A Framework of Service Architecture of a University Consortium Information System Wasefer Zaman, Pramatha Nath Basu

International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 12, December-2013 1381 ISSN 2229-5518 A Framework of Service Architecture of a University Consortium Information System Wasefer Zaman, Pramatha Nath Basu

Abstract – In this paper, a design of service architecture of an information system for a University Consortium is discussed. It foresees a situation where a consortium is to be formed by a number of universities from diverse geographical locations. The consortium will thrive for the conservation of resources by avoiding unnecessary duplication and by allowing healthy competition among member institutions. The information system is a conglomeration of service architecture and functional model.

During design of the functional model e-learning standards have been taken into consideration. Service architecture of university consortium information system has been designed using web services. Functional model consists of SCORM compliant LMS for tracking students’ activity and LCMS for managing the process of assembling and delivery of learning content and credit calculation and credit transfer. In the service architecture, web services have been incorporated for the communication between consortium and member universities to maintain the interoperability of the systems. In the proposed framework of University Consortium Information System both quality of education and quality of the system functioning are taken into consideration.

Index Terms – Web services, e-learning, SOA, LMS, LCMS, SCO, SCORM.

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1 INTRODUCTION ith the growing needs of the adult learners and demands for onl y those courses and modules offered through the consortium. The W the customi zed and anytime-anywhere learning, there is a proposed functi onal model of the University Consortium Information need to develop a formalized academic cooperation between System is developed keeping in mind the current existing standards providers. This will help cross validation and cooperati ve of the e-l earning [7] and a proposed service architecture of the improvement of the quality of education. The need of the hour is the University Consortium Informati on System. The service architecture formation of consortium of a number of institutions offering courses has been designed to maintain the interoperability of the systems, in Digital Distance Education format [1]. using web services. To implement the quality of education and University Consortium would offer courses by providi ng quality of the University Consortium Information System [6], the common portal. According to this approach all consortium members framework has incorporated certain criteria. contribute to the management and administration. All member universities act as local learning centers and attend to students’ face Learning through University Consortium is suggested as the next to f ace w henever r equi red. IJSERgeneration e-learning system [2]. It is an online learning environment The suggested consortium will work with due considerations of where the students are getting customize learning content based on institutions of dissimilar academic structure, dissimilar culture and pedagogical input and learners’ background / prior knowledge on practiced technicalities. that particular subject. The student group is heterogeneous. To be The institutions under the umbrella of a consortium, must able to individualize and differentiate e-learning to a heterogeneous determi ne the academi c f ramew ork to r esol ve the i ssues l i k e w hi ch student group, it is necessary to find and describe the heterogeneity institution will be the administering institution, what happens if two factors of the student group based on the learner’s prior knowledge institutes offer courses by the same name, which institute gives the [3]. A holistic approach has been taken into consideration when degree/dipl oma if there are cross modules opted by the student describing the heterogeneous student group, avoiding that smaller across the institutions. This would also answer the basis of eligi bility parts not are viewed as more important than necessary. I n the qualification criteria, the process of counseling, admission, academic learning environment, students who come from di fferent ethnic inputs, distribution and evaluation of assignments, conduction of groups require different support. examinations, evaluations, credit transfer, publication of result, There is a shift in which l earning technology applications such as aw ard of certi f i cates etc. [2]. learning management system (LMS) or l earning content To keep the autonomous nature of institutions academic management system (L CM S) move away from being a monolithic coordination norm should be developed and would be applicable to application towards more flexibl e components that expose services accessible to other applications via a loosely coupled standards- based interface. The adopti on of servi ce ori ented approaches should ———————————————— enable these applications to integrate with an enterprise wi de e-

• Wasefer Zaman is currently a research scholar in the School of Education Learning solution. Technology, JupiterBuilding, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700 032, West Bengal, India. Email: [email protected] Our aim is to investigate and design A Framework of Servi ce • Pramatha Nath Basu is currently a professor in the School of Education Architecture of a University Consortium Information System using Technology, JupiterBuilding, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700 032, West Bengal, India. Email: [email protected] Web Servi ces. A University Consortium e-learning system should fulfill certain

