontology enables better understanding, analysis, and development of SGs, facilitating their application in diverse contexts. Furthermore, the ontology serves as a foundation for semantic interoperability between SGs and related systems, promoting the creation of more adaptive and personalized gaming experiences tailored to specific learning or developmental objectives.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are being increasingly explored and used in healthcare for their potential applications. These models show the capacity to impact clinical care, research, and medical education significantly. In this research, we shed light on the transformative potential of LLMs in reshaping the healthcare landscape, emphasizing their role in enhancing patient care, improving decision-making processes, and advancing medical research. While the application of LLMs in healthcare presents immense opportunities, this research, also, addresses critical challenges and limitations. Concerns regarding the accuracy, reliability, and ethical implications of LLMs in medical contexts are highlighted, emphasizing the need for continuous monitoring and evaluation to ensure patient safety and data privacy. By exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with LLMs in healthcare, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the implications and future directions of this technology in the healthcare sector.

This paper presents a case study based on Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory designed to gather learner opinions regarding the use of competency-based applications in technology-enhanced learning. In particular, a questionnaire was designed to measure the satisfaction of learners with a Competency Management, Development and Tracking Tool, called CMD2T, which can be integrated into virtual learning environments in order to provide users with a practical way to assess, track, and prove competencies associated with a given course. To test the reliability and validity of the proposed questionnaire, two statistical methods have been used. The Cronbach's alpha test was performed to check the internal consistency of each subscale comprising the questionnaire as well as the entire questionnaire. Besides, different validity procedures have been used to assess its validity, including construct validity using factor analysis, convergent and discriminant validity. Results of factor analysis and learner satisfaction measurement indicated that the questionnaire is proved to be a reliable instrument to measure learners' satisfaction and that the proposed CMD2T tool is very useful and highly appreciated by teachers and students. This paper, also, aims to show how a new questionnaire to assess learners' satisfaction can be validated. Hence, researchers who have a similar issue related to measuring learners' satisfaction about an innovative competence-based tool can potentially benefit from the paper's results.

Abstract In the domain of technology-enhanced competency-based learning and training, there is an increased interest in the integration of competency-related information for supporting competency-driven decision-making purposes. Indeed, since competency development draws upon several related areas, including teaching subjects, instructional design, learning resource annotation, e-Portfolios and motivated by the need for an integrated and semantic-based approach to competency management and development, a series of ontological structures have been formalized and developed for each of these areas. This paper aims to provide a framework specification for lifelong competency management and development, called LCMDF. The main advantage of this framework lies in its ability to provide a unifying semantic foundation in the form of a set of controlled vocabularies for describing competencies and their related details within the contexts of technology-enhanced competency-based learning and training. Moreover, this framework provides a novel integrated model to support a wide range of use cases. The proposed framework results from reusing widespread international standards for competency modeling which helps designing and implementing interoperability architecture of semantically-enhanced competency-based learning/human resource (HR) systems.

In technology-enhanced learning, semantic annotations have been employed to attach semantic metadata to learning materials in order to significantly enhance their accessibility by human users and machines as well. In this paper, we present an ontology-based multi-level semantic representation model that aims to enrich the description of learning objects with semantics regarding their subjects, competencies and instructional roles. More specifically, the proposed model uses three ontologies: a subject domain ontology describing the domain concepts and the relations that are covered by the subject matter being taught, a competency ontology describing the competency-related characteristics of learners and learning resources, and an instructional role ontology specifying the instructional role(s) a learning object can play in an instructional setting. To demonstrate the feasibility of our model, an illustrative example is given that explains how learning object semantics can be represented with different granularities.

Over the last century, different learning theories have shaped the world of education and training before shifting to the competency-based approach (CBA). This new paradigm to teaching and learning aims to ensure that every student has to graduate with the competitive competencies of lifelong learners and is ready to enter the workforce and begin functioning in entry-level positions. However, despite the growing interest in competency-based learning and training, this field still faces numerous challenges, essentially the lack of consensus about an interoperable description of competency evidences. Indeed, the move towards CBA has created a need for effective instruments that support and assess competency development. In this context, the electronic portfolio (e-Portfolio) emerged as a suitable tool that helps learners collect and manage multiple kinds of assessment evidences linked to the program’s competencies from multiple sources. In this paper, we propose an ontology-based approach to e-portfolio modeling which relies on Semantic Web technologies to formally and semantically describe portfolio artifacts that evidence the achievement of one or several competencies. The proposed ontology is structured according to official e-Portfolio specifications, namely IMS ePortfolio and JISC Leap2A. In addition, other existing approaches to e-Portfolio modeling reported in the literature have been explored to avoid misinterpretation of these specifications. Furthermore, a comparative study of common e-Portfolio systems has been carried out in order to gain a fairly accurate idea of the generic structure of an e-Portfolio.

The Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle is currently the most popular software solution which provides many modules for various teaching and learning purposes. However, several aspects relevant for competency management are typically missing in Moodle. This paper proposes an ontology-based competency management application which is developed as a Moodle extension for supporting the development and assessment of competencies inside a course. Details about the competency ontology adopted for designing the competency-based course structure as well as the competency management features embedded into Moodle are presented. By incorporating these features into a LMS, it becomes possible to manage target competencies together with their associated evidence items and assess proficiency levels reached by students for each target competency. In addition, it becomes possible to generate different types of competency reports depending on the target role (teachers, students or administrators).

For some years, competency-based learning and training has known a growing interest, especially in conjunction with proliferation of the terms "knowledge society", "citizen mobility", or "globalization". Competency modeling becomes an important concept in many domains, especially in human resource development and e-Learning. In this paper, we present a review of relevant competency metadata standards and some ontology-based approaches for competency modeling.

Although the extent and the nature of difficulties in learning are more severe for disabled students, non-disabled students may also have similar requirements and want to give them the ability to express preferences about display, control and content. In this paper, we propose using the IMS Accessibility for LIP (ACCLIP) specification to express accessibility preferences and needs of learners. This specification allows describing accessibility needs other than those just for learners with physical disabilities to ensure that all learners can define preferences.