Cloud adoption for e-learning: Survey and future challenges

The cloud computing platform has become prevalent today and is being utilized by many organizations in government, industry, and academia. For teaching and training, its virtual environment provides a cost-effective alternative to physical labs which may be rapidly configured to provide hands-on lab exercises, as well as to run scientific applications for e-learning. In this paper, we present a survey of cloud usage aimed at empowering students with practical skills in an educational environment. We present a taxonomy of cloud usage for e-learning, and also analyze existing major contributions relevant to cloud usage for e-learning. We also perform a comparative analysis of the frameworks and models found in the literature along with a comparative evaluation of the implementations carried out for e-learning. The future challenges and major issues being faced in adopting cloud technology for e-learning are also discussed along with recommendations for possible solutions.