Technologically supported E-learning Systems in Higher Education

Περίληψη

European higher education institutions have realized that today’s society requires e-learning systems that are flexible, have lifelong educational accessibility and which are cost effective. SinceEuropecannot stand graduates’ high unemployment rates, higher education institutions have to equip people with the skills for life long learning offering them a greater choice of learning paths. The Knowledge commercialization generates opportunities for new markets and poses a threat for new competitors to universities.

We focus on integrating a set of interoperable network services based on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach according to appropriate standards to succeed a flexible and powerful content management.

A platform is proposed to support the interoperability between the proposed and delivery platforms according to the specification of the services. Towards an open system the necessary components are interfaces to content repositories, reuse of existing metadata descriptors and a flexible data model for learning resource descriptors. The main objective of this platform is to analyze, search and present information retrieved from the web. It also touches on some important developments, such as Open Educational Resource movement, open research archives and global e-libraries such as Europeana. Digital Libraries as information economies have a major influence on the design of future e-learning systems.