CLOUD COMPUTING AND EDUCATION

By Zaid da’ood

NEAR EAST UNIVERSITY

January 20, 2013

4. CLOUD COMPUTING AND EDUCATION

4.1. Introduction

4.2. Knowledge on E-Learning

4.2.1. Definition

4.2.2. History

4.3. How to Develop an E-Learning System?

4.4. Virtual and Personal Learning Environments

4.4.1. Virtual Environments

4.5. Using Cloud Computing for E-learning Systems

4.5.1. Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 Tools

4.6 An E-learning System Architecture Based on Cloud Computing

4.6.1. System initiation process group

4.6.2. System planning process group

4.6.3. System execution process group

4.6.4. System monitoring and controlling process group

4.6.5. System closing process group

4.7. Cloud Computing Benefits for E-learning Solutions

4.8. Conclusion

4.9. References:

4. CLOUD COMPUTING AND EDUCATION

4.1. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is discuss the cloud techniques that could use in e-learning

systems, let's take this realist example as an introduction taking some problems and discus it ,

Over the years software and (internal transaction network)ITN education industry have

evolved, these days students faculty and staff have new expectations in addition to computers

they expect IT services to work on a wide array of devices like phones and web browsers, to

serve this demand IT departments are all augmenting their on premises software, with

software delivered over the internet what many call cloud computing if this combination of on

premises software and cloud solutions they give the education industry choice and how they

react to the needs of the education community to help explain this further let's meet to

education leaders this is David he runs a large school district that depends on software David

purchases software has installed on the school districts computers his success depends on

software that uniquely developed for his district and the hardware that runs it David is

concerned about making sure school districts data are secure and accessible now this team is

distributed he needs to collaborate and share data more frequently with other groups within

the school district and now he's thinking about creatively engaging parents and the

community on the internet David likes the familiarity of on premises software but he's

worried about the flexibility to meet his school districts evolving needs in the future with

shrinking resources across the country is our second education leader Nancy her university

has a lot in common with David school district but she is already thinking differently about

her software instead of installing it on the university's local computers she use software

delivered over the internet Nancy depends on the internet to what usually connect the

university and its students faculty and staff anywhere she also values that cloud computing

helps eliminate many of her IT worries whether its employees working remotely or making

sure her computers have the latest updates but she worries with all the data in the cloud who's

protecting it where is it being stored who's managing what if there's a problem or a service

outage plus because internet services are sometimes designed to work similarly for every user

she can tailor them to meet her universities specific requirements when David and then see

meat it finally becomes clear what David sees limitations with on premises software our

strengths for the internet services Nancy is using and vice versa they agree the best solution

can be a combination of both on premises software in addition to cloud services David and

Nancy illustrate a powerful and growing trend today's educator shouldn't be limited school

districts and higher education institutions need flexibility and choice from a technology

partner this prepared to grow and adapt to their ever evolving needs Microsoft and its partners

have worked closely with the education community from more than twenty-five years fifteen

of which delivering clown based services we're dedicated to meeting the needs of the

education community in the cloud and from the cloud or on premises with a commitment to

security standards and enterprise reliability and flexibility that software plus services.

We will see in this chapter everything about cloud computing related with e-learning trying to

collect all information that any organization need to manage an e-learning system with the

cloud computing let’s see.

4.2. Knowledge on E-Learning

Many universities and learning centers are using e-learning because it can be as very

effective at a lower cost. Developing these systems is more expensive than preparing

classroom materials and training the trainers, especially if using multimedia or highly

interactive methods. However, delivery costs for e-learning including costs of web servers

and internet techniques are much lower than those for classroom materials, instructor time,

participants’ travel and job time lost to attend classroom sessions.

For the term Online learning as used in machine learning, see online machine learning.

