Internet+as+the+OER+Platform

=Internet is the Platform= (revised title)

toc This page is an outline for discussing the tools and methodologies that can be used to utilize the internet as the platform for online learning. There are many technologies available to facilitate online learning, the challenge comes in getting from the possibilities to the actual implementation. Authored by Peter Rawsthorne and Shawn Berney.Chapter Abstracts (entire directory)

Abstract
With all of the pedagogical and technology approaches available for online learning how do you move forward in identifying the possibilities best suited to your institution, organization or enterprise? And once the possibilities have been identified and the vision and strategy formed, what is the best way to get to implemented technologies that successfully support the vision and strategy? The things that are constant within today’s environment of online learning are innovation, change and the internet. This chapter is dedicated to describing the methodologies, tools and techniques available to taking vision and strategy and utilizing the innovation and change available on the internet to implement solutions that support the described vision and strategy. This chapter views the internet as an evolving set of communication standards when discussing design alternatives and technology solutions. //This abstract needs work, I think the spirit of my message is there. - Peter//

Contributors
In the order in which you'd like authors to appear
 * **Family names** || **Given names** ||
 * Rawsthorne || Peter ||
 * Berney || Shawn ||

Community Center metaphor
When we look at the internet as a forum where people engage - both with ideas and people - we can begin to provide insight into how altering the design of such spaces would impact those that frequent its halls. In this chapter we use the metaphor of a community center to draw relationships between the design of technology and the impact of this design to online visitors.

Broadly speaking, the community center needs a diverse group of individuals with jobs dedicated to administration, operations, and development tasks. In this chapter administrative direction is provided through the implementation of a Vision / Strategy & Business Case, Operations are supported by providing activities (approach / methodology), advisors (technology selection), and resources (architectural frameworks) that reify the administrative direction. Finally, development is accomplished by integrating quality assurance and human resource tasks with the community centers' operation.

Vision and Strategy
Creating a vision and strategy for an online learning project becomes an essential first step allowing you to assess along the way that you are moving toward your goals. Yes, this first sentence may seem simplistic, yet there is much to be said in engaging in a process of creating a shared vision, articulating this vision, and creating a strategy in achieving the vision. There are many ways to create a vision and strategy and this is not covered in detail during this chapter. The group who is championed with determining the vision and strategy will have to determine a method best suited to them. As has been eludded to in this section there is a difference between a vision and a strategy. The vision is the direction and destination of the educational project. The strategy are the steps, tools and equipment that get the project to its destination.

[should add some references to approaches to vision and strategy] Open Space is an important inclusion here.

Business Case
Once the vision and strategy are close to having a shared understanding from the stakeholders championed with their creation a number of identifiable initiatives will begin to emerge. Initiatives are discrete work packages that create a deliverable that complete a step, provide a tool or create a piece of equipment required to get the project to its destination. Once a number of these initiatives have been identified, they should be assigned to an individual or small team to create a business case. the individual and small team should have complete authority and responsibility in creating the initiative business case. Transparency is the key to creating the business case. Everyone the initiative may touch needs to be aware of the initiative business case and needs to be able to provide input and / or review.

[this chapter really should have a case study that follows along to anchor all that is being described.]

A business case is used to establish the role of technology within the organization. Clearly defining a business case is often the first step that an organization takes to justify new technology-driven projects. Effective business cases often include the development of usage scenarios, key performance indicators, and critical success factors.

Scenarios
Scenarios provide an important mechanism for continual improvement. The use of scenarios aids individuals in communicating their role(s) within the organization. They can also be used to support the creation and implementation of new and innovative strategies for improving business tools and processes.

The creation of scenarios requires that roles be envisioned and written in simple stories that describe; the person, what they will be doing, and what they will achieve. These simple stories should be created by all members of the organization and provide the basis for user stories (described further as a component of the Rational Unified Process). These stories can also form the basis of the institution / organization / enterprise knowledge directory; where individuals can locate individuals with the skills and abilities required for the completion of tasks.

Key Performance Indicators
Where the creation of business scenarios help to define what actions each individual will undertake, the creation of key performance indicators (KPI) will describe one tool for the evaluation of these actions. Key performance indicators also reinforce the organizations goals and objectives – as defined by the critical success factors.

