A Collaborative Learning System Based on Cloud and E-commerce

The number of learners using e-learning has been explosively increasing in the past decade by virtue of easy access to preferable educational resources at Internet. On the other hand, the number of teachers in schools or universities is growing slowly. As a result, instructional problems have emerged due to lack of sufficient support to learners in their e-learning process. Collaborative learning is suggested as a solution to this problem. However, current collaborative learning has focused on teamwork or group discussion without sufficient support to each individual. This paper presents a new model for collaborative e-learning called Collaborative Cloud, in which knowledge modelling and market economic mechanism are utilized to optimize the collaborative use of e-learning resources including teachers, students, and artifacts in collaboration. To implement the approach, cloud computing and electronic commerce are applied to connect learners and coordinate the resources in e-learning in a more effective way.