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Learning is a process of acquiring knowledge and skills in a particular domain of interest. This process, though continuous in one's life, ends with formative or summative assessment, in specific domain. In higher learning institutions, learning is acquired mostly through reading, experiments, observation, discussion, collaboration, lecturing etc, where sources of information play a fundamental roll. Repositories of learning resources are made available to students through portals that are integrated into e-learning management systems. Observations have showed that students are interested in these learning resources so that through utilising them they can acquire knowledge and skills, a part that is fundamental for one to be described as learned. The paper delves on the development and implementation of an ontology based innovative e-learning system with regard to acquisition of knowledge and skills by online learners at higher learning institutions set up where only core learner activities are identified. An e-learning ontology is used to model a domain of knowledge, thus complementing the functionalities of other learning systems that do not implement this technology. The paper presents assessment of students using assignments with instant feedback on the performance of the students following a Student-Teacher interaction algorithm (STia). The system is developed following creative design methodology and tested with the undergraduate students in the department of Computer Science at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Zimbabwe. Empirical results are given with regard to the strengths and weaknesses of the system as seen by the users. Recommendations to higher learning institutions in terms of policy, e-learning technologies and utilisation of e-learning systems are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-Learning is the use of networked information and communications technology in teaching and learning entailing, online learning, virtual learning, distributed learning, networked and web-based learning with the following modalities; individualised self-paced e-learning online/offline and group - based e-leaning synchronous/asynchronous in which the minimum requirement is a desktop computer. M-learning is defined as learning delivered or supported solely by mobile technologies such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, tablets or wireless laptops. A mobile device is a hand held device capable of sending and receiving messages, and calls while moving around a wide geographical space. It connects to a cellular network provided by mobile phone operator with access to public telephone networks. In addition to telephony, mobile devices such as cell phones offer other services such as text messaging, e-mail, Internet access, short-range wireless communications, business applications, gaming and photography. Mobile devices that offer these services have more general computing capabilities than the old models. They are normally called smart phones. In today's education, e-learning and m-Learning are becoming an integral part of curricular delivery medium. Learners and instructors expect to see no differences between the use of e-learning systems and m-learning systems. Information is expected to flow seamlessly between these dissimilar systems. Users envisage a scenario where there are no drawbacks to the learning process due to the type of learning system in use. It is sufficient to applaud e-learning and m-Learning for enhancing access to learning material, and for learner and instructor interaction. However, the implementation of the different technologies for both elearning and m-Learning have come with an unanticipated cost of restricting the mode of operation and capabilities when integrating e-learning and m-Learning for curricular delivery and access to learning materials. This paper addresses disparities encountered when integrating e-learning and m-Learning in the learning process and envisage an ontology and semantic web technology implementation as a solution. The features, operations and use cases that cause bottlenecks in curricular delivery are articulated in a base ontology and semantic web for the purpose of system interoperability and seamless flow of learning content in dissimilar computing devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]