Online course management system framework

Abstract

"I never try to teach my students anything. I only try to create an environment in which they can learn. " [Albert Einstein] Albert Einstein is quoted above in saying that he tries to create a better environment for students to learn in. This project can be very beautifully summarised as a framework used by developing companies to create an academic environment that is available to all persons with access to a common network. The norm in academic learning is that a student with a desire to acquire knowledge seeks some source with greater knowledge for learning. Even though there have been great changes in the academic environments this is still the case. In ancient Greek times teaching was done in public forums where philosophers would preach to the public. By time books started being written to assist the philosophers. Eventually the classroom environment was evolved where students with a common interest in learning would meet in a room and learn from a tutor. This type of environment lasted till present day and will last for time to come. In the early 80s use of multimedia material was started to be introduced to aid the tutor. With the introduction and widespread use of personal computer e-Learning was born. Computer solutions were being developed where students were guided through a syllabus with the aid of multimedia material. The introduction of the World Wide World in the 90s gave academic learning a totally new face. The World Wide Web is used by the academic world for its communication features where faculty members post course material for students and communicate with members of the faculty and students through collaboration tools. Developing companies have seen this change and started developing hybrid systems that offer academic support with the use of the Internet. This is where the problem rises. Developing companies started developing Online Course Management systems, but they had to develop the system from scratch. There is no framework for such big systems. This project is about building a framework for developing an online course management system. This framework offers the latest services and structure that such a system should have and thus gives the developing company the possibility to invest more time developing a presentable and robust solution rather than investing time in creating a structure for the system. The framework is structured in that it offers a series of services, if a developing company desires to make use of them it just plugs in the service into its system and the framework will take care of all the hard work.