Development of E-Learning Design Criteria with Secure Realization Concepts

Information security is a major quality factor for informatics systems and essential for enduring web-based offerings like e-learning. The term e-learning is used in practice in many different ways such that in parts even simple web pages with downloadable files like lecture notes are considered as e-learning. To get a definition of well acceptable and facilitating e-learning systems really focusing on the learning process, the underlying research project, first, investigates requirements from affiliated disciplines like educational science. This resulted in demands for equal opportunities (A1), social support by cooperation and communication facilities (A2), activities of students as important steps of the learning process (A3), priority to meet learning objectives (A4), flexible learning with sufficient adaptability to different target groups (A5), and integration of e-learning in an existing learning environment (A6). Since every criterion applied in implementing such a system increases the system's complexity, this undoubtedly leads to further demands for information security investigation to meet newly emerging security issues. Hence, to manage this complexity resp. high complex software creation in general aspects of the research field of software engineering are included in the examination of design criteria for e-learning. Demands stated by software engineering are mostly focusing on good software quality which can be classified in a structured set of criteria and sub-criteria as follows: functionality (B1), reliability (B2), usability (B3), efficiency (B4), maintainability (B5), and portability (B6). Especially usability and functionality demands are important for not restraining learners in their learning process and provide them with an easy to use interface, such that interactions with the learning system are possible without distracting them by technical issues. Maintainability and portability give options to adapt the system appropriately to different target groups and allow reactions to changing infrastructures.