E-learning, Experiences and Future

InTech, 2010. - 460 p. Basically e-learning is new way of providing knowledge to peoples to interact with web based systems which is need of current world. E-learning based systems received tremendous popularity in the world since this decade. Currently most of the universities are using e-bases systems to provide interactive systems to students which can make communication fast to grow up the knowledge in every field of study. Many advantages comes to adopt e-learning systems like paper less environment, pay less to instructors, students can access systems from any part of world, advanced computer trainings provided at homes and access any material using web. In advanced countries e-learning systems play major role in an economy to produce productive output in the industries without having paid huge amount for personal staff that are locating physically and also provide big advantage to peoples of developed countries who can not attend physically courses neither afford experts in a professional fields. This is big achievement of e-learning bases systems to promote education online. This book is consisting of 24 chapters which are focusing on the basic and applied research regarding elearning systems. Authors made efforts to provide theoretical as well as practical approaches to solve open problems through their elite research work. This book increases knowledge in the following topics such as e-learning, e-Government, Data mining in e-learning based systems, LMS systems, security in elearning based systems, surveys regarding teachers to use e-learning systems, analysis of intelligent agents using e-learning, assessment methods for e-learning and barriers to use of effective e-learning systems in education. Basically this book is an open platform for creative discussion for future e-learning based systems which are essential to understand for the students, researchers, academic personals and industry related people to enhance their capabilities to capture new ideas and provides valuable solution to an international community. The editor and authors of this book hope that this book will provide valuable platform for the new researchers and students who are interested to carry research in the e-learning based systems. Finally we are thankful to I-Tech Education and publishing organization which provides the best platform to integrate researchers of whole world though this published book. E-Learning Indicators: A Multidimensional Model For Planning Developing And Evaluating E-Learning Software Solutions Barriers to Effective use of Information Technology in Science Education at Yanbu Kingdom of Saudi Arabia The Use of Multi-Agents’ Systems in e-Learning Platforms Quality Metrics of an Integrated E-Learning System – students’ perspective Intelligent Interaction Support for e-Learning Supporting Technologies for Synchronous E-learning Bayesian Agent in e-Learning Data Mining for Instructional Design, Learning and Assessment A learning style – driven architecture build on open source LMS’s infrastructure for creation of psycho-pedagogically – ‘savvy’ personalized learning paths E-learning in information accessibility of disabled assistanttechnology Application of Data-Mining Technology on E-Learning Material Recommendation Loosely-Tied Distributed Architecture for Highly Scalable E-Learning System Evolution of Collaborative Learning Environments based on Desktop Computer to Mobile Computing: A Model-Based Approach From the discovery of students access patterns in e-learning including web 2.0 resources to the prediction and enhancement of students outcome Dependable e-learning systems Ontology-driven Annotation and Access of Educational Video Data in E-learning When a robot turns into a totem: The RoboBeggar case Virtual patients as a practical realisation of the e-learning idea in medicine Data Warehouse Technology and Application in Data Centre Design for E-government The Emergence of the Intelligent Government in the Second Society A Lightweight SOA-based Collaboration Framework for European Public Sector Spatial Aided Decision-making System for E-Government Evaluating Local E-Government: A Comparative Study of Greek Prefecture Websites A shift can be traced from the so-called Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is not a uniform concept, but a generic term for new internet technologies and applications. Important characteristics of Web 2.0 applications are virtual networks, sharing of information, active users that influence the products and the dynamic content of information. Both these technological and societal developments have impact on what we call the Second Society. In this chapter we explored the implications of Web 2.0 applications for the emergence of the intelligent government. The study has shown that Web 2.0 applications can have different characteristics and functions. For that reason we have tried to classify Web 2.0 applications. We made classifications based on distinguishable characteristics (generic versus specific, dynamic versus static, closed versus open and personal versus collective) and functions (sharing of information, mobilisation of interests, social interaction, delivery of services and transactions) of Web 2.0 applications. All policy stages within the public sector are currently being influenced by new internet applications, namely policy development, policy implementation, monitoring and management. We state that Electronic government is not a goal in itself but a process in which intelligent Web 2.0 technology is being used to make the policy process more effective and efficient. For this reason it is