E-learning includes all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching,

including educational technology. The information and communication systems,

whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning

process. This often involves both out-of-classroom and in-classroom educational experiences

via technology, even as advances continue in regard to devices and curriculum. Abbreviations

like CBT (Computer-Based Training), IBT (Internet-Based Training) or WBT (Web-Based

Training) have been used as synonyms to e-learning. E-learning is the computer and network-

enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. E-learning applications and processes include Web-

based learning, computer-based learning, virtual education opportunities and digital

collaboration. Content is delivered via the Internet, intranet/extranet, audio or video tape,

satellite TV, and CD-ROM. It can be self-paced or instructor-led and includes media in the

form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio. It is commonly thought that new

technologies can make a big difference in education. In particular, children can interact with

new media, and develop their skills, knowledge, and perception of the world, under their

parents' monitoring, of course. Many proponents of e-learning believe that everyone must be

equipped with basic knowledge in technology, as well as use it as a medium to reach a

particular goal. [1]

Figure 1 shows some knowledge on e-learning.

figur1[http://www.zythepsary.com/thesis/2-2-methodologies-2/]

4.2.1. Definition

There are many definition on e-learning I read it before and we will read in future but I

will present to you my opinion simple definition, that the e-learning systems can be used to

develop any type of knowledge and skills by offering effective instructional methods based

on learners’ needs.

ELearning is a term that means something different to almost everyone who uses it.

Some use the term to refer to packaged content pieces and others to technical infrastructures.

Some think only of web-based self-study while others realize eLearning can encompass real-

time learning and collaboration. Almost all agree that eLearning is of strategic importance.

Almost all also agree that eLearning is an effective method that should be blended into a

corporation’s current learning mix. [2]

ELearning refers to the use of internet or wireless technologies to deliver a broad array

of training solutions. E-Learners access the learning from computers via the internet or an

intranet, or through a hand held device like a palm pilot. In 2001 Marc Rosenberg suggested

the following definition of eLearning: “the use of Internet technologies to deliver a broad

array of solutions that enhance knowledge and performance.” (p. 28). In less than two short

years this definition has expanded to include wireless as well as internet technologies with the

two technologies often working together to delivery focused learning to the job-site.

The origins of the term e-Learning is not certain, although it is suggested that the term

most likely originated during the 1980's, within the similar time frame of another delivery

mode online learning. While some authors explicitly define e-Learning, others imply a

specific definition or view of e-Learning in their article. These definitions materialize, some

through conflicting views of other definitions, and some just by simply comparing defining

characteristics with other existing terms. In particular, Ellis (2004) disagrees with authors like

Nichols (2003) who define e-Learning as strictly being accessible using technological tools

that are web-based, web-distributed, or web-capable. The belief that e-Learning not only

covers content and instructional methods delivered via CD-ROM, the Internet or an Intranet

(Benson et al., 2002; Clark, 2002) but also includes audio- and videotape, satellite broadcast

and interactive TV is the one held by Ellis. Although technological characteristics are

included in the definition of the term, Tavangarian, Leypold, Nölting, Röser, and Voigt (2004)

as well as Triacca, Bolchini, Botturi, and Inversini (2004) felt that the technology being used

was insufficient as a descriptor. Tavangarian et al. (2004) included the constructivist

theoretical model as a framework for their definition by stating that eLearning is not only

procedural but also shows some transformation of an individual's experience into the

individual's knowlege through the knowledge construction process. Both Ellis (2004) and

Triacca et al. (2004) believed that some level of interactivity needs to be included to make the

definion truly applicable in describing the learning experience, even though Triacca et al.

(2004) added that eLearning was a type of online learning.[3]

4.2.2. History

In the early 1960s, Stanford University psychology professors Patrick

Suppes and Richard C. Atkinson experimented with using computers to teach math and

reading to young children in elementary schools in East Palo Alto, California.

Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth is descended from those early experiments. In

1963, Bernard Luskin installed the first computer in a community college for instruction,

working with Stanford and others, developed computer assisted instruction. Luskin completed

his landmark UCLA dissertation working with the Rand Corporation in analyzing obstatcles

to computer assisted instruction in 1970. Early e-learning systems, based on Computer-Based

Learning/Training often attempted to replicate autocratic teaching styles whereby the role of

the e-learning system was assumed to be for transferring knowledge, as opposed to systems

developed later based on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), which

encouraged the shared development of knowledge. As early as 1993, William D. Graziadei

described an online computer-delivered lecture, tutorial and assessment project using

electronic mail. By 1994, the first online high schoolhad been founded. In 1997 Graziadei,

W.D., et al., published an article entitled "Building Asynchronous and Synchronous

Teaching-Learning Environments: Exploring a Course/Classroom Management System

Solution". They described a process at the State University of New York (SUNY) of

evaluating products and developing an overall strategy for technology-based course

development and management in teaching-learning. The product(s) had to be easy to use and

maintain, portable, replicable, scalable, and immediately affordable, and they had to have a

high probability of success with long-term cost-effectiveness. Today many technologies can

be, and are, used in e-learning, from blogs to collaborative software,ePortfolios, and virtual

classrooms. Most eLearning situations use combinations of these techniques. [4]

4.3. How to Develop an E-Learning System?

To develop an e-learning system should detect a group of developers from deferent

specialist, Any e-learning system need an analyzing as a first step to start using it and make it

more useful to the users (trainer, lecturer, students, etc….), and of course designing the

system model to simplify the dealing with this model and make it more flexible to use and

deliver the information or can easily reaching the data as a second step , the next step

development start after collecting all data and experience to put it realistic and apply it in our

system ,implementation is our aim to create developing system, the last step is evaluate

system work and controlling the advantage and disadvantage, register all the positive and

negative result. Adapting existing models to match specific needs is wiser than proceeding

without any plan. However, flexibility is needed to select and adapt a model to a given

situation. E-learning projects different in complexity and size. The process described below is

comprehensive – it covers all the options that can be included in a complex learning project.

However, some of the steps can be skipped or simplified according to project’s objectives and

requirements, such as budget, expertise or organizational constraints.

1- analyzing

A needs analysis should be conducted at the start of any development effort to

determine whether. Training is required to fill a gap in professional knowledge and skills, and

e-learning is the best solution to deliver the training. The needs analysis allows the

identification of general, high-level course goals. Analysis also is needed to determine the

course content, Task analysis identifies the job tasks that learners should learn or improve and

the knowledge and skills that need to be developed or reinforced. This type of analysis is

mainly used in courses designed to build specific job-related skills (also called “perform

courses”). Topic analysis is carried out to identify and classify the course content. This is

typical of those courses that are primarily designed to provide information (also called

“inform courses”).

2- Designing

The design stage includes the following activities:

Putting a set of learning objectives need to achieve the general, high-level course

objective, identifying the order in which the objectives should be achieved (sequencing), and

selecting instructional, media, evaluation and delivery strategies. The results of the designing

stage are

A blueprint that will be used as a reference to develop the course . The blueprint

illustrates the curriculum structure (e.g. its organization in courses, units, lessons, activities);

the learning objectives associated with each unit; and the delivery methods and formats (e.g.

interactive self‑paced materials, synchronous and/or asynchronous collaborative activities) to

deliver each unit.

3-Development

This step, the e-learning content is actually produced. The content can vary greatly,

depending on the available resources. For example, e-learning content may consist of only

simpler materials (i.e. those with little or no interactivity or multimedia, such as structured

PDF documents) which can be combined with other materials (e.g. audio or video files),

assignments and tests. In that situation, storyboard development and the development of

media and electronic interactions would not be conducted. The development of multimedia

interactive content is comprised of three main steps:

Content development: writing or collecting all the required knowledge and information.

Storyboard development: integrating instructional methods (all the pedagogical

elements needed to support the learning process) and media elements. This is done by

developing the storyboard, a document that describes all the components of the final

interactive products, including images, text, interactions, assessment tests.