IJSER © 2013 http://www.ijser.org International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 12, December-2013 1382 ISSN 2229-5518 needs and requirements in a field of increasing demand for effective, whi ch faci l i tates effecti ve e-l earning content/servi ce discovery for fast and pedagogicall y correct learning experiences. U niversity the consumption or composition [12]. C onsortium creates, operates and administers on-line learning activiti es. T hey also create and deliver questions and tests for learner assessments. They support collaboration between users. All e- 3. WEB SERVICES learning systems administer virtual, distributed learning experi ences A Web Service is a software system designed to support where learners are geographicall y scattered and communicate vi a the interoperable machine-to-machine interacti on over a network. Web I nternet. A n e-l earning system is considered to be adaptive if it is Ser vi ces expose onl y their interfaces to the public. Such an interface capable of: monitoring the activities of its users. Adaptive e-learning can be completely described using a Web Servi ce Descri ption system can be described as personalized system, which beside Language (WSDL) document that characterizes the Web Servi ce contents discovery and assembly, is able to provide adaptive course interface in terms of operations that the Web Service provides, delivery, adaptive interaction, and adaptive collaboration support. messages that are exchanged to do so and data types that are used to construct those messages. An important characteristic of Web Services is that implementation details of the systems are hidden 2. LITERATURE SURVEY behind the interface. The consumer is aware that certain functi onality Personalized E -l earning S ystem (PE S ) is suggested as the next i s provided, but the internals on how this is done are abstracted generation e-learning system. I t is an online learning environment behind the Web Servi ce interface. Consequentl y, this invol ves that where the students are able to customize thei r learning environment the actual functionality could be impl emented in an arbitrary based on pedagogical and personal choices. T he student group is programming language and running on arbitrary platform. SOAP is heterogeneous. To be able to individualize and differentiate e- an application-level protocol based on XML used for data exchange learning to a heterogeneous student group, it is necessary to find and and remote procedure call in distributed applications, usually for describe the heterogeneity factors of the student group. A holistic accessi ng Web Servi ces. D ue to i ts X M L - based design, SOAP is approach is necessary when describing the heterogeneous student platform and programming language independent. SOAP messages group, avoiding that smaller parts not are viewed as more important are transmitted embedded into or on top of other application-l ev el than necessary. I n the learning environment, students who come protocols such as HTTP, SMTP or JMS. from di fferent ethnic groups require di fferent support [8]. The Web Servi ce Descripti on Language (WSDL) provides the E lectronic L earning technology offers the opportunity to integrate possibility to completely describe a Web Service interface through and optimize the global teaching learning and distribution of learning the use of an XML document that conf orms to an X M L Schema as resources. T he computers of the vari ous I nstitutions, located defined by the WSDL speci fi cation of the W3C. WSDL provides throughout the world, will communicate with each other to machine-processable information on how to interact with a given determine the availability of components, to place and confirm the Web Servi ce to a Web Servi ce consumer appl i cati on. Si nce the Web related knowledge centers, and to negotiate delivery timescales. Ser vi ce i s f ul l y descri bed by the W SDL document, it is possible to T here is a need for effective and effi cient communication among generate cl i ent code f or i nteracti on w i th a gi v en Web Servi ce by components in a multidisciplinary, cross-organizational architecture. using the definiti ons given in the WSDL document. The Uni versal T he most recent, and quite networkIJSER-based servi ces, referred to as Description Discovery & Integrati on (UDDI) specifi cation defi nes a Web S ervi ce [9]. Web Servi ce r egi str y that al lows possible Web Service consumers to A n interface acts as a crossing point for the back end web dynami cal l y di scov er Web Ser vi ces that provi de a certai n servi ce. servi ces and the learning software component model. U sing the W hi l e W SD L descri bes the Web Ser vi ce i nter f ace, U D D I al l ows the interface, the student can interact with the tutors regarding the course di scov er y of the Web Ser vi ce i nter f ace by cl i ents. The U D D I regi stry which they want to join. Based on students’ requirements, the i s actual l y a Web Ser vi ce i tsel f and mak es use of W SD L to descri be interface will provide an e-l earning system with interactive its interface. The main purpose of the UDDI registry is to allow materials. Thus online tutoring framework for e-l earning system client applications to dynamicall y discover Web Servi ces that using web service t echnol ogy i s experi ment ed to esti mate the provide a required service. The use of UDDI allows the client performance improvement compared to the works in terms of applications to discover a repl acement f or f ai l ed Web Ser vi ces. Web scalability, communication effi ciency, speed of message transfer Servi ce Noti fi cati ons (WSN) i s to al l ow Web Servi ces to noti fy other [11]. interested entities of events that have occurred inside the Web E-learning content can technicall y be combined with the recent Service. In the basic form of the publish subscribe interaction standardi zati on eff orts that aim at content exchangeability and pattern, a Web Service publishes a topic of events to which other effi cient reuse. A repository for l earning object publication and i nterested enti ti es may subscri be. search is proposed that essentially adapts the UDDI framework used Occurrence of an event inside the publishing Web Servi ce then i n commerci al Web Servi ces to the e-l earning context. To adopt Web triggers the Notifi cation of subscribed entities. Additional to this Ser vi ces technol ogy towards the reusability and aggregation of e- basi c f orm, Web Ser vi ce N oti f i cati ons may al so i nvol ve an learning services, the conceptual Web Servi ces architecture and its i ntermedi ar y Web Servi ce, cal l ed a N oti f i cati on brok er that may building blocks need to be augmented. The objecti ve of this research introduce additional features and enhanced scalability to the Web is to design broker based registry architecture for e- Web ser vi ces Service Notification architecture.

