Evolution of the Design and Implementation of Tutor: A Web-Based Educational System for University Courses

摘要

We have designed a web platform to support the teaching and learning of certain subjects taught in the University of Granada. This platform facilitates students and teachers diverse educational tasks and provides an effective management of academic data. Originally, it was intended for a reduced array of subjects, but as a result of its increasing success and use in a greater number of subjects, we have been encouraged to extend it. However, the approach used in the early design was a classical life cycle and did not take into account either future needs or its hypermedia system nature, which is even more important and requires a special processing, which is different from the one required for conventional applications. From our experience, we have learned and have taken into account the detected lacks to make the platform progress, and we have provided a new design thus changing completely its philosophy, structure and interface. We will hereby describe the main characteristics of both designs (the first and the new one) in order to highlight the evolution of the system.