the jisc e-learning framework

Supporting further and higher education

The JISC e-learning framework

Sarah Porter, Head of Development, JISC

and Scott Wilson, Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards


JISC Strategic Aims

• To enable UK education and research to keep their activities world-class through the innovative use of ICT

• To provide advice to institutions enabling them to make economic, efficient and legally compliant use of ICT

• To help the sector provide a positive, personalised user experience

• To develop mutually advantageous partnerships with organisations in the UK and abroad

• To advise, inform and implement the strategies of government, funding councils and research councils.


JISC’s Activities


A ride in the TARDIS …

A typical college or University in 1984

• Limited use of computers for specialist applications• No widespread internet, LANs, graphical user

interfaces• Few desk-top PCs• Mostly paper-based financial systems,

administrative systems• Limited computerised library catalogues• Limited interest in computers• Very few ‘users’!


Brave New World 2005

• Look how far we’ve come …• Substantial proportion of capital and recurrent budgets

spent on ICT• Every learner, teacher and researcher has access to a

computer• Some new processes

– Communication by email obligatory in some organisations

• Multiple systems for administration, resource management, digital resources, teaching, research, etc …

• E-learning increasingly popular, but quality variable; ‘best’ models unclear


Key questions

• Where are we going with e-learning?

• Are we in control?

• Who should be in control– Teacher– Learner– ‘experts’?


Questions

• Complex relationship between people and technology– Is technology changing practice?– Is it improving learning experiences for

students?– Do we have the balance right – is

technology driving practice or is practice limiting technology?


Is technology changing practice?

• Practice has been changed: systemic use of technologies

• Large scale use of ‘accepted’ technologies e.g. commercial VLEs

• Approaches to encouraging use, staff development, sharing practice

• Using one system in systemic way has implications for lots of other systems and processes– E.g. SMS server needs to interoperate with library

system


Innovation

• ‘Technology doesn’t just allow students to answers questions more quickly, but to ask new questions’ (Vijay Kumar)

• Mobile technologies allow ‘populist and personal approach’ (Terry Keefe)


Key issues

–Creativity

–Choice


Questions for you

• Who has a VLE or LMS?

• Which?

• Are you considering changing it in the next 3 years?

• Why?

(5 mins)


JISC activities 1999-2004

• To explore the concept of Managed Learning Environments (MLEs)

• To share effective practice• Managed Learning Environment programmes

– Programmes in UK Higher Ed, Further Ed, across sectors

• Awareness-raising; guides to good practice (MLE InfoKit)

• Surveys and studiesAdvisory service (JISC InfoNet)

Quality Process

BusinessSystems

LearningResources

CurriculumMapping

Assessment

Communication

Delivery

TutorSupport

Tracking

OtherAgencies

OtherColleges

Virtual Learning Environment

Managed Learning Environment

Student Record System

Off-LineLearning

Registers

Reproduced by kind permission of BECTa

???

?

?

?

?


JISC interoperability projects (1999 – 2003)

• Lots of projects funded under MLE programmes to integrate systems to support business functions– E-learning– Management of student information– Collaboration with other organisations

• Content-oriented projects were generally successful

• Integration projects were generally less successful

• Where integration projects were successful, they were not repeatable outside the project


Why unrepeatable?

• Various projects along lines of “Integrate System X with System Y”

• Eventually everything talks to everything else?

• But actually “Integrate X with Y in environment Z”

• So even replicating a previous pairwise integration often meant starting from scratch (c.f. Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland programme)


JISC e-Learning Programme

• eLearning and pedagogy– Guide to Effective Practice published recently

– Numerous studies

– Beetham article in March 2005 ALT-J

• Technical framework and tools• Innovative technologies• Distributed eLearning (regional projects for FE/HE)• Coherent activities that fit together and inform each other

– Bringing together technologists and practitioners– Using short-term projects to test and develop and feed

back into new phases of activity


E-learning programme

Sequence of learning activities (learning design)

Learner Organisation may be local, regional or national

Teacher sets up activities after discussion with learner(s)

portfolio

profile

Learning resources

Accredits learner

assessment

Learning activity Learning activityLearning activity Learning activityLearning activity

Model to inform e-learning programme

MLEs for LLL

E-learning and pedagogy

X4L

Technical interface between as many systems as possible (Frameworks)


What is the JISC framework?

