the sakai project university of michigan indiana university stanford university mit ja-sig (uportal)...
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The Sakai Project
University of MichiganIndiana UniversityStanford University
MITJA-SIG (uPortal) & OKI
SAKAI Proposal
• U Michigan, Indiana U, MIT, Stanford, uPortal• Awarded 2-year Mellon Foundation funding• Build on JSR 168, OKI standards• CHEF 2.0 as framework and services
implementations• uPortal as 168-compliant portal• Distributed development of tools – portable code• Tool Portability Profile (TPP) as part of grant
Goal: interchangeable tools and components built at different places all working together
Sakai Project Core Universities• Commitments
– 5+ developers/architects, etc. under project leadership – no local responsibility for 2 years
– Public commitment to implement Sakai– Open/Open licensing
• Project– $4.4M in institutional staff (27 FTE)– $2.4M Mellon Foundation– Additional investment through partners
Contributions
• University of Michigan’s CourseTools (CTNG) and Work Tools (WTNG) for group collaboration (from the CHEF project)
• Indiana University’s Navigo Assessment, Oncourse Course Management System, Eden Workflow, and OneStart enterprise portal
• MIT’s Stellar Course Management and Administration System; OKI OSIDs
• Stanford’s CourseWork Course Management System, Navigo development
• JA-SIG’s uPortal
Sakai Project Deliverables
1. Tool Portability Profile Specifications for writing portable software
2. Pooled intellectual property…best of JSR-168 portal Course management system
Quizzing and assessment tools, etc
Research collaboration system Workflow engine …modular & pre-integrated
3. Synchronized adoptions at Michigan, Indiana, MIT, Stanford with open-open licensing
Michigan•CHEF Framework•CourseTools•WorkTools
Indiana•Navigo Assessment•Eden Workflow•OneStart•Oncourse
MIT•Stellar
Stanford•CourseWork•Assessment
OKI•OSIDs
uPortal
SAKAI 2.0 Release•Tool Portability Profile•Framework•Services-based Portal
SAKAI Tools•Complete CMS•Assessment•Workflow•Research Tools•Authoring Tools
Primary SAKAI ActivityRefining SAKAI Framework,
Tuning and conforming additional toolsIntensive community building/training
Activity: Ongoing implementation work at local institution…
Jan 04 July 04 May 05 Dec 05
Activity: Maintenance &
Transition from aproject to
a communitySAKAI 1.0 Release•Tool Portability Profile•Framework•Services-based Portal•Refined OSIDs & implementations
SAKAI Tools•Complete CMS•Assessment
Primary SAKAI ActivityArchitecting for JSR-168 Portlets,
Refactoring “best of” features for toolsConforming tools to Tool Portability Profile
Sakai Core Project
Open/Open Licensing
• “..all work products under the scope of the Sakai initiative for which a member is counting matching contribution and any Mellon Sakai funding” will be open source software and documentation licensed for both education and commercial use without licensing fees.
Sakai Community Support • Developer and adopter support
– Sakai Educational Partner’s Program(more below)
• Commercial support– No exclusive deals – talk with everyone– Open-open licensing – open source, open for
commercialization– For fee services will probably include…
• Installation/integration, On-going support, Training
Sakai Educational Partner’s ProgramFee: $10k per year, 3 years
• Access to SEPP staff– Community development manager– SEPP developers, documentation writers
• Knowledgebase
• Developer training for the TPP
• Exchange for partner-developed tools
• Strategy and implementation workshops
• Early access to pre-release code
SEPP Support
• Developers to provide technical support for partners and liaison with the Sakai Core development team,
• Support tools of immediate and specific interest to partners, such as a shared knowledgebase,
• Technical documentation and specifications,• Administrative Support person to aid SEPP staff
members and partners.
SAKAI Partners
“institutions of higher education, both large and small … participating in the Sakai Project in ways that suit their local needs and timing. These may include:– contributing to funding the project to ensure an open
source option for higher education,– participating in the discussion of strategic directions for
the Sakai Project– developing educational tools based on Sakai’s Tool
Portability Profile, and/or– adopting Sakai Project software at their institution.”
SEPP Objectives (1of 3)
The objectives of the Educational Partner’s Program are to:
• actively develop a large, self-sustaining community of institutions that share the Sakai Project’s open source vision
• carry on a discussion of strategic directions for the Sakai Project as it emerges and evolves,
• provide a Sakai Project roadmap describing the timing and features for Sakai software releases,
SEPP Objectives (2 of 3)
• provide in depth developer and adopter training,• develop a leveraged support infrastructure of a
common (or locally implemented) knowledgebase, and helpdesk
• mobilize distributed resources for development and support of Sakai tools,
• provide a marketplace for the sharing and exchange of Sakai-based tools/components,
• facilitate purposeful interaction with the Sakai Core development team,
SEPP Objectives (3 of 3)
• coordinate activities with other organizations, such as IMS or country-level agencies,
• build on the experiences of the JA-SIG, CHEF, and OKI training and conferences,
• facilitate Sakai community sharing of best practices in development, implementation, and support.
