e Learning Resource Management Tool

Abstract

e-Learning Resource Management Tool (e-LRMT) is a research-based, holistic solution for publishing and managing resource for the online courses conduct by The National e-Learning center (NeLC) at the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC). The sole purpose of this project is to provide an efficient, interactive, a painless and a user friendly platform for the e-learning centre staff to ease their day-to-day work while increasing the productivity. This thesis contains both conceptual overviews and technical overviews regarding e-LRMT. The NeLC at UCSC has been creating and publishing a vast amount of learning recourses for an external degree program called, Bachelor of Information Technology and several other professional programs such as Foundation of Information Technology, e- Sri Lanka Certification, etc... The e-learning center staff and the students experience certain issues related to the resource publishing and managing process of the current e-Learning system. Limitations of conversion of resources to standard formats such as SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) and PDF (Portable Document Format), no convenient way of storing source files of resources for reuse in an easy accessible manner, no single process engaged with conversion of resources to browser compatible format and uploaded to the LMS, no proper way of tracking changes that occur in each resource, are some of the issues faced by e-Learning Centre staff. Because of these issues, the productivity of staff is considerably low. Therefore, there is a need for a tool to support publishing and managing of learning resources professionally. In the current system, to convert Microsoft Word, PowerPoint resources to standard portable web formats such as PDF, there is a need of additional software and time. Therefore, e- educators tend to publish those Microsoft Word and PowerPoint resources within the learning management system. But, when we consider the general public e-learners, on an Internet site, most of them are not willing to open "non-web" file formats such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Also, some of the learners don’t have MS office application installed in their computer to open those resources. So, it is important to provide a way to convert learning resources to browser compatible formats while reducing the workload of the staff. Even though the system has been developed based on the need of NeLC, with minor modifications, this tool is flexible enough to work in another organization body.