On the scope and the structure of e-learning platforms at universities

E-learning is one of the pillars of modern higher education and there are many systems that support e-learning and many applications. Today the scope of e-learning goes more and more beyond individual universities. Study programs are often installed in a consortium of cooperating universities. In this case students and staff need access to e-learning platforms of different universities. E-learning platforms for higher education so far have been focused on enrolled students and lecturers. In regard to candidates and people who are interested in study programs but are not enrolled yet we need better bridges between the basic web portals of universities and e-learning platforms in the future. Today there are special e-learning platforms supporting for example clusters of distant learning programs for students enrolled at different universities. We need bridges between such platforms and the platforms installed at the individual universities to share course materials for example. In many cases we need links between different e-learning platforms. And besides that we need links between e-learning platforms and Wikispaces, Facebook, systems dealing with the administration of students, exams, etc. The scope and the structure of e-learning systems for higher education especially at universities are discussed here.