Integration and development of learning management features into the Colums platform

Abstract

Due to the increasing use of computerized information systems in higher and further education for both administrative (Human Resources, Finance, Student Records) and instructional (Teaching, Learning, and Research) purposes, the challenge of systems integration has emerged like Virtual Learning Environments, electronic resource discovery tools, etc. COLUMS is a comprehensive and deeply integrated software product for large, medium, and small educational institutions that automates data stream and can be thought of as an Organization Wide Computing Package.  The concept of COLUMS is to interconnect Students, Teachers, Parents and Management in effective manner. To meet all the requirements of the customer, the system needs to be upgraded and merged with the E-learning system. In terms of administration and remote learning, the new system provides all requirements of the university. The use of this technology is to enable people to learn anytime and anywhere, and not only depend only on attend of the student to the university to learn and take the courses. Given the shortcomings of the COLUMS, this project introduces new capabilities and services to address these issues. such as selecting the course to study online, with easy and fast way to enroll to the course, each course will contain number of lessons which contain the scientific   material,   as   well   as   add   some   extra   feature   to   the   course   like announcement, drop box, homework, document and chat room. For the future work, add a more feature of alerting the users by sending phone SMS when the any change happen  in  the  course.  Moreover,  white  board  technology  (virtual  Class)  so  the teacher can use the electric white board to describe the content of his subject online and the student can see the lesson as stream video. Finally, make the accessing of this system not only though browsing by the computer but also use the smart phone and tablet.