How To Use Grid Technology for Building the Next Generation Learning Environments

Grid technologies promise to improve the way we think about e-learning allowing wide-scale learning resources sharing in heterogeneous and geographically distributed environments, allowing, in this way, the implementation of distributed learning spaces where different organizations and individuals are able to cooperate in pursuing similar and complementary learning and training objectives. But is the e-learning ready for this evolution? In this paper we try, starting from an existing e-learning platform named IWT, to sketch a possible migration path toward a Grid based environment. IWT was selected because it presents a flexible, service-oriented, layered architecture suitable for migration in an OGSA compliant environment. The new approach will provide more flexibility, in fact, it could leverage on the resources distributed across the Grid in order to build the learning experience that best fit student requirements. A use case scenario is also provided in order to emphasize differences between the two approaches.