INTELLIGENT SYSTEM FOR EVALUATING E-LEARNING PLATFORMS

The major consequence of Internet using has been the rapid growth of technology mediated distance learning at each level of education. Open-source e-learning platforms, like course management systems, learning management systems or learning content management systems have lately become an obvious choice whenever an e-learning infrastructure is being designed. Due to the diversity of these platforms with many characteristics and to the constraints of an educational institution or even enterprise, the task of choosing a suitable platform that meets particular requirements is not trivial.  The main purpose of this paper is to present an intelligent system (an expert system) supporting this decision-making. The knowledge base contains facts regarding characteristics of some open-source e-learning platforms (ATutor, LON-CAPA, Moodle, DotLRN/OpenACS, Sakai, Claroline and Docebo) and rules for reasoning about decision-making. CLIPS language is used for building the knowledge base for the intelligent system and C# language for the graphical user interface.