Courseware development: developing media and interactive components, producing the

course in different formats for CD-ROM and Web delivery and integrating the content

elements into a learning platform that learners can access.

4 - Implementation

In this step the course is delivered to learners. The curricula is installed on a server and

made accessible for learners. In facilitated and instructor-led courses, this stage also includes

managing and facilitating learner’s activities.

5 - Evaluation

An e-learning project can be evaluated for specific evaluation purposes. You may want

to evaluate learners’ reactions, the achievement of learning objectives, the transfer of job‑

related knowledge and skills, and the impact of the project on the organization.

4.4. Virtual and Personal Learning Environments

I choose a simple topic discuss the beginning of this environment, that related with the

traditional learning organizations, The reaction of education systems and institutions to the

rise of social networking has been at best bewilderment, at worst downright hostility, a refusal

to engage in these issues risks school becoming increasingly irrelevant to the everyday lives

of many young people and particularly irrelevant to the ways in which they communicate and

share knowledge.[5]

Source: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/07/anatomy-of-ple.html

4.4.1. Virtual Environments

Social Networks

Social network sites can be construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded

system and articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and view and

traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

Professional Networks

Professional network generally refers to a professional network service, a virtual

community that it is focused on professional interactions instead of social interactions.[wiki]

Special-formed learning networks for life-long learners

A learning network is a group of persons who create, share, support and study learning

resources (“units of learning”) in a specific knowledge domain.[6]

And also in the future we

will see and living with many new environments, for the raison of technology and internet

applications developing and I will discuss more environments in another position in this

chapter.

Communities of people who share interests and activities, connect people at low cost

and here is most social network services such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file

sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on, and I prefer to mention about some social

network best site that helped greatly e-learning in the past 10 years, Here is top [7]

3 social e-

learning tools in 2012:

1- Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking service and micro blogging service that enables

its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".

It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly

gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012,

generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per

day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the

Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet." Unregistered users can read

tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a

range of apps for mobile devices. [8]

Cost: free

Availability: online

www.twitter.com

2-Youtube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in

February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos. The company is based

in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display

a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips,

and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original

videos, and educational videos. [9]

Cost: free

Availability: online

www.youtube.com

3- Google Docs

Google Docs is a free web-based office suite offered by Google within its Google

Drive service. It also was a storage service but has since been replaced by Google Drive it

allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other

users. Google Docs combines the features of Writely and Spreadsheets with a presentation

program incorporating technology designed by Tonic Systems. Data storage of files up to

1 GB total in size was introduced on January 13, 2010, but has since been increased to 10 GB;

documents using Google Docs native formats do not count towards this quota. The largely

anticipated cloud storage feature by Google is said to be replacing most of Docs' features in

2012. This extension or replacement of Google Docs called Google Drive was opened to the

public on April 24, 2012. [10]

Cost: free

Availability: online

Docs.google.com

4.5. Using Cloud Computing for E-learning Systems

E-learning systems provide processes of delivering the learning contents to learners who

have different backgrounds, interests, and locations away from a classroom in order to

maximize the effectiveness of learning. Usually, the classical e-learning system is based on

client/server architecture thus they lack of the scalability, flexibility and interoperability. It

makes the learning resources cannot share, and the system improvement is not easily. The

cloud computing architecture in the e-learning system that the architecture separate into three

layers includes infrastructure, platform and application. This architecture needs to design

components in order to transfer the learning resources to the cloud platform. Infrastructure

layer, the learning resources from the traditional system are transferred to the cloud database

instead of the usual DBMS. Platform layer, a new e-learning system that consists of the CMS,

AMS, and other service components were developed. These components were developed to

be the intermediary between cloud database and the applications. Finally, application layer,

CAT web application and WBI application were developed for interacting with the student's

client .The results shown that all applications co-operated with the other components suitably.

