ERCIS | European Research Center for Information Systems

Project Website:
LearnServe

We are working towards making e-learning offerings for secondary and tertiary education available through the emerging paradigm of Web services. Recent standardization efforts in e-learning concentrate on the reuse of learning material, but not on the reuse of application functionalities. Our LearnServe systems starts from the perception that a typical learning system is a collection of activities or processes that interact with learners and suitably chosen content, the latter in the form of learning objects. This enables us to break the main functionality of an e-learning system down into a number of stand-alone applications, which can then be out-sourced, or be realized individually or in groups as Web services. Web services, in turn, are offered by a number of providers, and can be composed into course units or complete courses.



Intuitively, learners can search for content that matches their needs, book it, pay for it, and finally consume it, all by composing various Web services appropriately. Generally, we try to design such services using tools and languages that are common in this area as far as possible. To this end, we rely upon established Web service standards such as UDDI or WSDL, since they appear sufficient for our purposes. The implementation of Web services in the area of e-learning facilitates a considerable flexibility for the users of the system both in usage of functionalities and selection of content. We also investigate novel areas that are opened up by employing Web services in this context, such as indepentent test centers, billing and payment, or variable pricing schemes.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Gottfried Vossen
Street:Leonardo-Campus 3
City:48149 Münster
Country:Germany
Web:Website
Email: vossen@ercis.uni-muenster.de