This paper discusses a new approach to build infrastructures for E-Learning systems for Learning Software Organizations on the basis of Web Services. A requirements context is developed to determine which type of E-Learning applications that can be Web Service Enabled. This is illustrated with a case study on an Encapsulated Software Teaching Environment. Additional facilities, such as didactical agents and deep personalization to facilitate Learning Software Organizations are discussed at the end.

De Backer, Manu

Dedene, Guido

Lemahieu, Wilfried

Snoeck, Monique

English

Research Papers in Economics

 Althoff et al. (Eds.): WM 2005, LNAI 3782, pp. 127
 –
 133, 2005. 
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005 
New Generation E-Learning Technology 
by Web Services 
Guido Dedene
1,2, Monique Snoeck
1, Manu De Backer
1, 
and Wilfried Lemahieu
1 
1 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Department of Applied Economic Sciences,  
Naamsestraat 69, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium 
{Guido.Dedene, Monique.Snoeck, Manu.DeBacker, 
Wilfried.Lemahieu}@econ.kuleuven.ac.be 
2 Universiteit Van Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics and Econometrics,  
Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands 
Abstract. This paper discusses a new approach to build infrastructures for E-
Learning systems for Learning Software Organizations on the basis of Web 
Services. A requirements context is developed to determine which type of E-
Learning applications that can be Web Service Enabled. This is illustrated with 
a case study on an Encapsulated Software Teaching Environment. Additional 
facilities, such as didactical agents and deep personalization to facilitate 
Learning Software Organizations are discussed at the end. 
1   Introduction 
The Web Services technology has introduced a revolution in the way how software 
component interfaces can be invoked over the Internet by means of the XML-
message-based SOAP protocol [1]. The commercial deployment of Application 
Service Provider (ASP) type of Web Services [2] seems to take off slower. 
Nevertheless, the concept to provide access to complex applications through 
(extreme) Thin Clients is very appealing in terms of lowering the Total Cost of 
Ownership. In particular, for Learning Software Organizations, support costs of the 
learning infrastructure can dramatically be reduced.. 
This paper will explore the possibilities of Web Services for building E-Learning 
applications that may provide a better infrastructure for Learning Software 
Organizations. In Section 2 a requirements context is presented to select E-Learning 
applications that can be based on Web Services. Not every learning application can be 
Web Service enabled. In Section 3 a major learning environment case study is 
reported, where first year economics students are exposed to basic software concepts 
based on a strict object-oriented approach. Finally Section 4 explores some further 
developments, discussing the added value of didactical agent technology and deep 
personalization. These features are particularly relevant for Learning Software 
Organizations, because they allow the environment to learn from the learners 
behavior, and make the learning process more effective. 
K. D. -128  G. Dedene et al. 
2   Web Services and Education Environments 
Whenever education institutes decide to add computer-based training elements to 
their courses, and introductory first-year courses in particular, they may face some 
significant organizational problems. In particular, in a typical non-computer science 
department, such as economics students, the computer background of the average 
student is limited to Web surfing and using Text editors and Spreadsheets. Installing 
and running a (learning) software environment is not an easy process for this type of 
students. Moreover, first-year students are typically huge groups. In general, the 
following set of requirements holds for this type of education environments: 
a. The education environment should have a simple installation and configuration 
procedure. 
b. The education environment should provide maximal usability for the students, 
based on intuitive as well as defensive style of User Interfaces. 
c. The education environment should provide clearly structured, step-by-step simple 
exercises. 
d. The education environment should allow the student to construct solutions for the 
exercises, whereby the education environment should contain hints and/or 
guidance in the construction of the solutions. 
e. The education environment should support maximal automation in the process of 
creating, changing, maintaining and distributing exercises. 
f.  The education environment should require minimal maintenance from a technical 
infrastructure point of view. 
g. The education environment should integrate in a frictionless fashion with other 
Internet or Intranet based education tools. 
Traditional education environments make use of a physical distribution of the 
training programs (e.g. distributing CDROM’s) or a distribution through Website-
based downloading of the educational software. This solution may result in significant 
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) disadvantages. Every student needs a workstation 
that is powerful enough to support the software. Moreover, the (educational) support 
staff may suffer from a serious load in terms of installation or technical support 
questions on behalf of the students. Also, the CDROM as well as the Web-download 
distribution may result in situations where multiple, potentially conflicting versions of 
the education environment must be supported. It is also cumbersome to distribute 
corrections, modifications and additional exercises. 
The idea of using Web technologies and server-based education environments is 
not new as such. One successful development is Ceilidh, which meanwhile evolved in 
Coursemarker [5]. However, the specific capabilities of Web Services as a new 
innovative technology, create the opportunity to reduce significantly the Total Cost of 
Ownership and the organizational effectiveness of education environments. Perhaps 
