An overview on e-learning in the Italian Universities and the efforts of Bari University

In the era of globalization of goods and services, there are still difficulties in knowledge diffusion. The enormous potential of internetworking systems and devices for fast information sharing is not sufficient to determine the effective exchange of knowledge, as required to avoid the digital divide. E-learning is rightly considered an opportunity of great relevance for reducing the digital divide and ensuring faster and higher development trends. As matter of fact, several universities and companies are currently involved in using e-learning according to their own need and objectives. This notwithstanding several problems related to e-learning activities still remain. This paper presents an overview about the use of e-learning in the Italian Universities. The distribution of the most diffuse Learning Management Systems (LMSs) is here presented, by considering both open-source and commercial LMS platforms and a simple model is proposed and used for their comparative evaluation. At the end, the activity experienced at the Centre "Rete Puglia" of the University of Bari is described and the most relevant results are shown.