An Access Control Scheme for Web-Based E-Learning Systems

In recent years information technology and the World Wide Web in particular have changed profoundly the way we teach and learn, and this revolution will continue in the coming years with more and more universities, colleges and even elementary schools incorporating Web-based e-learning systems of some kinds into their education business. Different from other Web-based systems, a fully integrated e-learning system should provide different groups of users such as program directors, course authors, editors, course coordinators, instructors, tutors, students and administrators with access to different web documents and Web services, although they do share some of the documents and services. Therefore, the access control of such Web-based e-learning systems has become an issue for both researchers and practitioners in e-learning. In this paper, we present a role-based access control scheme that has been successfully used in the development EduPalace, an integrated Web- based system for e- learning and e-education. We will begin with an introduction to EduPalace to see what access control we need in such an integrated e-learning system, and then to present the access control scheme in detail. In conclusion, we will discuss some of the advantages of this scheme as well as how this scheme may be used in developing other Web-based systems such as those for e-business and e-service.