Forum .LRN Q&A: Interesting article about open source in universities

1: Interesting article about open source in universities

Posted by Rafael Calvo on 07/26/04 01:42 AM

http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0440.asp

EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 4 (July/August 2004): 12–27.
Open Source 2007: How Did This Happen?
Brad Wheeler
Brad Wheeler is an associate vice president and dean of IT at Indiana University. He is also an associate professor of information systems in IU’s Kelley School of Business. Comments on this article can be sent to the author at mailto:bwheeler@iu.edu.

Developing sustainable economics and advancing the frontiers of innovation are the dual challenges for application software in higher education. Sustainable economics means that an institution’s base budgets can support the licensing fees, developers, maintenance, training, and support required for application software. For example, it means that the viability of a course management system (CMS) is not dependent on the next grant or on a one-time budgetary accommodation. Since making changes to application software invokes cost, minimizing change is one tactic for achieving sustainable economics through lower IT costs. In higher education, however, the creative nature of colleges and universities motivates faculty and staff to innovate with new pedagogy and with the use of online resources. Application software that fails to evolve or to allow experimentation and innovation in teaching is unlikely to be well received.

Higher education is in search of a new model to address these dual challenges, and open source application development has been proffered as a solution. Open source software, which is usually obtained without paying any licensing fee to its creators, allows developers to modify the inner workings of the software. In contrast, commercial application software, which is usually licensed for an annual fee, does not allow the inner workings of the software to be modified. Open source software is not free, however, when properly viewed from a total cost of ownership (TCO) perspective. Like all other systems, it requires investments for hardware, user support staff, training, integration with other systems, and so forth. Thus licensing fees, technical support, and control of destiny in evolving the software features are the discriminating cost factors. But licensing fees are not trivial: some estimates place licensing at 20–25 percent of the TCO—in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for many institutions.

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2: Re: Interesting article about open source in universities (response to 1)

Posted by Orzenil Silva Junior on 07/26/04 03:43 AM

Thanks for your tip, Professor Calvo!

This weekend I was reading about open source in higher education. This paper you suggested is very close to writings I was searching for.

I think one important feature in this article is related what Mr. Wheeler says about interoperability as indicator for quality applications:

"Many administrators have been surprised at how quickly a number of disparate open source projects have become interoperable, which they view as a boon to reducing implementation and support costs."

I really think it is a great challenge for dotlrn project. I know u-portal interoperability is a projetct for dotlrn as also is workflow, assessment and curriculum. I also think all this projects into dotlrn could be integrate into one great project called portal interoperability.

The Sakai Project - www.sakaiproject.org - as Mr. Wheeler introduces takes a big picture about this kind of integrative approach. The project aims to provide "code mobility in higher education" via open source, promissing for an economically-sustainable IT investment path for higher education. Sakai Project defines a Technology Portability Profile (TPP) that provides four essential elements for code mobility - see here.

Application Progamming Interfaces (APIs), portlets, agreement on datamodels such as those defined by IMS, DRM standars, implementation of SCORM etc are critical point on convergence to make sure that we can get this kind of interoperability to provide open source application as a solution in higher education.

Dotlrn is great and i think the project is going very well about discussing things like that. More elements for discussions like this article you brought for us is very important.

Papers I read this weekend about technical framework to provide interoperability in elearning solutions for higher education:

The Sakai Project - http://www.sakaiproject.org/
Interview in CETIS with Chuck Severance, from Sakai, and Scott Wilson, from JISC project - http://www.cetis.ac.uk/content2/20040503155445
comparison of the JISC Technical Framework and Sakai - http://www.cetis.ac.uk/lib/media/S040405N.pdf

There is a demo for sakai rc1 at http://demo.sakaiproject.org/. Guest account is provided: - enter "guest@chefproject.org" for the email, - enter "chef" for the password.

Sakai seems very user interface level oriented. Maybe could be interested for dotlrn developers see about it.

3: Re: Interesting article about open source in universities (response to 1)

Posted by Orzenil Silva Junior on 07/26/04 04:53 AM

Rafael,

A time ago I saw a post of yours in this forum about openacs work at WEG/Univ. Sydney. There was a work under development by Nick Carrol about implementing web services for remote portals (WSRP) specs in dotLRN. I know Vignette, BEA Logic, U-Portal an others are supporting this protocol.

Are there news about Carrol's work on WSPR on dotlrn portlets implementation? Is there documentation and most important is there a way to cooperate?

Thanks

Orzenil

4: Re: Interesting article about open source in universities (response to 3)

Posted by Nick Carroll on 07/26/04 12:25 PM

Orzenil,

Well that is my goal to implement web services for WSRP. I'm still working on converting service contracts to web services. Will then build on this for WSRP.

Cheers,
Nick.

5: Re: Interesting article about open source in universities (response to 4)

Posted by Orzenil Silva Junior on 07/26/04 04:12 PM

Thanks for your reply, Nick

I saw other posts from you where you said the big picture that you have in mind is to use web services as a way for dotLRN to comply to OKI. Are you also thinking about a way to comply dotlrn to specs from IMS relating ,in example, Learning Resources?

Do you have a document on your vision about web services available for reading? I'm a newbie but very curious about this kind of approach you're outlining.