Abstract:

The Easy-Learning platform, developed as original e-learning research project became in time a complex system of virtual education. Ver. 2.0 achieved a high maturity level using modern IT tools & technologies: Apache, PHP, MySQL, HTML5 and MVC, the options and facilities being vastly diversified.

Adding a discussion forum:
Depending on the users’ access level and the forum features, posting messages needs to be approved by a moderator. The forum is hierarchical, having a tree structure. Within a forum topic, each new discussion is called thread and can get answers from all users. The tables in the forum database are: categories, users, discussion topics and answers. The benefits of the forum are the improvement of tutor-student communication, creating a better environment to exchange information: announcements, Q&A, etc.

Implementing a platform calendar and a personal calendar for users:
The calendar consists of two components: the upper part contains links to the previous and following months and the lower part is the calendar itself. It shows the name of the selected month and below it the days of the month, with all events created by users. The benefits of this feature are for both tutors and users, all of them being allowed to create dynamic personal agenda.

Implementing a video conference system:
Web conferencing is possible by using TCP/IP connections, offering real-time point-to-point and multicast communication to multiple receivers, providing text, voice and video streaming to be shared across locations. Applications include sessions, training events or Internet presentations. The implementation is based on the BigBlueButton, an open source web conferencing system based on GNU/Linux OS. The benefits are related to the enhancement of the interactive features of the virtual classes: webinars, webcasts, web-meetings, etc.

Password recovery:
Recovering the password can be a very useful option, as the administrator has to reset it manually for each registered user account. Connecting to MySQL is done through the installed and enabled PHP PDO module. The script can be set as soon as users enter valid email addresses. The benefit of this feature is the enhancement of the security and accessibility level of the platform.

Subscribing to the newsletter:
To implement this function a new form has been added to the platform where the user's email address is saved in the database. To transfer form data, the POST method is used instead of the GET method. The methods use the same syntax, but the POST method no longer changes the URL so that the variable names and the sent values can no longer be seen clearly. The benefits are the improvement of the asynchronous communication of the shared information.

Viewing Optional Subjects:
Primarily, students have access only to the courses of the subjects they are enrolled to, but if they want to study other subjects they can follow their choices provided that the tutor in charge allows it. In the user menu, there is an option displayed with the administrator's agreement for all available subjects. The benefit is expanding the flexibility of the virtual study process, allowing students to access multiple sets of subjects depending on their personal interests.

Conclusions:
Important changes in the code management improved users experience by a responsive GUI and extended capabilities concerning new added functions and options. The new modules take full advantage of the features of the platform’s web components.

Keywords:

e-learning platform, Emerging technologies, Knowledge management, Communication tools, Virtual class, Data security, Adaptive systems.