XML Languages for Student-Oriented Services

The high cost of education and the increased number of adult students increased the demand for online degrees. In the current online education model, the school specifies the courses required to obtain a degree. For each course, the instructor specifies the course elements including teaching method and assessments. But research in education has long proved that different students have different capabilities and constraints. Most institutions provide the same courses. A student should be able to select the course that best matches his capabilities and constraints as long as it satisfies the required course outcomes. To achieve this goal, we propose the use of SOA. We introduce an extended service-oriented architecture and an extended service definition. This paper also presents two XML languages. The first, enables course providers to specify courses that have been defined using our extended service. The second enables course requesters to specify their requirements and constraints.