Cloud computing and education

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
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
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 Average Average
CPU cost bandwidth storage
(per hour) cost (per cost (per
GB/month) 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.].
15- [Pocatilu P., Vetrici M., Schedule Risk Management for Business M-Applications
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].

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