Evaluation Models for E-Learning Platforms and the AHP Approach: a Case Study

Our “information-oriented” society shows an increasing exigency of life-long learning. In such framework, the E-Learning approach is becoming an important tool to allow the flexibility and quality requested by such a kind of learning process. In the recent past, a great number of on-line platforms have been introduced on the market showing different characteristics and services. With a plethora of E-Learning providers and solutions available in the market, there is a new kind of problem faced by organizations consisting in the selection of the most suitable E-Learning suite. This paper proposes a model for describing, characterizing and selecting E-Learning platform. The E-Learning solution selection is a multiple criteria decision-making problem that needs to be addressed objectively taking into consideration the relative weights of the criteria for any organization. We formulate the quoted multi criteria problem as a decision hierarchy to be solved using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In this paper we will show the general evaluation strategy and some obtained results using our model to evaluate some existing commercial platforms