better to speak about Intelligent Government (IGovernment). An indicator for the Intelligent Government in the Second Society is that the application must meet a successful linkage between the problem and solution, both perceived by the actors involved. In the case of the police department Haaglanden we can conclude it is an initiative by the government aiming to inform citizens about crimes in their neighborhoods in the region of Haaglanden. The linkage between problem and solution is less than optimal, where the linkage is successful in providing information, it is less successful in involving citizens. In the case of the platform against airport hindrance we can conclude it is an initiative by citizens aiming to mobilize citizens who claim to suffer from airport hindrance in the region of Castricum. The linkage between problem and solution is completely successful. When citizens obtain the possibility to, within ones own problem perception, contribute to a solution, the added value of this solution will be higher. When we focus on the characteristics of these websites, we can conclude that both websites have a specific and collective focus and open access to all viewers. A difference between the two websites is that the `governmental' website is more static then the `citizen' website. When we focus on the function, we can conclude that informing is the most important function, but that, surprisingly, the degree of interaction is quite modest. A critical key success factor is the influence of citizens on the process. We can conclude that websites in which citizens have a large impact on the problem perception and on the solution for this problem, have a larger degree of success than websites where this is not the case. An intelligent government is a government that mobilize the intelligence of citizens and activate, to speak in Web 2.0 terms, the wisdom of the crowds The number of complex multi-domain/multi-country collaborations is constantly increasing, as the SOA concepts and supporting technologies are maturing. In order to gain acceptance, such solutions must be efficient, easy to use, secure and trusted. The work presented in this chapter aims to leverage the best implementations of standard and interoperable Web services specifications to provide a lightweight and modular framework for inter-organizational collaborative interactions. The concept of application-level gateway is implemented using pluggable extensions of Web services engine and further enhanced by using intelligent message processing based on Enterprise Service Bus and mediation techniques. This kind of virtualization allows achieving needed flexibility and security level providing standards based interoperability, data confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and role/policy based access control. These features, combined with the concept of Data as a Service (DaaS) enable the end users to have more power of creating ad-hoc enterprise data mash-ups, leverage benefits of enterprise social computing and gain additional opportunities when creating and reusing value-added knowledge. A prototype of the described solution has been implemented using Apache and WSO2 Web services platform, WS-Security family of specifications. This prototype will be used to assess solution performance and suitability before moving towards enhancing choreographed interactions. A good case study for application of such compliance proof mechanism can be collaboration between public administrations of different EU Member States in legal/law enforcement domain (R4eGov case studies, 2007) where efficiency, security and trustworthiness of interaction steps is highly important. Further work is planned on privacy-preserving access control protocol, fine grained specifications of access entitlement and distributed authorization mechanisms In this article we described a dedicated knowledge assessment system, designed to supplement existing e-learning solutions, as they implement such functionality in inadequate manner. The design of our system includes a number of original solutions and often exceeds similar products in terms of functionality. Our system relies heavily on webbased technologies (Java, XML, HTML, standardized media files, streaming media, SOAP, SMTP, MIME, etc.), but their usage differs from currently popular trends. The uniqueness of our e-learning solution lies in use of independent modules, full-client approach, loosely-tied distributed architecture and inclusion of ComAL functionality. As a result we have a system which can be deployed fully or partially and easily integrated with third party solutions. Possible deployment scenarios range from a single workstation with knowledge testing module exporting results to MS Excel, to a collection of interconnected servers (each controlling a large number of knowledge-testing client modules) allowing global information searches. The system has proven to be extremely scalable. Complication of system configuration also scales, which means that simple setups are as easy to prepare and maintain as installing and running a standalone application, while only more advanced require additional system configuration and administration. Distributed server part configuration is also easy due to automatic information routing mechanisms. System servers function independently and can be connected and disconnected from the system almost at will with no impairment of their basic functionality, apart from global search ability. That independence allows various departments of an organization to autonomously organize their own elements of the system and retain access to full system information base