Abstract:
Electronic learning (e-learning) content delivery and accessibility have received significant research attention
over years in order to ensure reliability, availability and cost-effectiveness through Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs).The evolvement of mobile computing devices especially smartphones
bring prospects in overcoming the inherent limitations of the Internet when accessing web contents. Among the
potential opportunity revealed includes the ability to work offline. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the
existing online and offline e-learning systems in order to explore the uniqueness, technical problems and
opportunities in this field. In the same vein, this study proposed synchronization and caching approach for cost-
effective e-learning content delivery. The proposed approach synchronizes contents from the original server to
local database in mobile computing devices in order to deliver contents to learners in a reliable, cost-effective
and timely manner. Finally, comparing existing web-based learning system and the proposed approach, the
analyzed results provide empirical evidence that, the proposed approach is significant for bandwidth usage cost
saving and hence cost-effectiveness due to ability of working offline. Therefore, synchronization and caching
approach cut down several limitations in existing e-learning systems including: reduction of cost of bandwidth
usage; improving system performance by cutting down the servers’ workload and internet usage overheads; cutting down costs of purchasing hardware and increasing motivation in learning activities by allowing learners to access learning contents anywhere and anytime.
