The education process in engineering means theory and practice, individual study, group-based projects or experimental work that involves equipment, simulation/emulation software packages and laboratory applications. In order to develop e-learning platforms for higher and postgraduate education in engineering, new methodologies should be taken into consideration: project- and problem based learning, virtual laboratory (remote access to laboratory infrastructure and task evaluation) or remote assistance for diploma projects and mobility grants. This paper presents new blended learning methodologies and the manner they can be customized for higher and postgraduate education in engineering by using the cloud computing paradigms. The article is organized as follows: after a suggestive introduction, the related works and proposals are presented in Section II. Section III is dedicated to the blended learning models for higher and postgraduate education. Several important aspects are taken into consideration: how to improve the retention factor in the individual study, how to provide remote access to laboratory infrastructure and applications and how to support fundamental and applied research activities within individual, group-based projects or international partnerships. Section IV starts with the technological aspects and continues with the deployment diagram of the blended learning platform for technical education and continues with the elastic cloud environment presentation. The experimental results, especially the platform deployment for “Economic and Exact Sciences” and “Applied Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology” domains, including the blended learning support, practice and assessment processes, are highlighted in Section V of this paper. In conclusion, the authors underline the importance of SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) concepts in higher and postgraduate education by presenting a complex scenario for extending legacy e-learning systems in order to support blended learning capabilities.

cloud computing, blended learning, virtual laboratory, hybrid classware, project-based learning