Integrating web services and agent technology for E-learning course content maintenance

This paper describes an integrated system using autonomous agents and Web Services to maintain Web-based course materials. The system is to monitor the Web-based course materials and report its findings. A couple of agents are deployed in a distributed educational environment. One of the agents called Web Monitoring Agent is mainly responsible for detecting web hyperlink status and content changes. If it discovers that the content of the course materials of a particular course has significantly been updated or modified, it will trigger a Notification Agent to send out a message to the students taking the course, or to whosoever interested to receive the message. If the Web Monitoring Agent discovers broken hyperlinks, it will trigger the Notification Agent to send out a message to the course instructor to remedy the situations. The model and approach proposed can be generalized and used in Web-based information resources management systems.