Service-Oriented Approach to Improve Interoperability of E-Learning Systems

We present a design and open source implementation for a service oriented e-learning system, which utilizes external services for supporting a wide range of learning content and also offers a REST API for external clients to fetch information stored in the system. The design will separate different concerns, such as user authentication and exercise assessment, into separate services, which together form a complete e-learning environment. A key component of the design is identifying a general set of characteristics among existing exercise assessment systems, by which the assessment methods are grouped into three types: synchronous, asynchronous and static exercises.