Applying the cloud computing makes the classical e-learning more scalability, flexibility, and

interoperability. Moreover, cloud computing induces the way that e-learning can be share and

distribute the learning resources to any kind of devices and platforms. Since the e-learning

services are used for a relative short time, pay per use of the cloud could reduce the cost thus

the organization pay only for capacity that actually used. [11]

http://geekandpoke.typepad.com

4.5.1. Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 Tools

At the beginning, we had access to e-mails; all concepts were new to who depended

on post offices, telephones. A rapid change in the era of Information technology always

keeps on growing and is always bringing new changes in Computer in the Cloud, SaaS,

Web 3.0 and now, Cloud computing is a trend which is integral to Web 2.0 which bring

all sorts of user data as well as operating systems online and this makes it unnecessary to

use storage devices enabling content sharing platform with web access. Some Advantages

Of This Trend Are:

In most cases the user does not have to worry about the operating system and

hardware that is being used. The corporate job and file sharing become easier, since all the

information is in the same “place“, or the “cloud computing solutions“; It is easy to

imagine that we came from a generation of services. The difference between Web 2.0 and

Web 3.0 is that, with the concept of the web as a platform, involving applications in social

networks, and IT, this term is new for the web and just because of that, it is hard to update

the technical specifications, but a change in how it is perceived by users and developers is

an environment for interaction and participation which today encompasses numerous

languages and call the second phase.

What Can We Find In Web 3.0?

Searching Information Compilation of information processing Presentations of all

kinds of information and knowledge of Information Technology . We understand the

critical success factors in this new environment are absolutely linked to the simplicity,

applicability, usability among others. In these 3 aspects even the WEB 3.0., the question is

whether the opportunities created by new technologies will bring clear results and

applicability to justify a new wave on Internet or not. [12]

And another many applications we mention about it in chapter 2.

4.6 An E-learning System Architecture Based on Cloud Computing

At the first step view, cloud computing based development of e-learning systems

follows the same pattern as any other system development project.

4.6.1. System initiation process group

The initiation of an e-learning system development project using cloud computing

architecture comprises of developing the project charter and the development of the

preliminary project scope statement. The project charter represents the document that

formally authorizes the development project and endows project manager with the

authority to employ organizational resources to project activities. Preliminary project

scope statement defines what needs to be accomplished, i.e. the functional specifications

of the future e-learning system and the project objectives that have to be met. At this

stage special care should be given to the strong correlation between the project objectives

and project scope. It is important to quantitatively measure the efficiency of the project

objectives as they will have a crucial impact upon the efficiency of the future e-learning

cloud computing system. In order to assess the fitness of the proposed objectives, the If-

then analysis from the LogFramework analysis [13]

will be employed. The fitness f of the

objective (Oi) is defined function of the project scope S as:

( )

{ if 0,then

When ( ) equals 1 this means the completion of objective Oi leads to the

accomplishment of project scope S. In order for the project scope S to be considered

completely defined one must have:

∑

which means, all the stated objectives Oi must lead to the accomplishment of the project

scope S. In the field of e-learning system implementation using cloud computing, S might be

“implement an e-learning system for the 100 students of the PhD program with a maximum

initial investment of 50.000Euro”.

4.6.2. System planning process group

The very nature of a cloud computing business model and of its technical architecture

makes the planning of a cloud computing based project different than any other IT

development project. Considering the cloud computing infrastructure will be rented from the

service provider, the project manager’s focus moves from choosing the right technology to

choosing the right vendor. Instead of

Concentrating on the computing power of the architecture and the costs of scaling up

the e-learning system, the project manager will be looking at such parameters as service

availability, data security, backup and contingency plans the cloud computing vendor offers,

etc.

The availability of the cloud computing based e-leaning system can be calculated as:

Where:

A – The availability of the system during a year. A is measured in percent's.

UT – the total uptime of the e-learning system, measured in seconds. 31536000 –

Represent the total number of seconds during a year.