IJSER © 2013 http://www.ijser.org International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 12, December-2013 1383 ISSN 2229-5518 4. SERVICE ARCHITECTURE OF UNIVERSITY distributed. Standard compliant learning information presented by CONSORTIUM INFORMATION SYSTEM X M L that is wrapped with the SOA P specification is exchanged between the requester and provider. T he provider publishes a W S D L file that contains a description of the message and endpoint

University Consortium Information Member Universities Web services system

LMS Learner service requester/ provider Interact Find / publish LMS Content service Learner LMS requester Find / publish service discovery Learning User service agencies service requester/ provider provider

Find Publish Content service Find / publish requester/ provider Interact Content service Interact discovery IJSERagencies LMS LCMS Learner service Find requester

Interact Content service requester/ provider

Figure 2. Service architecture of University Consortium Information System

information to allow the requester to generate the S OA P message The above (Figure 2) architecture defines how University and send it to the correct destination. C onsortium information system and information system of the Effective infrastructure is required to support web servi ces in participating universities exchange messages through the interaction terms of three rol es – servi ce provider, servi ce requester and servi ce of Web S ervi ce agents. registry and describing the interaction between them: publish, find, In Web services Discovery Agency is a searchable set of servi ce and interact. ‘ I nteract’ is the step that allows an application to descriptions where service providers publish their servi ce connect to a web service at a particular web location and start descriptions. T he servi ce discovery agency can be centralized or interaction with it.

IJSER © 2013 http://www.ijser.org International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 12, December-2013 1384 ISSN 2229-5518 A servi ce descri pti on i s the metadata descri bi ng the ser vi ce. Thi s and response sent. I nformation regarding digital learning resources metadata must include suffi cient information for a service requester can be retrieved by sending a SOA P query to the U D D I R egistry to access the service it describes including its interface and location. which is like a remote database. To get the desired learning resource, A service provider publishes a service descripti on to a servi ce a request is made based on the query retrieved from the U D D I registry. A service requester then finds the service description of the R egistry to the W SDL repository. T his could be sent over a transport servi ce registry. protocol lik e H T T P. T hen finally, the W SDL document containing C ontents are improved in terms of quality and become ready to the descripti on of the desired l earning content is retri eved and use or reach on approved state [5]. For these it is assumed that forwarded to the L M S by sending an SOA P request over H T T P. T he whenever the system wants to devel op and deliver a new learning learner or the discoverer is able to discover the digital resources resource (module), it aggregates all the required S C Os (S hareable simply by sending a SOA P query over HT TP. C ontent Object) using SC OR M SC OR M (S hareable C ontent Object S ervice Provider is a service container, which is used to exchange R eference M odel) A ggregation M odel. T he system fi rst searches its messages. S ervi ce R equester is the application that is looking for and own repository [4] and then it searches the U DDI registry using invoking or initiating an interaction with a service. Discovery standard metadata to collect the SC Os. T he system also checks the A gency is a searchable set of servi ce descriptions where servi ce UDDI registry for the approved SCOs for this module. providers publish their servi ce descripti ons. T he servi ce discovery Clear and explicit teaching strategy (sequence of the learni ng agency can be implemented by the web servi ce. Web S ervi ces are objects) of the learners need to be designed according to the learner perfectl y feasible for implementing the interoperability of types, needs and context using pedagogical design principles. T he information systems for the foll owing reasons: framework suggests storage of these strategies in the pedagogical repository. D uring delivery of the content to the l earners, teaching  L OM, IMS Content Packaging, all have standard X ML strategy of that type of learners would be taken into consideration by binding. taking input from pedagogical repository. T he framework supports  Web servi ces architecture is platform and language would remain so that necessary paths for the experts to update independent. pedagogical inputs regularly are provided in the proposed  Web servi ces can be used in Private I ntranet as well as framework. Public I nternet servi ces. A ccording to the l earners’ performance appropriate feedbacks and suggestions are given. A fter creating a new session, taking inputs of these two modules, the appropriate content is served to the 5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK learners. I n other words, dynamic sequencing of the S C Os is done M any universities all around the world are offering online courses. based on the individual performance at run time. Formation of University Consortium is to facilitate wider choice, greater flexibility to students globally and also for greater content reusability. T he proposed U niversity C onsortium I nformation S ystem has two parts – functional model and service architecture. I n functional model, e-learning standards have been incorporated and in service IJSER architecture, web services concept has been taken into consideration. T here are many challenges for implementing such U niversity C onsortium I nformation S ystem because web services, e-learning standards and both quality of education and quality of the system functioning are all emerging and promising technologies and are undergoing rapid changes and developments.

REFERENCES

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