SEPP Meetings
• The initial SEPP meetings are planned for June and September of 2004.
• The semi-annual SEPP meetings will have a technical track for training software developers and implementers and an administrative track for Sakai strategy and user support.
• Partners may send two developers to each meeting for formal training in the Sakai Tool Portability Profile by the lead technical staff of the Sakai Project.
What Can Be Done Now - Look At:
• www.sakaiproject.org• uPortal (www.ja-sig.org)• JSR 168• Chef (www.chefproject.org)• OKI (web.mit.edu/oki)• J2EE/EJB/JBoss
– Tools won’t be built this way, won’t even see EJB’s– Services should be built this way
• Clustering, scaling, caching, cache coherency – rely on entity beans
• Avalon, Spring, Pico– Inversion of Control models– Levels 1,2, 3– Loader models
What should we be doing here at UVa?
• Start a regular series of discussions• Become familiar with the various pieces and
technologies in the Sakai project• Get plugged into the Sakai project• Start planning how to take advantage of Sakai
– Assess existing Toolkit functionality versus Sakai, e.g., what to keep, what to replace
– Start designing the ToolkitNG based on Sakai
– Envision and design the larger MyUVa that includes ToolkitNG
Sites are accessed via their tabSites are accessed via their tab
Synoptic viewsSynoptic views
Foreign Language supportForeign Language support
Customizable page menuCustomizable page menu
PresencePresence
Michigan’s CTNGMichigan’s CTNG
Tool Portability Profile
• The Open Knowledge Initiative’s (OKI) OSIDs OKI Service Interface Definitions
• The JSR-168 portlet specification – Built into Michigan’s CHEF and – JA-SIG’s uPortal
• User interface abstraction for localization
Services – OKI, CHEF implementations/extensions
JSR 168 Portlet ContainerCHEF
JSR 168 Portal
uPortal
Tools use the services (storage, notification, workflow, …) made available to them by the framework.
Toolaka
portlet
…Toolaka
portlet
Toolaka
portlet
Toolaka
portlet
uPortal talks to portlets, aka tools, across the JSR 168 interface, aggregates their content, and presents their content to users.
CHEFProvides the place for the tools to run, the services, and communication between them.
JSR-168 Instant Tutorial
• JSR-168 leverages the Servlet API – anything Servlet references, JSR168 just adopted
• The concepts of actions and context are there (basic MVC with some separation of logic and presentation)(enough C that you can do M&V separately)
• Great support for JSP as rendering language, or the portlet could choose to call Velocity or XSLT to do the rendering.
• The API is very rich and solves many of the complicated problems of living inside of a portal.
• WSRP and JSR-168 are well aligned (i.e. remote and local portlets will play well together)
• There is a Jakarta project to develop JSR-168 middleware (Pluto)• Pluto does not implement a portal – it can be used by many portals,
that’s the portlet container concept, and one of the main points of 168 • So, we really like JSR 168
Some Standards• OKI – services interfaces• JSR 168 – portals, portlet containers• SCORM – looking for someone to build portlet, service –
interchange format - zipformat, manifest, etc; runtime environment - pop-up frame set, database-persistent scratch space – island? Out of band agreements need to be codified for integration into Sakai
• LOM – Looking at it, like IMS standards• IMS – where applicable, like QTI for assessment
– Increasingly coordinated with OKI efforts – what/how– Emerging effort for common architectures
• XML/XSLT - sure, as part of, say, QTI spec, or for display rendering
• RDF – of increasing interest to Chef team – stay tuned
Chef Project
• Encompasses CT.NG, WT.NG, NeesGrid, NMI, other users of Chef
• Is the core software development effort– Providing framework for tools that go to make
up the other offerings, eg, CTNG, WT.NG, DissertationTool (cTools)
• We are currently running Chef 1.2 for CT.NG
• Chef 2.0 is foundation for Sakai
CourseTools.NG SAKAI Tools
Administration
User presence
Schedule
Announcements
Resources
Assignments
Discussion
eMail Archive
Dropbox
Chat
News (RSS)
Webpage Tool
Synopsis
Notification
Anonymous comment
Public view
WebDav
Search
Gateway to CTNG – supports non authorized viewof sites, general info about the application
Gateway to CTNG – supports non authorized viewof sites, general info about the application
Sites tool – non-authorized users can see site contentdesignated as Public
Sites tool – non-authorized users can see site contentdesignated as Public
Personal tool list for user, customizable create, edit, configure worksites join sites summary of sites – announcements, schedule private resources RSS feeds, links to web pages
Personal tool list for user, customizable create, edit, configure worksites join sites summary of sites – announcements, schedule private resources RSS feeds, links to web pages
