An Extended E-Learning System Architecture: Integrating Software Tools within the E-Learning Portal

Zuhoor Al-Khanjari, Swamy Kutti, and Muna Hatem 

Department of Computer Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman 

Abstract: IT-based Higher education is found to be a feasible and economical solution in improving the traditional education model [2, 14]. Consequently the e-learning portals have been evolved as experimental tools in implementing online courses with the existing classroom education [3, 6, 13]. For an on-line course to be successful, it is essential to provide a necessary resource environment available in on-line. This expects designers to implement their courses standing alone without a third party dependency. An experimental study has been carried to verify the feasibility of implementing a system architecture that can support course-related resources in stand-alone mode. This paper explains the development of a prototype system architecture which results by extending the services of a portal by integrating software tools used in the related courses. The resulting architecture is simple, distributed and cost effective. The supporting experimental work has been carried out on the test bed around the e-learning portal WebCT that is currently available in Sultan Qaboos University (SQU).

Keywords: Workgroup learning, web-server, MyCoursesServer, application server, Unix network server, WebCT

 Received June 13, 2004; accepted February 25, 2005.