The primary business problem that a Learning Content Management System faces is to create just enough content, just in time, meeting the needs of different types of learners. A possible answer is the concept of educational component. This paper addresses the formal definition of an educational component model. Its framework will be the Learning Management System. Besides, we define both canonical operators to facilitate component composition and automatic metadata definition, and high-level constructors to coalesce and copy components. The goal is to provide a componentbased environment of composition and delivering of platform independent educational contents to support adaptive learning. Additionally, we provide strategies to classify educational chunks, constituting a common base of knowledge and facilitating sharing of the learning objects. KEYWORDS Educational component, reuse of learning objects, Web-based adaptive learning system, educational ontology.