Distributed Smart Applications: an Architecture for an e/m-Learning-Based Virtual Campus Scenario

Future virtual campuses can be regarded as distributed smart applications, mainly based on e/m-Learning web platforms, heterogeneous devices and supported by properly managed network infrastructures. In this work, some distinct situations that can occur during a lecture are depicted and a proposal is made which aims at giving a suitable Quality of Service (QoS) in all such situations. Applied to e/m-Learning, QoS techniques must in fact guarantee an appropriate communication quality to every learning activity, ranging from lectures based on interactive videoconference to real-time groupwork activities. Each of such tasks requires a different bandwidth at disposal and, in consequence, the bandwidth required vary over time not firstly on the basis of people and groups, but mainly on the basis of groupwork activities currently in progress. QoS, thus, is not managed only on the basis of the user's or group's profile and access rights, but also of the kind and requirements of cooperative tasks currently active during learning and teaching sessions.