cloud computing efficiency metrics for enhanced e-learning … in cloud... · 2013-12-21 · cloud...

Kamal Dhull: - Cloud computing efficiency metrics for enhanced e-Learning implementation model based on View controller design pattern paradigm

www.ijifr.com [email protected], [email protected] IJIFR©2013

This paper is available online at - http://www.ijifr.com/searchjournal.aspx

Volume -1 Issue -4, December 2013. ID: IJIFR/V1/E4/034

79

ISSN (Online):2347-1697 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATIVE AND FUTURISTIC RESEARCH ( IJIFR)

Volume -1 Issue -4, December 2013 Research Area: Physical Education, Page No. : 79-87

Cloud computing efficiency metrics for enhanced e-Learning

implementation model based on View controller design pattern

paradigm

Kamal Dhull

Research Scholar

Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Pacific University, Udaipur

Abstract

The education sector is one of the cornerstones of socio-economic development. It is widely accepted

that education contributes to poverty reduction and increased economic growth, which in turn leads to

an improved standard of living. It also enables the individual to participate in wealth generating

activities, leads to the creation of employment, and the overall development of society. In our

proposed model a significant proportion of e-Learning services are delivered through Cloud

Computing. Those e-Learning units that have determined to adopt cloud computing need to take the

time and effort to design a cloud computing strategy along with a plan that will work best for their

own needs. In case of distance learning administrators and practitioners must be diligent about

protecting institutional data and must sharpen their contract writing skills with cloud service

providers. These use Web services as an interface integrator to support communication across

heterogeneous platforms over internet protocols. Similarly, a high level of task collaboration is needed

to form an e-Learning community. Therefore, we propose an e-Learning Model with Cloud (eLC)

based on the Model- View-Controller design patterns paradigm. The reusable task objects collaborate

in a Model that is wrapped inside the reconfigurable Controller which transforms the request/response

parameters of the end user View to that of the Model. The eLC offers software development platform

for e-Learning Task Management. The main deliverable of eLC is a Task as a Service which is

decoupled from View as well as user session maintenance. It is directly exposed to external the e-

Learning Cloud (eLC) for scalability.

Index Terms: Cloud Computing, e-Learning Cloud (eLC), Strategies, Framework, Scalability,

Application Programming Interfaces (API), Task Controller Cloud, Standardization

1 Introduction

E-Learning is an Internet-based learning process, using Internet technology to design, implement,

select, manage, support and extend learning, which will not replace traditional education methods, but

will greatly improve the efficiency of education. As e-Learning has a lot of advantages like flexibility,

diversity, measurement, opening and so on, it will become a primary way for learning in the new

century . A cloud based e-Learning model (eLC) we need a well-defined strategy that supports Cloud

Computing capabilities. Representing an important part of the organization IT strategy, migration

must be aligned to this. Cloud computing provides virtual e-universities with a fundamentally

different model of operation among E learning processes. This new model takes advantage of the

PA

PE

R I

D:

IJIF

R /

V1 /

E4 /

03

4


www.ijifr.com PAPER ID: IJIFR/V1/E4/034 IJIFR©2013

IJIFR- An Enlightening Online Open Access, Refereed & Indexed Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

80



maturity of web applications and networks and the rising interoperability of computing systems to

provide IT services. Cloud providers specialize in particular applications and services, and this

expertise allows them to efficiently manage upgrades and maintenance, backups, disaster recovery,

and failover functions. As a result, e-university consumers of cloud services may see increased

reliability, even as costs decline due to economies of scale and other production factors. With cloud

computing, e-universities can monitor current needs and make on-the-fly adjustments to increase or

decrease capacity, accommodating spikes in demand without paying for unused capacity during

slower times. Cloud computing scalability is another key benefit to higher education, particularly for

research projects that require vast amounts of storage or processing capacity for a limited time. Aside

from the potential to lower costs, e-universities gain the flexibility of being able to respond quickly to

requests for new services by purchasing them from the cloud. Cloud computing allows e-universities

and ELearning services providers to make IT costs transparent and thus match consumption of E-

learning services to actual demand.

