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Cloud adoption for e-learning: Survey and future challenges

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Abstract

The cloud computing platform has become prevalent today and is being utilized by many organizations in government, industry, and academia. For teaching and training, its virtual environment provides a cost-effective alternative to physical labs which may be rapidly configured to provide hands-on lab exercises, as well as to run scientific applications for e-learning. In this paper, we present a survey of cloud usage aimed at empowering students with practical skills in an educational environment. We present a taxonomy of cloud usage for e-learning, and also analyze existing major contributions relevant to cloud usage for e-learning. We also perform a comparative analysis of the frameworks and models found in the literature along with a comparative evaluation of the implementations carried out for e-learning. The future challenges and major issues being faced in adopting cloud technology for e-learning are also discussed along with recommendations for possible solutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan

    Minhaj Ahmad Khan

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Khaled Salah

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  1. Minhaj Ahmad Khan
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  2. Khaled Salah
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Highlights

• This paper contributes towards a survey of cloud usage aimed at empowering students with practical skills in an educational environment. The cloud computing is a state-of-the-art paradigm for distributed applications whose prevalent application makes it a hot topic.

• This paper presents a taxonomy of cloud usage for e-learning for classifying existing major contributions. A comparative analysis of the cloud-based frameworks and models for e-learning is also presented. The future challenges and major issues being faced in adopting cloud technology for e-learning are described along with recommendations for possible solutions.

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Khan, M.A., Salah, K. Cloud adoption for e-learning: Survey and future challenges. Educ Inf Technol 25, 1417–1438 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10021-5

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