Scalability and Robustness in the Domain of Web-Based Tutoring

Web-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems distribute content using a server based infrastructure. These systems need to be easily accessible to provide a reliable and scalable architecture for students, teachers, parents, content creators, and researchers. Scaling up web-based applications requires a well designed system that distributes the load accross multiple application servers and database server(s). A typical web application involves a 3-tier architecture where client machines, application servers, and database server(s) are working together to achieve better performance. In this paper, we describe our architecture that utilizes these techniques to form a scalable, reliable, and robust structure. Our solution is general, and can be applied to solve different scalability problems in the domain of Web-based intelligent tutoring systems.