The workplace of the future will support the user to cope with a flexible change of multiple processes and tasks. The actual work context is observed by the system and this will be utilized to support the user with relevant information as well as recommendations to proceed in his work. Interaction channels and presentation means are chosen adaptively; needed knowledge and information is provided pro-actively and in direct context of the work performed. The user will have tightly integrated direct access to different services by mesh up techniques. He will collaborate via informal social networks provided by various Web 2.0 services (e.g., forums, weblogs, wikis, and Xing). Domain experts will be identified automatically through an expert finder which is driven by social mining and advanced machine learning technologies. The user will be able to change the system by the use of end-user development facilities to adapt his working environment to his actual needs and specific environments. These methodologies and technologies have been investigated in a varying depth in the research community. However, only a proper combination will lead to the desired user experience. Knowing about the (business) processes the user is involved in supports this and will form the workplace of the future significantly. Business processes are not necessarily IT-based or IT-supported.

This article describe the use of dedicated ontology for teaching in the context of the L 3 project, a national joint project for deploying further vocational education in Germany. The requirements for the open L 3 learning infrastructure are presented in order to motivate our approach to metamodeling learning resources and services by using dedicated ontolgies of pedagogics and didactics. The basic concepts and parts of the pedagogical ontology are outlined, and the practical implications for several of today's problems such as authoring and design, retrieval and adaptive of training resources are illustrated. An overview of the L 3 runtime architecture shows how the didactical ontology is used to deliver adaptive learning.