• A service-oriented analysis of the educational problem space

• Backed up with technical specifications, development projects, and toolkits

• A place for the partners to work together, to identify issues, opportunities, priorities

• A palette from which to select service definitions and locate tools and expertise to support implementation

• A model and methodology for planning systems integration.


ELF Today


How will it be used?

• Three ‘faces’:– Planning and strategy– Standards, service descriptions and

protocols– Tools and projects


Why create a framework for linking systems?

• Black-box solutions for e-learning are inflexible and difficult to adapt to their context

• What we thought would be basic integration tasks have often proved intractable and expensive, with solutions that are unrepeatable

• Duplication and waste in development efforts, and difficulty in exploiting development outputs outside the incubation projects


Objectives

• New synergies from the combination of tools and functions

• Efficiencies gained from linking together processes and using automation

• Flexibility in the configuration of functions to match our objectives and priorities, strategic and pedagogic


What does this mean for e-learning?

– Moving away from single large-scale systems to give users more choice

– Easier use and re-use of ‘content’ (may include e-portfolios, learning objects, research resources …) between systems

– More choice for learners; more creativity for teachers?


Video clip


• ‘integrate into schemes of work’• ‘Be very sure that the whole class is contributing, record their

activities’• ‘important that they can reflect on their learning at the end of a

session’• ‘couldn’t replicate that kind of learning environment any other way

…within an hour’s lesson’• ‘Enables the students to take more of an active role in their

learning process’• ‘Will improve their discussion skills and consequently their learning’• ‘With good teachers, LAMS can actually, we think, have a real

impact’• ‘Different opinions from different people’• ‘You can talk to other pupils about what YOU think’


Tara Brabazon, Digital Hemlock

• ‘Teaching well is ruthlessly corrosive of innovation’

Digital Hemlock: Internet education and the poisoning of teaching (2004) Tara Brabazon


Questions for you

• Do your current systems allow your learners and teachers (or yourself) to be as creative as you would like?

• Do they offer the right amount of choice?


International Frameworks’ programme

• Builds upon other, similar efforts, such as the IMS Abstract Framework, MIT’s Open Knowledge Initiative, Sun eLearning Architecture, work of the Carnegie Mellon Learning Systems Architecture Laboratory etc.

• Collecting together agreements on, and experiences of, using services into a common structure.

• Partnership between the JISC and the Department of Education, Science and Training, Australia

• Other contributors from US and Canada• Lots of interest from other countries, esp. Canada and

New Zealand and the European Commission


Desirable outcomes

• Flexible solutions that can be suited to individual institutions without causing interoperability problems

• Integration that is affordable and repeatable

• Research and development outcomes that can be shared outside their incubator projects


Integration Choices

• So how can we achieve integration?

• What does each approach afford us?

• Well, there are some common patterns…


Information Portal

• Aggregate information from multiple sources into a single display

• Display divided into multiple zones each displaying information from different system

• Limited interaction between zones

• Enables ‘shallow’ rather than ‘deep’ integration


Data Replication: Enterprise Application

Integration• Data is replicated

between multiple systems

• Business logic and presentation remains independent

• Typical VLE / LMS linked to Management Information Systems scenario

• Not very flexible


Service Oriented Architecture

• Presentation and workflow constructed from multiple shared services

• Data and business function encapsulated in services

• Also known as “Enterprise service bus” architecture


Data Warehouse

• Integrate many data sources to provide enterprise-wide reporting

• Business and presentation remain independent

• Strategic but not operational integration


Mix and match: Service Oriented Architecture

Portal• Using a Service

Oriented Architecture to implement teaching and administration workflows as Distributed Business Processes, presented using an Information Portal


Service Orientation

• A popular way to look at systems integration• Concentrates on contracts between service

Providers and service Consumers• Separates service from implementation• Many functions within an e-learning system

can be ‘exported’ to services offered by the environment to applications


Benefits

• Platform vendor buy-in, with plenty of class libraries and infrastructure ‘pieces’

• Lends itself easily to abstraction• Enables flexibility, even with legacy assets

(e.g. management information systems)• Neutral with regard to platforms and

languages• Relatively intuitive


Frameworks

• Some critieria for a successful framework:– Must be based on practical experience– Must evolve in response to experiences and

reflection– Must support partial implementation and not

require complete adoption of the whole framework to achieve anything

– Must not mandate a single development environment (e.g.Java)

– Must support a range of implementation patterns and as wide a variety of designs as possible


Myths and misconceptions

• The Framework is an open-source VLE or LMS– The ELF provides a framework that can help when

developing any kind of e-learning application, commercial or open-source

• Using ELF means buying all new Web Services-capable systems– SOA enables existing investments in systems to be

used, regardless of their platform, by exposing functions as services

• ELF will give you everything you need– You still need applications– Workflow? Security? Management?