Service availability A of more than 99% is considered a highly available e-learning

system. The data security e-leaning efficiency metrics is defined as:

where: DS – the security degree of the e-learning system, measured in percent’s; DA –

the number of successfully denied attacks upon the e-leaning system during a year; TNA

– the total number of denied attacks upon the e-leaning system during a year. The more

business oriented and less technical nature of the cloud computing based project activities

can be immediately observed in the project scope planning, project work breakdown

structure, activity identification and sequencing, activity duration estimation and schedule

development. This is because the service provider takes on this initial burden and then

offers on-demand virtualized processing power. For project activity duration estimation,

one or several of the described techniques [14],

[15]

and [16]

can be successfully employed.

Cost estimation and cost budgeting project processes are highly biased because of the

cloud computing architecture. The service supplier absorbs up-front costs and spreads the

costs over a longer period and over several cloud computing customers. Thus, the initial

capital expenditure of the project is converted to ongoing operational expenditure of the

e-leaning system maintenance. Table 1 shows the average fees for cloud computing

services. Google App Engine includes a free quota. After this quota is exceeded, the rates

from table 1 apply [15].

Amazon EC2 services are charged based on the required resources

(small, medium or large) [17]

Microsoft Azzure services are not yet commercially

available [18]

Provider Average

CPU cost

(per hour)

Average

bandwidth

cost (per

GB/month)

Average

storage

cost (per

GB/month)

Amazon 0.11$ 0.12$ 15$

Google 0.10$ 0.11$ 15$

Microsoft 0.12$ 0.125$ 15$

Using cloud computing instead of investments in datacenters (hardware and software

licenses) will result in a shift from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure

(OpEx). Quality planning project process involves creating test plans for the future e-learning

system. The tests should take into consideration both intrinsic system features and

performance testing on the cloud computing architecture. Human resource planning entails

allocating both legacy software development personnel and cloud computing engineers that

are aware of the peculiarities of these platforms. Communications planning means deciding

what project processes and tools will be used for timely and appropriate generation,

collection, distribution, storage and retrieval of project information. More exactly, this means

setting up the reports that have to be generated, their content and frequency. Also, this implies

setting up a bug tracking system for recording all the issues that arise during e-learning

system development. The ration of bugs to the total number of features developed is called

bug-feature ration:

Where:

BFR – the ration between the numbers of bugs (defects) discovered and the number of

features developed. This metric show how many bugs are there for every developed feature.

Bugs – the number of defects found in the system. Features – the number of features

developed according to the project plan.

Risk management planning project processes need special attention when working with

cloud computing infrastructure. It is true that the cloud computing maintenance burden

resides solely within the responsibilities of the provider. Even though there are service

level agreement items in the contract with the vendor, still Gartner analyst’s advices us [19]

to discuss the following items with our future cloud computing vendor:

Privileged user access, means asking who has specialized access to data and what

are the procedures regarding hiring and management of such administrators.

Regulatory compliance, means asking whether the vendor is willing to undergo

external audits and/or security certifications.

Data location, does the provider allow for any control over the location of data.

Data segregation means making sure that data encryption is available at all stages.

Also this implies making sure that the encryption schemes are designed and tested

by experienced professionals.

Recovery means discussing what happens to data in the case of a disaster, and

whether the vendor offers complete restoration. If so, how long does that process

will take?

Investigative support means making sure that the vendor has the ability to

investigate any inappropriate or illegal activity.

Long-term viability, what happens to data if the company goes out of business?

Also this implies making sure that the date will be returned in an appropriate

format.

Data availability means asking what are the procedures of moving the data onto a

different environment, should the vendor decide to do that.

4.6.3. System execution process group

Executing the project means directing and managing the project development and

performing ongoing quality assurance. For a successful cloud computing based e-learning

system to be developed, legacy software development techniques can be successfully

employed. That is source control software, build scripts for building the deployment

package and automated tests for regression testing. Project criticality analysis techniques [20]

can be easily employed in order to enhance the project development quality. The

criticality index of a task represents the probability that this task will be on the critical

path:

∑

Where:

TC – task criticality, a number between 0 and 1 inclusively.

