Service oriented technologies have become popular among academia and industry. They represent a new paradigm for sharing and reusing current software applications: instead of the traditional methods for system design and coding, service software is developed by wrapping and reconnecting existing applications.

Many good quality e-learning software products have already been developed. They are widely used to cover varied aspects of learning and teaching activities, such as developing learning materials, delivering learning activities, and performing assessment tasks. However, people cannot fully benefit from these valuable resources as they are often not shared effectively and efficiently.

The aim of our research focuses on exploring the benefits that service technologies can bring to the domain of education, in particular the benefits of applying service technologies for sharing and reusing resources in e-learning. The project involves not only the design and implementation of a novel educational services framework which students, teachers, administrators, and researchers will benefit from, but also identifying potential educational resources to share using the framework.

In order to cope with this, we have proposed a novel service oriented approach. This approach will better link and describe current available e-learning resources, such as e-learning materials, student record systems, and applications to support assessment tasks, by following the principles of discoverability, interoperability and reusability in service technologies.

The following diagrams present how some of current e-learning resources are shared, before and after our service oriented approach is introduced.

Educational software without SOA

Educational software with SOA

Publications

Yang, S. and Joy, M.S. and Nurse, J.R.C. (2011) Experiences on Sharing E-Learning Resources using Service Technologies. In: 14th IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE 2011), 11-13 July 2011, Cambridge, UK. (BibTeX)

Yang, S. and Joy, M.S. and Laine, T.H. (2011) An Educational Services Architecture to Share E-learning Resources. In: 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU2011), 06-08 May 2011, Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands. [PDF] (BibTeX)

Yang, S. and Joy, M.S. (2010) Service Advertisement and Discovery. In: Agent-Based Service-Oriented Computing. Springer, London, pp. 21-46. ISBN 978-1-84996-040-3 (BibTeX)

Yang, S. and Joy, M.S. (2009) Designing E-Learning Services. In: International Conference on E-learning in the Workplace (ICELW 2009), 10-12 Jun 2009, New York, NY. [PDF] (BibTeX)

Yang, S. and Joy, M.S. (2008) SOA Services in Higher Education. In: 7th WSEAS International Conference on Education and Educational Technology, 21-23 Nov 2008, Venice, Italy. [PDF] (BibTeX)