the most interesting aspect of Web Services is the fact that they enable a single point 
of control in an easy way. The center is a Web-based server infrastructure, which 
eliminates the need to distribute (any) software to the client computers. 
Not every education tool can be transformed into a Web Services based 
implementation. These are some context requirements that make it easier for a 
learning environment to transform it into a Web Service:    New Generation E-Learning Technology by Web Services  129 
a.  when the education environment has clearly isolated “user sessions” and has the 
capability of distinguishing and maintaining the usage data of multiple users 
within the same environment. 
b.  in case a simple user interaction, preferably on the basis of forms is used. 
c.  when XML documents can be processed by the education environment, or XML 
formats can be used to import and export information with the education 
environment. 
d.  when there is no need to store and maintain local data about the user on the user 
workstation. 
Many E-Learning software programs may satisfy the above context requirements. The 
use of Web Services results in the following Total Cost of Ownership changes for 
both the students (the learners, or “consumers”) as well as the educational staff (the 
“suppliers” or providers): 
 Party 
Potential TCO reductions  Learner Educational 
Staff 
Lower Equipment Costs  X   
Lower Software Costs  X  X 
No Installation Costs  X   
No Installation Support Costs    X 
Flexible Access to the E-Learning 
application (any thin client Web Browser) 
X X 
Better reliability of the E-Learning 
application 
X  
Lower Software Distribution Costs    X 
Flexible maintenance of the E-learning 
software and exercises 
 X 
E-Learning environment can reach more 
students 
 X 
Also, Web Services provide some unique opportunities that were largely 
impossible with the traditional distribution mechanisms. In particular: 
•  a complete transparency of subsequent versions of the learning environment. Due 
to the “interface”-nature of Web Services, students should not know the actual 
version of the learning environment that they are using. 
•  a possibility to monitor from a central viewpoint (i.e. without using local data, such 
as “cookies”) how the students are using the education environment. 
Finally, in case the learning organization or education institute is using workstation-
based training rooms, such as PC-classrooms, it can run the E-Learning tool also as an 
Intranet application, resulting in further reductions in the Total Cost of Ownership for 
the training rooms. 130  G. Dedene et al. 
3   An Encapsulated Software Education Environment Case Study 
The Department of Applied Economic Sciences at K.U.Leuven (the Catholic 
University of Leuven)  has a long tradition of offering an intensive Information 
Systems class to all its first year students. Today, the software part of this course is 
based on Object-oriented Software Development, based on the Eiffel Language [3]. 
The Eiffel Environment that is used is ISE Eiffel, and its implementation in the 
Microsoft .NET framework. The EiffelBench, and its successor, EiffelStudio (which 
is integrated with the Windows Visual Studio Development Tool) have been used as 
educational tools. Even with some customization of these tools, it turned out that 
many options in the tool were overwhelming for a first-year student (although it is 
clear that these features are needed for a professional use of the tool). Moreover, it 
was not straightforward for this type of students to set up the Assembly configuration 
files and libraries that are typically needed to develop an object-oriented application. 
Until 2 years ago, students were required to install the Eiffel Environment on their 
own computers, using distribution CDs and/or download from a central (Blackboard-
based) Web Server. The K.U.Leuven has a University Partner Program with ISE 
Eiffel [6]. One of the complications of the previous environment was the secure 
distribution of the license keys for the software environment. 
From a pedagogical point of view, the exercises are incomplete program fragments 
which must be completed by the students. This requires a basic knowledge of the 
software capabilities, but also the skills to gain understanding of existing software 
components. The basic learning idea is to learning software from sharing experience 
that is already imbedded in software fragments. The traditional environment could 
only facilitate the downloading of documents, which the students could fill in, without 
any straightforward automatic checking. The learning environment that was needed 
fulfills most of the context requirements of the previous section. Consequently a Web 
Services based E-Learning tool E
3 , the Eiffel Education Environment [4], was 
developed and put into production for the students two years ago.  
This education environment is largely simplifying the procedure for making, 
compiling and running exercise solutions. In fact, the user is driven by a number of 
ASP.NET based Web forms for the exercises. One advantage is that students can 
“drop” their session at one Web station (“in class”) and continue -  “resume” – next 
on another Web interface (“at home”). When a student wants to compile a solution, 
the completed form is submitted as an XML/SOAP document and is presented to the 
(encapsulated) Eiffel compiler, which runs now as a .NET-based Web Service. Error 
messages, as well as a successful compilation of the program are reported back as 
standard SOAP answers. In case a student wants to enjoy the results of the 
compilation on his own workstation, an option is provided to download the compiled 
program, including the run-time environment for the programs. The students are not 
required to install anything to run the exercises. Any access to the Internet is 
sufficient to access and use the education environment. 
The following diagram shows the collaboration of the ASP.NET pages (*.aspx) 
and the encapsulated Eiffel Compiler (Compile.asmx).    New Generation E-Learning Technology by Web Services  131 
 
