      Jelena Jovanović 1 , Dragan Gašević 2 , Christopher Brooks 3 , Colin Knight 2 , Griff Richards 2 , Gordon McCalla 3 1 FON, School of Business Administration, University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro 2 School of Interactive arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University Surrey, Canada 3 ARIES Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Canada  This paper presents an ontology0based framework aimed at explicitly representing the context of the use of a learning object inside of a learning de0 sign. The core of the proposed framework is a learning object context ontology that leverages a range of other kinds of learning ontologies (e.g. domain, user modeling, learning design etc.) to capture the context0specific metadata. On top of that framework, we develop the architecture of an adaptive educational sys0 tem, in order to illustrate the benefits of our proposal for personalization of learning design. Finally, we reflect on how two present educational tools (iHelp Courses and TANGRAM) correspond to the proposed architecture.   The combined use of the IMS Learning Design specification (IMS LD) [3] and IEEE Learning Object Metadata standard (LOM) [2] enables one to specify learning designs and learning objects (LOs) targeted for different learning situations, based on different pedagogical theories, comprising different learning activities where students and teachers can play many roles, and carried out in diverse learning environments. How0 ever, they cannot enable more advanced learning processes, such as dynamic adapta0 tion of content in accordance with the students’ objectives, preferences, learning styles, and knowledge levels. Further, if adaptation is to happen automatically infor0 mation must be codified in an unambiguous manner. Ontologies help increase the consistency and interoperability of metadata. The Semantic Web community has al0 ready developed a number of different kinds of ontologies that can be integrated in an ontological framework in order to enable adaptive use of LOs inside a learning design. Our proposal for such a framework is the main subject of this paper.     The complexity of the process of using LOs is described in this section in order to identify the main actors in that process, as well as the types of metadata that can be employed to facilitate the process. The principle actors are subject matter experts (who create the learning content and provide initial metadata for it), instructors (who search for, obtain, modify, then wrap a LO in a learning design), and learners (who end up consuming the LO). These actors use different tools to complete their tasks. A