June 10-15, 2012
Growing Community; Growing Possibilities
ESUP PortailA Global Approach of
Digital Services for Higher Education in
France
Alain Mayeur University of Valenciennes
Mathilde Guérin University of La Rochelle
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ESUP-Portail The French Consortium
Goals & Strategy
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Overview Since 2002: Project “Digital working
space” portal of digital services (ENT in France)
80% of French students and establishments staff use the platform to access to services and information
4 years (since July 2008) for the new structure (non profit structure with its own budget)
70 members in France
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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2012 : 17 UNR covering national territory More than 90% of students have a digital
working space (ENT)
The ESUP Portail Consortium
UNR RéunionUNR Midi Pyrénées
UNR PCL
ACOR
UNR LR UNR PACA
UNR RAUNRA
UNR CUNR PdL
UNRB
UNR Normandie
UNPIdF
UNRNPdC
UNERA
UNIRA
UNR Picardie
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Objectives Facilitate learning and campus life for
students... but also the daily work of the staff members
Pool the development of digital services to divide costs between universities
Share technological evolutions and new services amongst the members
Imagine and plan the evolutions of the French students' personal portal (Espace Numérique de Travail - ENT)
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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Some of the main services that have already been deployed so far: access to LMS
staff member's personal file
selective admission management for staff members and internship candidates
student electronic office
digital community management
mobile services for smartphones
integration of Content Management System (CMS) in the students' personal portal
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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Strategy Solutions are open-source to enable a
constant evolution of tools and services Each establishment can adapt the
technological groundwork to fit its own strategy and needs
Collaborate with other consortiums such as Jasig and Sakai, whose solutions are the basis of the French projects
Assure the perpetuity, the adaptability, the technological developments
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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Give access to the Information System depending on the user's profile
Integration of e-learning platform, access to pedagogical services, integration of documentation components…
Encourage team brainwork and sharing of experience/feedback
Support on the standards
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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ESUP-Portail : The French Consortium
Organization
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Organization Strategic board composed of 9 people Director of the consortium: Alain Mayeur Technical Coordination Team:
14 collaborators
Gatherings: 4 meetings a year
annual seminar for global coordination
The ESUP Portail Consortium
That’s me!
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Support of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research: evolution of digital plans and services for
training, employability and academic life
Financial contributions from the Ministry and other French local self-governments
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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Working Groups Work regarding uPortal: package, tutorial, etc.
Group management: Grouper internet 2
Portal/CMS
Communication (mail, calendar, digital desktop)
ESUP-Mobile
ECM-Nuxeo
IHM (ergonomics, look-n-feel, etc.)
OAE Sakai Group (created in April 2012)
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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Framework for development: ESUP-Commons2
Portlet, web mobile
Contribution of universities and engineering schools (development)
Lively community, encouraging debate Mailing lists and Wiki ESUP-Days: 2 conferences a year in Paris
more than 100 participants each time
#14 on June 27th 2012
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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Trainings to help members acquire or improve their technical skills
Offered by ESUP Portail members: esup-commons-v2 (followed by 90 developers)
esup-uportal
Provided by external companies: HTML5 / CSS3
jQuery (UI, mobile, etc.)
The ESUP Portail Consortium
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Relationship with Jasig and Sakai
Increasing our collaboration JASIG/ESUP for the last 6 years
Following the reflection and discussion about the Jasig-Sakai mergence
Work regarding Jasig solutions
Work regarding Sakai solutions
The ESUP Portail Consortium
2012 Jasig Sakai Conference
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Collaboration with Jasigesup-uportal
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esup-uportal: what for?
environment.build.ldap.url=ldaps://ldap1.univ.fr:636environment.build.ldap.pooled=false
esup.properties
<bean id="defaultLdapContext" class="org[...]LdapContextSource"> <property name="url" value="${environment.build.ldap.url}"/> <property name="pooled" value="${environment.build.ldap.pooled}"/> <!-- ... --></bean>
LdapContext.xml
Packaging & configuration
Create French package
Centralize configuration properties into one file and/or encourage the use of runtime environment properties
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Internationalization Improve French messages
Translate default and quickstart entities
Add/Edit design for French portals
esup-uportal: what for?
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HCI & UI
Create new skins Tutorial on how to custom the design Find French companies to identify as
“privileged partners” for design customization
Reflection on usability, ergonomics and accessibility
Identify most used customization and integrate them
esup-uportal: what for?
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Shibboleth
Facilitate Shibboleth integration Documentation
Configuration
Proxy CAS Authentication
Grouper
Documentation / Best Practices Suggestion of “generic group structure”
esup-uportal: what for?
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Support
• Continuous support (french mailing-lists)
• Recommendations / Best practices
Infrastructure, What (not) to do?, …
• General documentation / FAQ
Data migration, layout management,…
• Find French companies to identify as “privileged partners” for portal deployment
esup-uportal: what for?
