Advisory Agents in the Semantic Web

In this paper, we describe the advances of the Semantic E-learning Agent project, whose objective is to develop virtual student advisers that render support to university students in order to successfully organize und perform their studies. The advisory agents are developed with novel concepts of the Semantic Web and agent technology. The key concept is the semantic modeling of the domain knowledge by means of XML-based ontology languages such as OWL. Software agents apply ontological and domain knowledge in order to assist human users in their decision making processes. Agent technology enables the incorporation of personal confidential data with public accessible knowledge sources of the Semantic Web in the same inference process.