A Reference Architecture for a National E-Learning Infrastructure

A reference architecture guides an organization with best-practice knowledge about existing architectures, including an elaboration of the organization's mission, vision and strategy of a specific domain. Current e-learning architectures, however, focus on the theoretical framework of the application layer, service layer and database engineering while in reality, a networking layer is required for the implementation of e-learning systems. Existing publications do not focus on the collaborative aspect in the domain of national research and education networks (NRENs). This research tackles the creation of a reference architecture for e-learning in NRENs for which model driven engineering (MDE) is used. We analyze relevant aspects of NREN e-learning architectures by using the architecture tradeoff analysis method (ATAM). Next, we propose a NREN e-learning standard and concrete architecture.