Each user has their own private worksite – My WorkspaceEach user has their own private worksite – My Workspace
Example summary in My Workspace – schedules from all sites inwhich you are a member
Example summary in My Workspace – schedules from all sites inwhich you are a member
From the Educ 100 siteFrom the Educ 100 site
From the Sample siteFrom the Sample site
Hierarchy of foldersOptional permissions by role on folders
Hierarchy of foldersOptional permissions by role on folders
Resources accessible via WebDav Drag/drop to/from CTNG resources
Resources accessible via WebDav Drag/drop to/from CTNG resources
Multiple layout optionsThreaded, star formatsCategories, topics for organization
Multiple layout optionsThreaded, star formatsCategories, topics for organization
Open, Due, Close date controlInline, attachments, both for submissionsReturn for resubmission, review
Open, Due, Close date controlInline, attachments, both for submissionsReturn for resubmission, review
Presence – users focused on sitePresence – users focused on site
Users presentIn Chat
Users presentIn Chat
Multiple chat rooms via Options
Email Archive of all email sent to the siteUser’s preferences control how they receive email none, as they come in, digest
Email Archive of all email sent to the siteUser’s preferences control how they receive email none, as they come in, digest
Permissions per role can be set per toolSupport can add additional roles
Permissions per role can be set per toolSupport can add additional roles
Permissions per folder per role can be adjustedPermissions per folder per role can be adjusted
Let Students post files to this folderLet Students post files to this folder
The OKI Initiative• The Open Knowledge Initiative™ is a collaboration
among leading universities and specification and standards organizations to support innovative learning technology in higher education.
• The result of this collaboration is an open and extensible architecture that specifies how the components of an educational software environment communicate with each other and with other enterprise systems. O.K.I. provides a modular development platform for building both traditional and innovative applications while leveraging existing and future infrastructure technologies.
• O.K.I. is designed for broad adoption in the higher education domain. It provides a stable, scalable base that supports the flexibility needed by higher education and commercial developers of educational software.
http://web.mit.edu/oki/
The OSIDs“Common Services”
• Authentication• Authorization• SQL• Logging• Shared• Filing• Dictionary• Hierarchy• Group• ID• User Messaging• Scheduling• Workflow
Domain Specific Services
“Educational Services”
• Course Management• Digital Repository• Assessment• Grading
http://sourceforge.net/projects/okiproject
Existing Campus Infrastructure elements that Map to OSIDs
• Authentication/Authorization• Enterprise File Systems• Data Warehouses• Student Information Systems• Digital Libraries/Educational Content Repositories• Unique ID/Campus Namespace Systems• Group Management Systems• Enterprise Calendaring Systems• Enterprise Workflow Systems• Email, Chat, Discussion Systems
OKI - What Can be Done Now?
• Enterprise systems developers/managers should familiarize themselves with Version1.0rc6.1 of the O.K.I. OSIDs
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/okiproject• All the JavaDoc, Developer Docs,
Reference Docs, Solutions Guides as well as reference code and other developer aids can be found there.
OKI - What Can be Done Now?
• Begin developing implementations of appropriate OSIDs to integrate with campus systems
• The O.K.I team and others actively scan and respond to issues that are raised on the SourgeForge OKI project forums. Developers should be encouraged to post questions/issues/gripes/etc.
OKI - What Can be Done Now?
• In many cases there will be opportunities for institutional collaboration, especially where common technologies are in use:– LDAP/Kerberos etc. for AuthN– PeopleSoft for Student Information Data– CorporateTime/Meeting Maker/etc.– AFS for campus file systems– Etc…
Sakai Educational Partners Program
• Initially the SEPP can provide developer training opportunities as well as help in coordinating common OSID implementation efforts across member institutions.
Chef – What Can Be Done Now?
• http://Chefproject.org
• Source code
• Developer docs
• Installation docs
• Run it
• Look inside
uPortal – What Can Be Done Now?
• http://www.ja-sig.org/
• Source code
• Developer docs
• Installation docs
• Run it
• Look inside
Sakai Educational Partners Program
What can be done now? Join. So you can:
• Get access to early docs, knowledge base
• Get invited to June and September meetings to:– Get developer training on Sakai– Learn about, give input on development directions– Learn about, give input on strategic directions
• Build the HigherEd open source community