XESS — Extended e-learning support system

In recent years, Universities have begun to offer innovative services to students using technologies such as videoconferencing and e-learning platforms to provide a variety of courses. These services differ quite substantially and offer different benefits at different costs. Generally speaking, it is very difficult to estimate the total cost of an e-learning infrastructure, that takes into account start-up and steady state phases. Besides, the use of freeware or open source platforms can create other difficulties as, in many cases, no complete cost-benefit analysis exists that can consider hidden or related costs using this technology. Various methods are proposed in the scientific literature for tackling the problems related to the evaluation and the comparison between e-learning solutions. In this paper we discuss a new method for solving this kind of problems using a Decision Support System called XESS (eXtended E-learning Support System).