E-learning and educational data mining in cloud computing: an overview

E-learning is related to virtualised distance learning by means of electronic communication mechanisms, using its functionality as a support in the process of teaching-learning. When the learning process becomes computerised, educational data mining employs the information generated from the electronic sources to enrich the learning model for academic purposes. To provide support to e-learning systems, cloud computing is set as a natural platform, as it can be dynamically adapted by presenting a scalable system for the changing necessities of the computer resources over time. It also eases the implementation of data mining techniques to work in a distributed scenario, regarding the large databases generated from e-learning. We give an overview of the current state of the structure of cloud computing, and we provide details of the most common infrastructures that have been developed for such a system. We also present some examples of e-learning approaches for cloud computing, and finally, we discuss the suitability of this environment for educational data mining, suggesting the migration of this approach to this computational scenario.