Modeling learning technology systems as business systems

The design of Learning Technology Systems, and the Software Systems that support them, is largely conducted on an intuitive, ad hoc basis, thus resulting in inefficient systems that defectively support the learning process. There is now justifiable, increasing effort in formalizing the engineering of Learning Technology Systems in order to achieve better learning effectiveness as well as development efficiency. This paper presents such an approach for designing Learning Technology Systems and their most popular specialization, the Web-based Learning Systems, by modeling them as business systems, using business-modeling methods. The aim is to provide an in-depth analysis and comprehension of the Learning Technology Systems and Web-based Learning Systems domain, that can be used for improving the systems themselves, as well as for building the supporting software systems. Our work is based upon the Learning Technology Systems Architecture standard of IEEE LTSC, on the empirical results of designing Web-based Learning Systems for university courses and on the practices of the Rational Unified Process and the Unified Modeling Language.