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.
