Designing E-Learning Services: A Case Study

Abstract

Abstract-Recently, increasing numbers of e-learning tools have been developed. However, the benefits of these tools cannot be fully used as they typically operate separately and do not communicate with each other. It is necessary to develop a solution to redeploy existing tools, and create new tools, in a more effective way. Our approach is to link and manage these e-learning tools together, by grouping the tools together and presenting them as a set of e-learning services, implemented using service technologies. In this paper, we propose a set of e-learning services, together with the approach we have adopted to develop them, which are developed based on a case study.

Experiences on Sharing eLearning Resources using Service Technologies

“…The novelty of our solution lies in (a) the comprehensive application of a service approach to all stages of the e-learning process facilitated by an Educational Services Bus, and (b) the fact that we do not restrict ourselves to Web services [3]. Our approach uses service technologies, and addresses not only the problem of providing descriptions of learning resources, but also linking those resources together.…”

“…Our approach not only wraps existing educational software as services, but also inserts a layer between users and e-learning resource providers -the Educational Services Bus (ESB) -so that these tools can be linked together and users will be able to access them efficiently. Additionally, information about each software tool is described and presented in the ESB, so that users are able to discover and compare the tools effectively [3]. Figures 1 and 2 show the differences before and after our services approach is introduced.…”

An Educational Services Architecture to Share E-Learning Resources

“…For each service, its functionalities, operations, data types and binding information are specified in a service interface. In previous research (Yang and Joy, 2009), we conducted a case study within a university and proposed that there should be nine types of educational services. The five services we presented in Figure 1 are for illustrative purposes.…”