TCi – equals 1 if task is on critical path at iteration i and 0 otherwise.

N – The total number of Monte Carlo simulations. The closer to 1 is TC for a given task,

the higher the probability that that task will be on the critical path. The closer to 0 is a

task’s TC, the higher the probability that the task will not reside on the critical path. The

higher the TC of a task, the higher is the importance to manage the duration of that task

in order to avoid project delays. The sensitivity index of a task represents the correlation

between task duration and the overall project duration. In practice, the sensitivity index SI

is calculated as the pearman’s Rank Correlation between task duration and project

duration:

∑

( )

Where:

SI – sensitivity index of a task.

di = xi – yi – the difference between the ranks of the corresponding values xi (task

duration) and yi (project duration);

n – the number of simulations performed. The sensitivity index SI values lie between -1

and 1. In the field of project duration estimation, a SI less than 0 has no sense because the

project duration cannot be shorter as long as the task duration goes longer. So the only

meaningful values are between 0 and 1 inclusively. The greater the SI of a task, the

higher is the correlation between task duration and the overall project duration. The

cruciality index CI represents the product of the two indexes calculated above and shows

the importance to manage the duration-uncertainty of an

activity:

CRUI CI SI

Where:

CRUI – the cruciality index of a task;

CI – criticality index of a task;

SI – sensitivity index of a task.

The CRUI metric has no unit of measure but its significance lies in its ability to rank

project tasks

according to the descending order of the importance to manage the uncertainty of an

activity. The higher the CRUI of a task, the more attention the task needs from the

manager of the project regarding timely execution of the task. Project execution during e-

learning system implementation can benefit from such performance metrics used in the

field of automated software testing. Test success rate is defined as:

Where:

TS – test success rate, measured as a percentage;

TP – test cases that passed with success;

TNT – total number of tests.

The closer the TS test success rate to 100%, the higher the quality of the e-learning

system. For most of the e-learning systems the acceptance criteria is a TS rate of 100%.

In [21]

are presented metrics related to the cost effective software testing process.

4.6.4. System monitoring and controlling process group

The monitoring and controlling processes are performed during the entire project

lifecycle in order to take preventive and corrective actions so as to meet the established

project performance goals. Continuous monitoring gives the project management team

insights regarding project health and identifies any areas that might need special

attention. The cloud computing based e-learning systems are no different than other

software development projects. More exactly, monitoring and controlling processes are

concerned with:

Assessing project current performance.

Comparing planned and actual project performance.

Analyzing, tracking and monitoring identified project risks.

Provide accurate information regarding project status report.

Provide updated project costs and schedule information.

Manage ongoing feature change requests.

The ongoing performance of the project can be successfully tracked using Earned

Value Management technique. Figure 1 depicts the earned value method metrics for a

regular e-learning project implementation.

∑ ( )

Where:

EV – current earned value of the project, i.e. the sum of the planned value of the

completed elements of the project;

PV – planned value of various project elements. Only completed project elements will be

taken into consideration for this formula calculation.

PV from figure 1 represents the planned (budgeted) project value earning as the e

learning system implementation advances. PV will be calculated on a per case basis, but

generally it will be a function of the implemented features:

PV = f(features)

AC from figure 1 represents the actual cost of the work performed. AC is calculated as

the sum of all the individual costs incurred:

∑

Figure 1

Where:

AC – actual cost of the work performed;

Ci – the cost of executing the feature i .

Earned value management method is a valuable tool for monitoring project progress and

for anticipating and mitigating any problems the project may sustain.

4.6.5. System closing process group

Project closing involves finalizing all project activities and performing the

acceptance and delivery of the final e-learning system. During this stage the project scope

is checked against the initial objectives, the e-learning system installation and

maintenance is documented, the acceptance testing of the final product is performed and

the formal closing of the project is executed.

