what current trends tell us about the future of federated access management in education

InFAMy! Infamy! They’ve all got it

in for me!or... what current trends tell us

about the future of ‘federated access management’ in education

Andy Powell, Eduserv

@andypowe11

FAM10, Cardiff5, 6 October 2010

Intro

where are we now.../ the working assumptions of the UK Federation have been with us a long time/ FAM (as we know it today) has an uncomfortable fit with the wider web we see around us/ arguably better fit with ‘enterprise’ solutions?/ but discomfort of institutions as ‘enterprises’

Financial pressure

image: swamysk @ Flickr

financial pressure...

/ budget cuts/ job losses?

/ institutional and national ‘business

cases’ will become more critical

/ might argue that institutions will

become more enterprise-like

/ ...but think this will be very resisted

Outsourcing

image: M i x y @ Flickr

outsourcing.../ e.g. Google mail/apps/ the ‘new normal’/ for students currently/ but why not for staff?/ at what point is ‘identity’ also outsourced?

Expectation mis-match

bjornmeansbear

expectations.../ the mashable experience

/ user - privacy/ provider – terms & conditions

vs. day-to-day practice

image: Axel Bührmann @ Flickr

Mobilemobile.../ by <insert date here> mobile access to internet will have overtaken desktop access/ mobile devices may or may not become the primary route to learning and research – but they will play a bigger part/ what is the user-experience of SAML like from an iPhone app?

Open agendathe ‘open’ agenda.../ open source –

interesting tension withfinancial

pressure above/ open access – impact on the primary use-case for

FAM?/ open science

/ OER/ ‘open’ doesn’t mean

‘access management not required’

but it might change the nature and positioning of

the requirement?image: dullhunk @ Flickr

PLEpersonal learning environments

(PLE).../ a more open

approach to provision of learning technology

/ letting the learner (and the lecturer)

construct their own VLE using external

services of their choice

/ typically associated with ‘Web 2.0’

image: abardwell @ Flickr

OER and APEL

the changing nature of ‘course’ and ‘customer’.../ disaggregation of course delivery from accreditation/ changing relationship of students to universities/ increasingly ‘migratory students’/ changing customers of ‘academic’ publishers

Overseas students

Swansea Photographerimage: Swansea Photographer @ Flickr

globalisation.../ overseas students/ greater collaboration between institutions (nationally and internationally)/ research collaborations/ dealing with multiple federations

Usability

image: shbib @ Flickr

usability...

The portal problemusability.../ the portal solution.../ an attempt to control the user experience end-to-end/ but the web just isn’t like that/ WAYFless URLs are an abomination/ the portal is (part of) the ‘problem’!

image: dmolsen @ Flickr

Usability

usability.../ Kantara ULX work

/ some really interesting developments here/ but... scalability?

/ and... the ‘publisher’ problem

Consolidation

\/\//\R |_[]R[)image: andypowe11 @ Flickr

consolidation.../ of providers - Google, Facebook, ... (the ‘First bus’ effect?)/ and technology – OpenID, OAuth

Single sign-on

image: BuildArk @ Flickr

institutional login.../ single sign-on within

the institution

Conclusionsconclusions...

/ ‘education’ is a relatively small fish in a big pond

/ mainstream approaches will win (in the end) / for Eduserv OpenAthens ... Google are

as big a threat as Shibboleth (andthe same is true for Shibboleth)

/ current financial climatewill have an effect somewhere

/ institutions are probably becoming more enterprise-like but still not totally like

commercial organisations / tend to occupy an uncomfortable space

between the ‘enterprise’ and the ‘socialweb’ (e.g. PLE and open science)

/ the relationships between students (and staff)and institutions are changingimage: robotson @ Flickr

Thank youThank you

FAM10, Cardiff5, 6 October 2010

(with apologies to Kenneth Williams and whoever owns the copyright on this image!)