Framework design of Web-services based e-learning portal system

Abstract

This research is to propose a Web services based framework for e-learning portal systems designed to present a flexible integration model and to make the e-learning environment intelligent and adaptive to each individual learner. It is very important that all the learning components and applications are clearly defined, effectively discovered and loosely coupled. Web services and Portals provide an essential deployment environment to realize collaborative e-learning environment by facilitating efficient communication of components and applications. Given the proposed framework, instructor and learner will be able to use their learning objects or services based on portal (collaboration environment) universally anywhere, any time through common communication protocols (HTTP, SOAP). The key values of interoperability and accessibility in the proposed architecture enhance the future collaborative e-learning portal systems to communicate more efficiently and to share data more easily. A prototype of the proposed system is designed and implemented in a J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) combined with multi-channel, using WSRP (Web Service for Remote Portlet) for building essential Web services and for parsing SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) messages on lightweight platforms. The implementation is a successful demonstration that learning services can be easily accessed by portlet through standard Web services interface. Another implementation about role base access control is presented. An internationalization solution (I18N, L10N) based web-service e-learning portal system is successfully accomplished in this implementation.