Much of what you say is true for the basic toolkit. What dotLRN brings to the table are specific portlets for the various packages, and as you mention a framework for scoping etc, those these are built on top of the relational segments already present in OpenACS 4.5.
So ... dotLRN provides a working example of how to use them effectively.
dotLRN "applets", which are used to control which packages are mounted to a particular group, would definitely be useful in this context as well as many other contexts, because they give group admins a simple way to add packages to subsites associated with a particular group.
Group admins don't have to learn how to use the site map tool nor do you have to give them permissions to do so, and the "applets' take charge of tying together packages and portlets.
The dotLRN events package isn't really a scheduler, it just provides a mechanism for defining an event, handles registration, payment, etc. It's a bit too Sloan-specific to be of much general interest, I think, but we can probably generalize it easily enough afterwards.
