Abstract—This paper presents the development of learning object ontology for SQL contents that are designed according to the computer science curriculum standards of the ACM / IEEE Computer Society 2013. The learning object schema was designed by using the SCORM and the Ontology approach. The learning objects can be used as the knowledge base of Intelligent Tutoring System. The major characteristics of them are smaller learning units. These learning units facilitate to retrieve, share and reuse. In addition, it helps to define the different learning strategies of Intelligent Tutoring System in order to enhance the performance of system. The proposed ontology is applied in the semantic search engine in order to measure the performance. The retrieval results reveal that the semantic search engine using the SQL learning object ontology achieves with approximately 90% of F-measure in every type of keywords that are one keyword, two keywords and multi-keywords. Index Terms—SQL, learning object, ontology, intelligent tutoring system. I. INTRODUCTION Today, an environmental organization of the online learning is not just only converting media into an electronic form, but it also need to consider on the different learning ability of each learner. The learning ability depends on many factors of the learner such as learner’s prior knowledge, learner preference, learner performance, learner’s learning style, etc. The learning environment should be designed under the differences of the individual that cause learning with their full potential [1]-[4]. The current online learning (i.e., e-Learning, Web-based Education, Intelligent Tutoring System, Computer Based Training, etc.) focused on the development with regard to adapting to the learner. The Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is designed based on learning environment that can adapt itself to the learning characteristics, learner’s prior knowledge and learning ability of each learner. It’s using a computer that contains the knowledge base for managing the contents and teaching strategies [5]. The ITS is suitable for the learners because it offers the learning contents with a wide range of learning styles. It is operated by the collaboration of several working modules in the system. The first module, called Knowledge-based module, serves to collect all of the learning materials and the learning tests. It has a flexible structure for collecting the contents underlying the knowledge domain, which has two main parts: 1) Knowledge Manuscript received March 1, 2013; revised April 30, 2013. The authors are with the School of Information Technology, Suranaree University of Technology, Muang District, Nakhon Ratchasima 30000, Thailand (e-mail: y_wilairat@hotmail.com, jitimon@sut.ac.th, angskun@sut.ac.th). Organization and 2) Knowledge Repository. The second module, called Learner module, will store information about the learners which are performance, learning history and learning styles. Next, Pedagogical module aims to provide an appropriate learning material for each learner using the gathered information. Finally, the result of tutoring system is presented to learners in the Graphical User Interface (GUI) module. This research focuses on knowledge base organization in the part of Knowledge-based module of ITS. The knowledge domain is the contents of Structured Query Language (SQL). The SQL contents comprise many independent sub-contents and have a variety of formats (e.g., text, images, animation, video, or audio files). Learning Object (LO) is applied for organizing the structure of these sub-contents in accordance with a variety of the learner’s characteristics [6]. Each unit of LO has the self-contained and independent content as well as they can link together to be the new one with larger size. Moreover, these learning objects can be selected to merge with the learning management in a variety of learning styles [7], [8]. LOs must have been designed and developed as SCORM [9] and LOM [10]. In addition, this study investigates the LOs based on the context of the web-based learning (that can communicate and access to the system via the Internet). They are implemented by using a semantic web method, which can help to improve the performance of the tutoring system. The semantic web method has an ability of smart search for selecting and allocating the appropriate LOs according to the learner’s characteristics. It is related to three technologies such as XML, RDF and Ontology. These technologies play a key role in deploying and reusing of LOs on the semantic web. They are also used to describe metadata and other information related to the LO with more flexibility and facilitate to search and exchange LOs. Ontology technology will provide concepts of LO on the defined knowledge domain in order to get the required LOs on the knowledge domain [11]. That is the main basis of knowledge base construction. These concepts are arranged in a hierarchical inheritance relationship and they have the specific properties in each concept, which can be used to organize the structure of the LOs. The advantages of ontology are to support reusability and knowledge sharing [12]. This paper presents a design of LO Ontology for the SQL contents according to the ACM / IEEE Computer Society 2013 framework with a combination between the SCORM and Ontology technology. The design will be given an outline of SQL learning object Ontology that can be used to collect and store the knowledge base in the Knowledge Repository. It leads to the personalized creating process in SQL Learning Object Ontology for an Intelligent Tutoring System Wilairat Yathongchai, Thara Angskun, and Jitimon Angskun International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning, Vol. 3, No. 2, April 2013 168 DOI: 10.7763/IJEEEE.2013.V3.216