Significant improvements have been observed in the student results after the 
introduction of the Web Services based E-Learning environment. The following table 
summarizes the improvements for the same type of exams, indicating the average 
exam results before and after introducing E
3 , for two groups of students, Applied 
Economics students (who are less ICT-skilled) and Business Engineering student 
(who have more affinity with ICT): 
Average Exam Results  Before E
3   After E
3  Improvement 
Applied Economics  8,1 / 20  9,3 / 20  15% 
Business Engineers  9,3 / 20  11, 1 / 20  19% 
The TCO reduction was spectacular. The main TCO reduction factors are: 
•  no installation support costs (previously taking up to 50% of the time of the 
teaching assistants). 
•  no software distribution costs (elimination of CDs and download spaces). 
•  no more installation costs in student PC-rooms (no more local installations). 
Compared to the previous education environment (without Web Services) the total 
TCO reduction is 70%. This does not include the TCO reductions on the side of the 
users. 
Finally, it is interesting to note the absolute transparency of the versioning of the 
Eiffel environment to the students. In fact, switches happened in the Web Service to 
newer versions of the Eiffelstudio without any noticing of it on the side of the 
students. 132  G. Dedene et al. 
4   Didactical Agents and Web Service E-Learning Environments 
The use of Web Services puts more focus again on Service-based Infrastructures. The 
Web Services can be monitored, which enables the following feedback possibilities: 
a.  By analyzing the typical errors made by some students, additional exercises may 
be offered to the student. Students which have no problems with simpler 
exercises can skip these exercises and move directly to more advanced exercises, 
if they want to do so. For other students additional simpler exercises may indeed 
be needed. In this way a personalized E-Learning environment can be created, 
with a more effective learning process. 
b.  At the same time, the error information may give feedback to the content 
suppliers of the E-Learning environment, the educational staff. In fact, some 
consistent bad performance on particular exercises may invite the staff to expand 
on the explanation of the topic, and to improve the exercise track. This allows to 
build up a repository of learning experience, which may better align the learners 
and the educational staff.  
In this case a didactical agent can be developed that includes two major software 
components: 
•  The Web Service Analyzer and Advisor. This tool will categorize the students and 
their solutions to the exercises into consistent, coherent groups, who need a 
customized track through this technology. Various scheduling options should be 
available, such as a weekly checkup of the student results. The advisor may 
formulate recommendations to the teachers and assistants, for example, to 
indicate parts of the courses that need to be explained better, or for which more 
exercises or other types of exercises are needed. 
•  The Web Service Customizer implements in a real-time mode the rules that have 
been proposed by the Web Service Advisor. . It takes the form of a rule-based 
part of the User-Interaction, which guides the students through the E-Learning 
track that has the best fit with their individual needs. 
Didactical agents which are conceived in this way can also enable another 
contemporary didactical issue: guided self-study. Instead of reducing this self-study to 
some boring uniform document loading application, didactical agents create the 
possibilities for attractive, personalized self-study environments. In some ways 
didactical agents reverse the pedagogical process: instead of just having guided users 
(learners), a fully guided interoperation of the learners and the information providers 
(the educational staff) is facilitated in this way.  
One word of caution is appropriate here, as monitoring the individual behaviour 
against some server-based software application requires legally the permission of the 
end-user. This is of course related to privacy legislation, as it emerges in many states 
today. 
Observe how it is precisely the (central) Server-based nature of Web Services that 
makes this type of didactical agent technology feasible. With traditional education 
environments, difficult and dispersed evaluation systems are needed to try to obtain 
analogous results. Moreover there is a significant delay in the data analysis: Web 
Services can be monitored as frequently as needed from a Quality Improvement 
perspective.   New Generation E-Learning Technology by Web Services  133 
5   E-Learning Web Services Outlook 
Web Services based learning environments are very suitable technology for Learning 
Software Organizations. In the case that was presented here, the students as well as the 
staff learns from the central server-based learning environment and build a common 
repository of expertise in the Web Service environment. The environment can 
dynamically be adapted and evolves as the technology and the didactical insights progress.  
Really interesting new types of education environments can emerge when 
Choreographies of Web Services are applied to the didactical process. In such an 
environment, several Web Services are combined in the joint didactical process, and 
can share common repositories of expertise (for example, based on student profiles).  
Several Web Service-based learning environments are under construction at 
K.U.Leuven at this moment: 
•  A didactical learning environment for SQL-training. The fact that the latest 
versions of the Microsoft Office technology have build-in Web Service technology 
components is the basis for the construction of this learning environment.  
•  A design tool for decision tables and rule-based Business Validations. In this case 
an existing Delphi-based application is Web-enabled through the standard Web 
Service facilities of the Delphi environment. 
•  Another project is focusing on the expansion of the learning environment that was 
described in this paper into a complete software visualization environment. In 
particular, this includes the visualization of software applications that are 
composed by means of Web Services.  
•  An intelligent Business Modeling environment, which support the process of 
building organizational models, Business Models in particular, by using formal 
event-based object-oriented modeling techniques [7]. Not only internal 
organizational models, but also E-Business cooperative collaborations can be 
represented in this environment. Hence, such an environment may significantly 
contribute to organizational learning processes. 
The experiences from this paper suggest indeed to further explore and develop the 
possibilities of applying Web Services in Learning Software Organizations. 
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New generation E-learning technology by Web Services.

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