Web services for Learning Management Systems: Communication architecture

Abstract

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are more important in e-learning and future education. LMSs provide a set of functionalities and educational services to manage learners and learning contents. With the Internet growth, various learning contents and different learning systems are distributed independently. Thus, managing the distributed information and implementing interoperability between learning systems becomes more challenging. A Web service is the most innovative and well-established implementation platform for communications between applications. This paper proposes the communication architecture design for LMSs. It includes Web service interactions, essential service design, and application development. Web services and applications are designed using the standard LMS data structure. This data structure is rearranged into the new form that depends on requirements of remote applications. The design of communication architecture of Web services makes the standard LMSs able to link LMSs and other applications together. The proposed communication architecture also makes the standard LMSs enable the interoperability feature.