Figure 1: Cloud model Adoption Strategy in e-Learning

Cloud computing encourages E-learning organizations and providers to increase standardization of

protocols and processes so that the many pieces of the cloud computing model can interoperate

Knowledge

Database

IT Needs

Pilot Projects

Cloud computing Solutions Management

Plan




81



properly and efficiently. This paper measures the positive impact of using cloud computing

architectures upon e-Learning solutions development. We design and used a set of cloud computing

efficiency metrics for enhanced e-Learning implementation model. Also, overall efficiency of the use

of cloud computing in e-Learning system is evaluated. Starting from the recent researches related to

the transition to Cloud Computing and the experience of some institutes and universities in using it,

we suggest a migrating strategy towards cloud, formed of the following stages

2 Objectives of Study

o Provides a flexible, scalable, cost effective model that does not force the institute or

university to use out-of-date infrastructure or software application.

o Offers the flexibility to meet rapidly changing software requirements for todays and

tomorrow’s teachers and students.

o Allows software standardization, a shared pool of applications for use in a e-learning

system for school, college or university, and easier maintenance through centralized

licensing and updates.

o Enabling rapid development and deployment of complex solutions without the need

for in-house expertise

o To eliminate the upfront financial burden of deploying new technologies through a

pay-as-you-go model. Design the collaborative e-learning model based to Conduct a

learning scenario as a proof of concept for the model

3 Cloud Framework

Cloud Framework presented by us is a Cloud implementation to support scalable and cost efficient

services for e-Learning systems from basic to higher education in a country like India. The main focus

of this framework is on improving resource utilization through smart load balancing and providing

scalable IT services for e-Learning organizations. Another design proposed by us is a Cloud

application provides the infrastructure for implementing an e-Learning system. It highlights the

benefits of Cloud computing as a way to efficiently provide computational and storage resources on

demand (SaaS). Our proposed e-Learning Computational Cloud framework is motivated from Apache

Struts, Sun Microsystem (Oracle) Java Server Faces and Spring Source Spring frameworks. These

frameworks have exposed Controller as an interface integrator between View and Model. Struts and

spring have certain limitations such as weak session maintenance. Furthermore, JSP and JavaBean

based implementation squanders multi-threading advantage, which is ideal for B2C interactions, but

not appropriate for B2B interaction. Also, transaction navigations and definitions rules are defined in

XML which is difficult to maintain if the system becomes complex. Alternatively, our eLC model is

built on J2EE technology and follows Service Oriented Architecture standards. This framework

provides comparative flexibility and makes it easier to build a development framework. Finally,

session maintenance and transaction control does not depend on connection protocol such as HTTP,




82



SOAP, cookies etc. Session and transaction maintenance is defined and configured in the database.

The usage of EJB ensures that coordination between the container objects in distributed network will

be reliable.

Cloud computing systems are implemented and structured over 5 (3+2) layers. They have 3 service

layers (Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service

(IaaS)) and 2complementary functional layers (Client Layer and Server/Fabric Layer). Client Layer is

placed on top of the stack-like structure, while Server/Fabric Layer is placed at the bottom of the same

structure, as the basic or fundamental physical layer (figure 2):

1)Client Layer may be any computer hardware device (e.g. regular PCs, notebooks, mobile phones,

PDAs or any other similar equipment’s) and/or computer software application (operating systems,

web browsers) that relies on cloud computing for application delivery and that is in essence useless

without it.

2) Software as a Service (SaaS). Cloud application layer deliver software as a service over the

Internet, eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computers and

simplifying maintenance and support. Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers special-purpose software

that is remotely accessible by consumers through the Internet with a usage-based pricing model.

Salesforce is an industry leader in providing online CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Services. Live Mesh from Microsoft allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across

multiple devices. Partial taxonomy: Google App, Microsoft Dynamics CRM online, Microsoft

Live@edu, Business Productivity Online Suite, Exchange Hosted Services, Microsoft Office Web

Apps, Campus EAI, EducationERP.net, Campus Management, Jaspersoft, Coupa's e-Procurement.

Figure2: Cloud computing structuring layers




83



3) Platform as a Service (PaaS). Cloud platform services deliver a computing platform and/or

solution stack as a service, often consuming cloud infrastructure and sustaining cloud applications. It

facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the

underlying hardware and software layers. The Platform Layer adds on a collection of specialized

tools, middleware and services on top of the unified resources to provide a development and/or

deployment platform. For instance, a Web hosting environment, a scheduling service, etc. Platform as

a Service (PaaS) offers a high-level integrated environment to build, test, and deploy custom

applications. Generally, developers will need to accept some restrictions on the type of software they

can write in exchange for built-in application scalability. An example is Google’s App Engine , which

enables users to build Web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications.