Old World Brave new World

Interaction

mode Browser Anything

Connection

mode

Always-on Always on or partially

connected, depending on inter-

action mode used

Structuring

device

Module/course Whatever works for you -time,

topic, popularity,level, people

Structural

affordance

You get to choose which tools

show up in your course area in

the VLE

You have complete freedom to

select promote and demote

whatever tools are available,

and how you connect them to

the structure

Workflow Sequencing is either non-

existent or limited to primitive

show- and-hide, and roles are

built- in along "teacher" and

"student" lines. Typically the

same workflow is offered to all

learners

You can make up your own

rules, roles, sequencing, and

processes, and perhaps change

them later on, even while an

activity is running. Workflows

can be created on a group or

individual level.


ELF Today


What are Services?

• Functionally discrete patterns– Scope and definition– Patterns of implementation

• Port definitions– Abstract contract (UML)– API– Service bindings (WSDL, XML-RPC,

HTTP+XML…)


Learning Domain Services

• Functions that at the moment seem unique to the learning and teaching domain

• Each function expressed as a service analysis, with links to specification and R&D activity

• Eventually, each service will have toolkits, specifications and implementation patterns


Learning Domain Services


Common Services

• Functions that at this time seem to be shared by other domains, such as IT services, information environment, and e-science

• Effort may be lead by the e-learning sector, follow efforts lead by other sectors, or investigate in collaboration


Common Services

• Wide range of functions: administrative, collaboration, information management, and some core middleware functions

• List is being discussed and refined through consultation with those supporting other business functions e.g. research, administration, Grid technologies


What are the bricks?

• Each ‘brick’ represents a discrete set of functions that can be exposed within an environment, so that applications such as authoring tools, learning tools etc can make use of them

• Each ‘brick’ defines one or more service ports


Standards

• Standards already exist for some services• Where standards do exist, they aren’t

always suited to a service-oriented approach

• Standards don’t exist for many services• Where standards don’t exist, there may be

insufficient experience yet to create them


What isn’t on the ELF diagram?

• Applications - there are no applications here. Just services that support applications

• ‘Fabric’ - some things are common to a whole swathe of services and cannot be easily encapsulated into discrete functions– Workflow– Security– Management


Workflow

• How services fit within a flow of activity• How services need to be able to respond

to flows of action (‘workflow-aware’)• Some services need pretty complex

workflow behaviour:– Activation– Closedown– Monitoring– Intervention

• BPEL4WS, IMS Learning Design(?)…


Challenges Ahead

• We’ve made a pretty good start

• There’s a lot of work we could do - but what would be really useful?


ELF plans

• Identify the most critical services

• Build toolkits

• Develop capacity

• Demonstrate practical use

• Contribute to standards

• Work with the developer community - both commercial vendors and open source


Toolkits and demonstrators

• Developed a range of web service toolkits for integration of some functions

• Will be tested through ‘demonstrator’ projects during 2005

• Second phase of toolkits under development

• See


Challenges

• Get the basic technology right– Make things simple, but not simplistic– Enable different levels of technical

sophistication, from very easy HTTP+XML to very tricky SOAP+WS-* as needed

• Show some of this stuff really working– Compelling and interesting demonstrators– Persuading vendors and OSS projects to

take advantage of ELF toolkits


Challenges (cont’d)

• Communicate the ideas– Developers mostly get it … some managers get

it… but a lot of people don’t

• Get the factoring of services right– Need for community involvement in getting broad

consensus

• Start working on the hard problems– Security, workflow, management are all issues

that aren’t going away!


How will we know if we have succeeded?

• Deployment within institutions leads to:• More choice for learners and teachers

– More appropriate use of technology

• More options for technologist and developers• Less redundancy, better value from systems• Active engagement of open source

community and commercial companies.


Sources of information

• JISC e-learning web site– www.elearning.ac.uk

• E-learning framework web site– www.elframework.org

• Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

the jisc e-learning framework

Documents