Model Driven E-Learning Platform Integration

The success of the e-learning paradigm observed in recent times created a growing demand for e-learning systems in universities and other educational institutions, that itself led to the development of a number of either commercial or open source learning management systems (LMS). While the usage of these systems gains recognition and acceptance amongst institutions, there are new problems arising that need to be solved. Because of multiplicity of platforms and approaches used for various systems implementation, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage or compare them. Their variety and growing number is also a true barrier for re-use of existing learning materials that is a clear economical concern for the future of these technologies. Applications and their data become isolated. As the result of platform diversity, future vision of interconnecting LMS of different educational institutions is demanding, too. The present study ambitions to overcome the aforementioned difficulties by using the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach of the Object Management Group (OMG). The goal is to provide a generalized architectural framework enabling an integrated specification of platform architectures. This platform-independent framework can then be used to specify and classify existing or future Learning management systems and to simplify migration of data between different kinds of e-learning systems.