Service-Oriented Frameworks: Modelling the infrastructure for the next generation of e-Learning Systems

Abstract

Technology is becoming increasingly embedded in the systems and processes of our educational organisations. Research, learning and teaching and information management now rely on technology to support processes. Although technology has the potential to extend and improve educational and training activities, this potential can only be fully realised if the activities are built upon a stable and coherent technical infrastructure. The active involvement of the United Kingdom’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Australian Department of Education Science and Training (DEST) and Industry Canada (IC) in research into e-learning systems and the development of international learning technology standards and specifications, and the US Advanced Distributed Learning Initiatives (ADL) activities has highlighted the potential of technical frameworks to provide a common basis for designing e-learning infrastructures. Organisations such as JISC, DEST, IC and ADL along with many others have already made a considerable contribution to the development of e-learning in their own communities and in supporting interoperability standards. Each of these organisations has identified the need to produce a coherent vision of how to integrate systems to support organisational and cross-organisational processes for enabling effective e-learning. Much of work on developing integrated systems has relied upon frameworks based on a service-oriented approach which provides both direct and indirect benefits to teachers, learners, administrators, organisations and those who supply and develop content and software to the respective communities. A framework consists of a set of services, each of which may be defined at different levels of detail. The core task of creating a framework is to define a broad set of services required to support the business of a community. A service offers functions and content through agreed behaviours and interfaces. This paper explains the potential benefits to the e-learning community of adopting a service-oriented frameworks approach to infrastructure development, and the additional activities required to realise these benefits.