Abstract:

In the past two decades the area of e-learning was dominated by monolithic application silos. Modern Learning Management Systems (LMS) are facing the challenges for greater interoperability, flexibility, reusability, accessibility and manageability, as well as for sharing learning resources and components. Extensive research has been done in the field of sharing learning content and resources, but there is lack of theoretical and practical examples of systems sharing components and their functionality.
Assessment is an important integral part of every learning process. There are several systems for automatic assessment on the market, mainly as part of distance learning systems. However, there are independent software packages for computer based assessment, web based assessment or electronic assessment. Many of these systems are very comprehensive but most of them are stand alone applications without possibilities for interoperability, adaptability according to learner characteristics and possibilities for content reuse.
The interoperability of content was main focus of research in the past several years. Extensive research has been done, resulting with several published standards SCORM, IMS Content Packaging and IMS Learning Design. Separating content from tools and moving towards modular architectures opens up the possibility for exchange of tools, functionalities, semantics and control in a seamless and dynamic fashion.
Analyzing the current trends in the e-Learning and e-Assessment domain, where lots of emphasis is given to the level of interoperability between systems, exchange of content, functionalities and data not depending on the platform they work on, by using widely adopted standards, increasing system flexibility and pedagogical diversities supported, the new modern e-Assessment systems should be build with Service Oriented Architecture, based on encapsulating existing business functions as loosely coupled, reusable, platform-independent services which collectively realize required business objective.
In this paper we present high level abstraction architecture of an interoperable e-Assessment system. The system is designed using Service Oriented Architecture where existing business functions are encapsulated as loosely coupled, reusable, platform independent services. The system can be used as standalone application for e-Assessment both as compact application as well as application which can use its own services and services from other e-Assessment systems. Also, the system at whole can be used as a service and can be plugged to any existing Learning Management System, as well as other systems using existing standards for exchange of content, user data and metadata about the services which needs to be used.

Keywords:

E-assessment, e-learning, service oriented architecture, SOAP, WSDL, Web Services.