A modeling method for service management of e-Learning

• Authors: Jyhjong Lin
• Venue: AIC'08 Proceedings of the 8th conference on Applied informatics and communications
• Year: 2008

For the rapid advances of Internet technologies and Web applications in recent years, providing opportunities to learn outside of the traditional classroom-based education has gained many attentions as a new theme for prospect learners to acquire knowledge in a more convenient way. In this new paradigm of the so called electronic learning (e-Learning), many efforts have been made to build Web based learning systems that manage desired e-Learning processes. From the managerial perspective on education, this means that each desired e-Learning process is monitored and controlled for fulfilling an expected learning objective. In this paper, we propose an object-oriented modeling method that addresses this issue by dividing required mechanisms into three layers: learning objective, learning service agent, and learning service composition ones. With this architecture, e-Learning processes are managed via the recognition of a learning objective, the employment of a learning service agent that arranges a process of demanded learning services for achieving the objective, and the confirmation of interactions/coordination among these services in achieving the objective. For specification, an object-oriented model is presented for each layer that describes the working detail of that layer. To illustrate, these models are applied in the fulfillment of an e-Learning plan for learning about Software Engineering that involves a set of learning objectives to be achieved by various processes of learning services.