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esup-indicateurs
• Statistics on portal and services usage
Who? What? How much?
esup-uportal: Additional stuff
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Web Services
• “Export” of groups and user attributes…
• … usable from portlets
Monitoring Servlet
• Real-time data on portal status
Memory, Threads,…
esup-uportal: Additional stuff
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esup-uportal4 v1.0
• Beta release: late June 2012
• First production deployment: Sept. 2012
• Widespread adoption: Jan. 2013 and beyond
esup-uportal: Roadmap
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Collaboration with JasiguMobile
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French packaging?
• Nothing planned for now
Internationalization
• French Messages
Development
• Patches
• New features
uMobile: Made in France
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Examples of new modules
uMobile: Made in France
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New features
RC release: late 2012
Deployment in France
First production deployment: Sept. 2012 Widespread adoption: Jan. 2013 and
beyond
uMobile: Roadmap
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Collaboration with JasigPortlets
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esup-filemanager
• v2.2.0 (May 2012)
• Lets the user access (and manage) their homedirs (up/download, rename, delete, move, ...)
Portlets: Shareable services
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esup-lecture
• v2.0-RC8 (GA: late 2012)
• Aggregates XML feeds (RSS, RDF, …) and handles the users' preferences (subscription, (un)read items,...)
Portlets: Shareable services
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esup-annuaire2
• v0.2.2 (June 2012)
• Searches through a LDAP directory for students, staff members or structures
Portlets: Shareable services
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esup-messages
• v2.0.0-SNAPSHOT (RC1: late June 2012)
• Lists mails in the user's inbox and displays the mail content
Portlets: Shareable services
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esup-twitter
• v0.6 (March 2012)
• To follow someone’s tweets
Portlets: Shareable services
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esup-portlet-sympa
• v4.0 (November 2011)
• Displays the mailing-lists the user has subscribed to or is the owner (or moderator) of
Portlets: Shareable services
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Collaboration with JasigThe How and the Why
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The How
• The new GIYF: “Google Git(Hub) Is Your Friend”
• Contributing in mailing-lists and joining specific WGs
Collaboration with Jasig
uPortal
uMobile-app
esup-uportal
EsupPortailjasig
uMobile-app
Pull request
Pull request
Fork
Fork
uPortal
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The Why
• …
• Really?!
• …
• Do you even have to ask?!
Collaboration with Jasig
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Collaboration with Sakai
Feedback on OAE
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Sakai CLE
• Sakai CLE in two French universities
UPMC: used as an e-learning platform
ULCO: used as a teaching and collaborative tool
• Mainly used in two French universities for collaborative needs (Poitiers, Valenciennes)
• Presentations in 2 of our ESUP-Days
July 5th 2007: Sakai functionalities and usage at UPMC
July 2nd 2010: evolution of Sakai deployment and method of integration in ESUP Portail
Sakai in French Higher Education
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Sakai OAE
• Deployment of test instances in 3 universities
• Powerful ergonomic environment:
Simultaneous collaborative writing and document sharing
Different levels of workspaces
Various settings available
Sakai in French Higher Education
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Mainly focus on collaborative activities
• Staff collaboration
• Teacher/student or student/student collaboration
An asset as a collaborative tool
• Student projects and internship
• Collaborative assignments
May respond to future portfolio needs
• External users
• Document sharing
Feedback on Sakai OAE
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Main limitations (early 2012)
• “Poor” online documentation
• Customizing styles seems laborious
• No quota limit
• * No French translation
• * Needs to be compatible with the French digital workspaces (ENT) and CAS
Feedback on Sakai OAE
* : now available
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Conclusion (early 2012)
• Quite different from the LMS solutions used in French establishments
Is such a migration worth it?
• Some tools, praised by teachers in our LMS solutions, seem to be missing
Tests, tracking, …
To be used in addition to regular LMS as a social network and collaborative tool
Feedback on Sakai OAE
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Collaboration with Sakai
ESUP SakaiOAE Working Group
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Creation of the ESUP SakaiOAE Working Group
Objectives
• Maintaining the French version
• Organizing thematic days with feedbacks of partners
• Thinking about implantation strategy in the information system of establishments
• Widget development
Collaboration with Sakai
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Roadmap
• First meeting: Sept. 2012 What? Who? When? => to define the roadmap!
Concretely speaking...
• JIRA tickets
• The return of GIYF Git(Hub) Is Your Friend
Collaboration with Sakai
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ESUP-Portail A Global Approach of Digital Services
for Higher Education in France 2012 and beyond...
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Objectives
• New French esup-uportal package
• Customized skins (uPortal, OAE, etc.)
• Grouper: user profile management
• New features/services
• …
• And increase collaboration with Jasig and Sakai!
2012 and beyond...
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And... Voilà!(aka “That’s all Folks!”)
Questions?