The JISC e-learning framework

1. The JISC e-learning framework Sarah Porter, Head of Development, JISC and Scott Wilson, Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards

2. 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.

3. JISC’s Activities

4. 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’!

5. 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

6. Key questions • Where are we going with e-learning? • Are we in control? • Who should be in control • Teacher • Learner • ‘experts’?

7. 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?

9. 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

10. 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)

11. Key issues • Creativity • Choice

12. Questions for you • Who has a VLE or LMS? • Which? • Are you considering changing it in the next 3 years? • Why? (5 mins)

13. 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 studies Advisory service (JISC InfoNet)

14. ??? Off-LineLearning ? ? ? ? Registers Managed Learning Environment Virtual Learning Environment CurriculumMapping Delivery LearningResources Quality Process Assessment TutorSupport Communication Tracking Student Record System BusinessSystems OtherAgencies OtherColleges Reproduced by kind permission of BECTa

15. 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

16. 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)

17. 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

18. Teacher sets up activities after discussion with learner(s) Learning activity Learning activity Learning activity Learning activity Learning activity assessment portfolio profile Learning resources Accredits learner Model to inform e-learning programme E-learning programme Technical interface between as many systems as possible (Frameworks) E-learning and pedagogy Sequence of learning activities (learning design) MLEs for LLL X4L Organisation may be local, regional or national Learner

19. 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.

20. ELF Today

21. How will it be used? • Three ‘faces’: • Planning and strategy • Standards, service descriptions and protocols • Tools and projects

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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?

25. Video clip

26. ‘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’

27. Tara Brabazon, Digital Hemlock • ‘Teaching well is ruthlessly corrosive of innovation’ Digital Hemlock: Internet education and the poisoning of teaching (2004) Tara Brabazon

28. 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?

29. 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

30. 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

32. Integration Choices • So how can we achieve integration? • What does each approach afford us? • Well, there are some common patterns…

33. 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

34. 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

35. 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

36. Data Warehouse • Integrate many data sources to provide enterprise-wide reporting • Business and presentation remain independent • Strategic but not operational integration

37. 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

38. 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

39. 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

40. 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

41. 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?

43. ELF Today

44. 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…)

45. 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

46. Learning Domain Services

47. 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

49. 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

50. 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