Grid Learning Management System with role-based access control

This paper proposes a Grid-based Learning Management System (GLMS) framework as a global approach to E-learning. In spite of its potential, present day instruction and learning through online media is highly localized. Being local, the material used by the educational institution for instruction quickly becomes stagnated. Further, the institution tends to overlook quality materials that are available elsewhere. In addressing these key shortcomings, GLMS (a) recognizes course content in terms of its geographically distributed units (aka, learning objects), (b) associates cross-institutional instructional processes to learning objects, and (c) ensures security, privacy, and authenticity for the use of learning objects. We borrow established techniques from Grid Computing to achieve these three goals. Other benefits that we anticipate from GLMS include distributed resource sharing, heterogeneous learning objects for adaptive learning, scalability of learning objects, discovery of resources, learner modeling and security management. This paper discusses Grid-based access control and how we plan to employ them in an LMS.