4.7Cloud Computing Benefits for E-learning Solutions

Cloud computing is evolving quickly into a race for computing power, communications

and transactions. As it merges further with social and identity services, it even challenges

the idea of national boundaries and resource management. In the next few years there will be

a massive building phase with a lot at stake for traditional and new service providers. We

predict cloud platforms that emphasize open data exchanges through APIs will become the

dominant force for building ecosystems that will tip the balance of the developer mindshare

– and perhaps set the social boundaries for this generation.

The future will be driven by the relationship between transactions. The architecture of

the enterprise will evolve beyond standards-based B2B data exchange and will instead

develop real-time APIs to use with its partners; to the extent these interfaces are real-time,

the enterprise itself will need to become real-time to keep up with location-driven and

personalized relationships. Real-time is the life blood of the enterprise. As APIs continue to

develop, the next evolution of enterprise software will look like advanced Twitter-bots or

real-time algorithms. [22]

4.8. Conclusion

Dear reader in this chapter we trying to close to you how to treat with cloud computing

and how to use it with an e-learning system ,at the first we present a short cut introduction to

shows the converting of education organization from traditional education to technology

education and cloud education , we mention about how we can develop an e-learning system

step by step and some environment that will be more benefited to use it with e-learning

system, and declare about some using the cloud in now a days web and tools also by

collecting some data from many reference we trying to create An E-learning System

Architecture Based on Cloud Computing how it work ? How is the processing go on? What is

the outcome from the execution? How can we control the system? And many features.

Finally off course we present the benefit from the using of cloud computing in e-

learning and another system also we hope to deliver our information briefly and clearly and

we hope that our book will be useful and help the organizations to use the cloud techniques.

4.9. References:

1- [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-learning].

2- [ August 2003, the herridge group].

3- [ e-Learning, online learning, and distance learning environments: Are they the same? Joi

L. Moore, Camille Dickson-Deane, Krista Galyen].

4- [Wiki,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-learning#History].

5- [GrahamAttwell,Personal Learning Environments].

6- [Rob Koper, Open University of the Netherlands].

7- [Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 by Jane Hart on Oct 01, 2012]

8- [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter].

9- [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube].

10- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs].

11- [ Computer & Information Science (ICCIS), 2012 International Conference on Date of

Conference: 12-14 June 2012 Author(s): Phankokkruad, M. Fac. of Inf. Technol., King

Mongkut's Inst. of Technol. Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand ].

12- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3.0#Web_3.0]

13- [The Logical Framework, USAID 1971,http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNABI452.pdf].

14- [Vetrici M., Software Project Duration Estimation Using Metrix Model, Informatica

Economica Journal, Vol. XII, no. 47/2008, pp.87-91.].

Temnenco V., Software Estimation, Enterprise- Wide, IBM The Rational Edge, Vol. June

2007, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/jun07/temnenco/index.html.].

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Development Projects, WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMPUTERS, Issue 4,

Volume 8, April 2009, ISSN: 1109-2750, pp. 735-745].

16- [Billing and Budgeting Resources – Google App Engine – Google Code

http://code.google.com/intl/ro/appengine/docs/bil ling.html].

17- [Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/, retrieved

on August 2009].

18- [Google Apps - www.google.com/a, retrieved on August 2009].

19- [Brodkin J., Gartner: Seven cloud-computing security risks, Infoworld, July 2008,

http://www.infoworld.com/d/security- central/gartner-seven-cloud-computing-

security-].

risks-853, retrieved on August 2009].

20- [Vetrici M., Improving software project quality using criticality analysis, Proceedings of

The Ninth International Conference on Informatics in Economy IE 2009, Bucharest,

Romania.].

21- [Lazic L., Mastorakis N., Cost Effective Software Test Metrics, WSEAS

TRANSACTIONS on COMPUTERS, Issue 6, Volume 7, June 2008, pp. 599-619].

22- [http://readwrite.com/search?keyword=cloud].