Konstantin Simić

Cloud Computing Environment for e-Learning Services for Students with Disabilities

This chapter discusses design of cloud computing environments for e-learning services and applications for students with disabilities. The main idea is to expand the corpus of e-learning services adjusted for students with disabilities. The rationale is that e-educational systems are becoming more complex and educational institutions need a new solution for deploying e-learning services. The cloud computing environment gives a new perspective to educational process in terms of usage of educational applications, software, and system for e-education. Regardless of the rapid development of information and communication technologies, there is a low level of inclusion of students with disabilities into the education process. Therefore, in this chapter the authors present a model of cloud computing environment for providing e-learning services developed with respect to the needs of students with disabilities. The model includes a variety of services, applications and components integrated into the e-learning Web portal. These services provide numerous features: a choice of different types of teaching materials, an integration of interactive voice response system within the learning management system, a mobile messaging service, etc. As a proof of the concept, a number of components of the model were implemented for students with disabilities within the Laboratory for e-business, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. Results and our impressions are presented.

Management of Cloud Computing Infrastructure for E-Learning

Modern technologies are used daily to gather information, for communication, for entertainment, and to provide a variety of services. The concept of learning through the Internet and the use of global networks in higher education for organization and implementation of the educational process is increasingly common. The application of information technology in education leads to changes in the ways of acquiring knowledge and presenting content to students (Mihailovic et al., 2012). With a rapid increase in the number of users, services, educational content, and resources required, educational institutions and their e-learning systems face new challenges in the design and deployment of the IT infrastructure for e-education. Modern information and communication technologies provide the means for increasing efficiency, flexibility, and the cost-effectiveness of e-learning systems. The users of e-learning systems have a need for including different resources into courses. These resources require more data and resource-demand processes, such as interactive video, virtual worlds, modeling, and simulations. The current traditional IT infrastructure used for the great majority of e-learning systems is not able to answer all teachers’ and students’ requests and needs in an effective and economical way.