Partial taxonomy: Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure Services, Amazon Simple DB, Microsoft SDS,

Oracle Higher Education Constituent Hub, Amazon SQS, Dynamsoft, Force.com, Microsoft Dynamics

CRM online.

4) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Cloud infrastructure services deliver computer infrastructure –

typically a platform virtualization environment – as a service, along with raw (block) storage and

networking. Clients can access these resources as a fully outsourced service. The amount of resources

consumed (and therefore the cost) will typically reflect the level of utility computing activity.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provisions hardware, software, and equipment’s to deliver software

application environments with a resource usage-based pricing model. Infrastructure can scale up and

down dynamically based on application resource needs. Typical examples are Amazon EC2 (Elastic

Cloud Computing) Service and S3 (Simple Storage Service) where compute and storage

infrastructures are open to public access with a utility pricing model. Eucalyptus is an open source

Cloud implementation that provides a compatible interface to Amazon’s EC2, and allows people to

set up a Cloud infrastructure at premise and experiment prior to buying commercial services. Partial

taxonomy: EducationERP.net, Amazon S3-EBS- EC2, Eucalyptus, Microsoft, Oracle Coherence,

Rackspace, RightScale, 3Tera App Logic, EnStratus, Flexiscale, GoGrid, CloudStatus, CampusEAI.

4 Cloud Computing Architecture For E Learning

The architecture of a Cloud Computing platform as depicted in Figure 2 is usually common to most e-

Learning approaches on the Cloud. In the first layer we can observe the interface with the Cloud

environment, which consists in several management subsystems for determining the current

necessities of the user in terms of computational resources, being these the planner for the storage

services, the management for distribution of the execution load among the virtual machines, a system

administrator to monitor and to initiate activities of each layer, and a security component to ensure the

privacy, recovery, integrity and security of user data and transactions, among others. The second layer

represents the virtual machines implemented within the system. Finally, the third layer includes all the

physical architecture of the system. The model contains physical hardware layer, virtualization layer,

education middleware layer, application program interface layer; management system and security

certification system see Figure 2.




84



Figure 2: Architecture of Cloud Education model

Physical hardware layer is a basic platform in model, including servers, storage equipment’s, and

network equipment. Virtualization layer with the feature: dynamic configuration, distributed

deployment, fee measurement realizes the five characteristics of cloud computing. The goal of

virtualization layer is to break completely information islands based on existing regional through the

distributed technology and virtualization technology. This layer also consists of three parts: virtual

servers, virtual storages, and virtual databases. Education middleware layer is the core layer, because

it is the basic business platform. This layer is different from existing, and all information attached to it

on different computing node including ordinary file and database. Application program interface layer

can guarantee model’s scalability. Because of the diversity of the existing application system and an

application system cannot satisfy all the needs of customers. In this layer also provide the necessary

interface beside, and still need to be able to provide hosting service. Management system mainly

watchers physical condition, virtualization software, hardware and software, open API. Management

system can enhance the safety of the software platform. Security system includes identity

authentication and authorization, single point login, virtualization software and hardware access

control and audit, the education middleware and open API access control.

5 The Cloud in education sector

The education sector has traditionally been cautious to embrace new technology due to factors such as

cost and risk. But the 21st century presents new financial, demographic and industrial pressures to the

education sector that are making it imperative for schools and universities to align themselves to the

latest technology. In such a scenario, the Cloud could offer a highly acceptable solution to the

education sector, helping it adopt evolving technologies without the burden of excessive cost and




85



complexity. The Cloud has already started making its presence felt in the education sector, in India, as

well as globally. Schools have started leveraging the Cloud for student e-Mails, collaboration tools

and virtual desktops. The Cloud is also providing cost effective and low maintenance solutions to

online programs and distance education programs. Affirmative feedback from the early adopters of

the Cloud promises extensive use of this technology in the education sector. Wider acceptance of the

Cloud has the potential to make several alterations to ecosystem of education sector.The following

diagram presents a significant shift in ecosystem with the advent of the Cloud:

Figure 3: Working model for e learning Cloud in Education System

In the proposed architecture teachers also answer students’ questions and offer essential teaching to

major and difficult points. In addition, teachers can also use multimedia to enhance teaching content.

