Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Economies of scale achieved with E-Learning content reusability and
cost advantages for online education make up for resource intensive up-front
investments for E-Learning content and technical infrastructures. Virtual E-Learning communities reduce tutoring and mentoring costs, increase learner satisfaction, and enable social and mutual learner support. Unfortunately, due to the early stage of several online university projects at least in Germany, relatively small numbers of subscribed students limit size and value of the virtual E-Learning communities and hence reduce E-Learning tutoring and mentoring cost advantages. The versatile Impuls EC portal applications facilitate the integration of different E-Learning communities from different online universities around identical or similar E-Learning courses.1 Web Services enable the seamless integration of communication and collaboration application provided by Impuls EC
and applied by different online universities to trigger and form sustainable E-Learning communities. Potential benefits are increasing learner self support and more efficient tutoring and mentoring to reduce education costs.