Students work out their own learning plans, determining learning methods autonomously. They

conduct on-line autonomous learning when they study each unit, finish its test via Internet and do

some statistics to the test results. Teachers also encourage students to cooperate with each other to

finish simple learning tasks or complex group-based projects. Through cooperative learning, students

cannot only acquire knowledge, their team spirit and coordination will also be fostered, skills in

dealing with people will be improved and abilities to express themselves will be enhanced. Thus the

learning and teaching will be more interactive which the demand of the age is. The interactive mode

of the proposed architecture is furnished in the Figure given above.




86



6 Conclusion

If analysing the e-learning cloud setup with the platforms presented in the introduction and related

works, the advantages are conclusive: individual study support, Internet-based collaborative learning

features, online access to lab infrastructure, collaborative research capabilities, project-based learning

and problem-based learning functionality delivered using a complex but low cost infrastructure. Due

to cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS and PaaS paradigms) implementation, the e-learning service providers

can easily setup new learning environments or extend their existing systems in order to support

blended learning capabilities. The most important advantage of the cloud computing is the cost

effectiveness. Instead of investing funds in the own e-learning infrastructure and educational software

packages, the educational institutions should pay more attention to the content, staff, marketing and

student enrolment, which can grant the service improvement. If opting for cloud-based services there

are no IT costs, neither IT specialists to employ. The educational institutions register in the eLearning

cloud and pay just what they consumed. The online access to collaborative learning tools and flexible

individual study are implementing using SaaS paradigm. The development and deployment of

laboratory applications use the PaaS concept. In order to implement laboratory

equipment/infrastructure sharing or virtual desktop functionality, the faculties and departments can

opt for IaaS services. Such systems allow students to enrol in educational programmes even if the job

is very restrictive because most of the learning activities can be remotely done. Several enhancements

in the educational act have been identified. The implementation of the interactive learning approach in

individual study grants a high retention factor (up to 80%) and the collaborative learning develops the

soft skills and teamwork capabilities. The hybrid class ware approach implements the synchronous

collaborative learning methodologies and allow the students to actively participate to the educational

act. Its main role is to keep the responsibility of learning on the teacher’s end but also make students

more responsible, communicate to each other and work and study as a team. Fundamental and applied

research support, task management features and remote access to lab equipment and applications are

also supported.

7 References

[1] Case Study,Intel Education, Cloud computing brief, Schools, IT, and Cloud computing The Agility for

21st century e-learning.

[2] Cloud computing for education: A new dawn?by Nabil Sultan∗ Faculty of Business and Computer

Science, Liverpool Hope University, Hope Park, Liverpool, L16 9JD, UK, International Journal of

Information Management.

[3] Demystifying cloud computing for higher education by Richard N.Katz, Phillip J. Goldstein, and

Ronald Yanosky Research Bulletin ECAR.

[4] The Promise of the Cloud for Education Understanding cloud computing and its true potential for

educators by Tim Youngblood and Ken McElrath.




87



[5] Chimombo, J.P.G. (2005): Issues in basic education in developing countries: an exploration of policy

options for improved delivery. CICE Hiroshima University, Journal of International Cooperation in

Education, Vol. 8 (1), pp. 129-152.

[6] Hawkins, R.: Ten Lessons for ICT and Education in the Developing World. In: Kirkman, G. et al.

(Eds): The Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World,

Oxford Universitz Press, Oxford 2002, 38-43.

[7] Hodgkinson-Williams, C.; Siebörger, I.; Terzoli, A. (2007): Enabling and constraining ICT practice in

secondary schools: case studies in South Africa. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning,

Vol.3 (2/3), pp. 171-190.

[8] Thomas Dietinger. “Aspects of e-Learning Environments”. Dissertation for the Award of the Academic

Degree Doctor of Technical Sciences at Graz University of Technology. Retrieved January 12, 2008,

from: http://www.iicm.tugraz. ac.at/thesis/tdieting_diss.doc

[9] Ministry of Education Government of People’s Republic Bangladesh, http://www.moedu.gov.bd/.

[10] Y. Wei, Y. Rong, “Research of an E-learning System Model Based on 7. Agent”,Computer

Engineering and Applications, Nov. 2004, pp.156- 158.

[11] A. Gladun, J. Rogushina, F. Garcı′a-Sanchez, R. Martı′nez-Be′jar, J. Toma′s Ferna′ndez-Breis, “An

application of intelligent techniques and 69. semantic web technologies in e-learning environments”,

Expert Systems with Applications 36, 2009, 922-1931.

http://www.moedu.gov.bd/

cloud computing efficiency metrics for enhanced e-learning … in cloud... · 2013-12-21 · cloud...

Documents