That said, as one tool for measuring the effectiveness of project action items, KPIs can provide valuable insight. Historically, KPI have been defined as simple measures for website clicks, resource requests, and the like. Today, as the ability to engage individuals with online tools and technologies evolve, these metrics will need to evolve; more structured methods for measuring engagement continually over time can yield insight into how barriers can be reduced and incentives created for project stakeholders.

Establishing KPIs is an important step in the ongoing assessment and evolution of technological architecture. Once systems have been designed, the ongoing evaluation of system goals and objectives will lead to continual improvement. Regardless of how your organization defines success, use of performance indicators that reduce project barriers and create incentives can facilitate strategic alignment between stakeholders and identify areas for growth, development and innovation.

Critical Success Factors
Just as KPIs inform the ongoing evolution of technological architecture based on how effective each project action item is, critical success factors inform the ability of the KPIs to meet the larger project goals and objectives.

It is commonly stated that what gets measured, gets managed. It is important therefore, to ensure that the critical success factors be carefully crafted as poorly constructed success factors can encourage misguided actions – especially where economic benefit is tied to performance accomplishments.

For example, using the metric 'Increase usage of online wiki' might encourage more casual chatter about low priority initiatives; causing increased barriers to high performing collaborative teams. Alternatively, using a success factor such as 'increase strategic alignment that results in new economic and research partnerships' may encourage action oriented steps by teams and provide a tool to move beyond discussion into coordination of actionable items.

< * summary here tying all these business case elements together. * >

Approaches and Methodologies
Moving forward means capturing the requirements in a form that best suits the organization. For the most success tying things back to the organizations vision and strategy will ensure there is alignment throughout all levels of the organization.

When we discuss the internet as the platform, There are a number of identifiable perspectives: 1) The internet as the universal access point - where information can be accessed in offsite storage - cloud computing perhaps. 2) The internet (protocols, schemas, validations, etc) that enforce the aggregation and federation of data - distributed computing 3) The standards that are forming to assist access and interoperability of the internet 4) Semantic web where the ontology ([|folksonomy]) defines the vocabulary and links of a knowledge domain and is technology agnostic (ie will exist regardless of technology innovation) 5) software agnosticism - where committing to open source and multiple software platforms rather than to a single or proprietary software platform

Once we set the context of what is the internet we need to describe the solutions development methodologies that take vision and strategy (with supporting scenarios) into implementation.

Lightweight
Lightweight solution development methodologies are more pragmatic and less ritualized than the traditional approaches. A number of methodologies exist within this domain; [|Agile], [|Extreme], [|Scrum]and others... Nimbleness is the key to the lightweight approaches. Once it is accepted that the Internet is the platform then a methodology that allows quick adoption of new Internet technologies is preferable.

User Stories
User stories will be harvested from the scenarios. each should be modular enough to become a feature to be implemented within the software / solution.

< * more complete definition of user stories required * >

Actors
[|Actors] are all the participants within an organization. They should be described, given personalities and photos attached. The more personable they are they more effective people have in relating to the role.

Choosing Technologies
The ability to select the appropriate technologies for integration into the support activities of the organization (such as capturing requirements, and iterative development) can be supported by ensuring that the costs and benefits of various technologies be acknowledged and considered. This process is often overwhelming given the abundance of technology and tools available. This section and the following section on arcitectural frameworks begin the discussion by providing an overview of procurement processes and decision factors.

A timeless approach
As technology evolves, our ability to adapt and adopt to new and changing tools becomes bound to our existing tools and technologies. This can be seen in both large organizations who are bound to legacy IT applications with expensive and out-dated databases, as well as individuals who have limited time to learn new tools or move their digital content to new applications. In recent years technologists have started to address these concerns by providing methods and tools for organizing content. These tools include software applications that allow individuals to add descriptive text to help them search and organize their digital files.

Descriptive text added to digital files is called metadata. Metadata (descriptive information attached to data) can be added to files automatically - for example when a digital camera saves exposure information to an image file. Or the metadata can be associated with a file using desktop applications such as Adobe Bridge, or web applications such as Delicious. Sometimes that addition of metadata is referred to as tagging because the information is attached to the original content much like a tag is attached to a product in retail stores - allowing users to remove the tag without affecting the product at anytime.

Individuals should be aware, however, that tags are not always easy to remove. Just as retail stores can add security tags that cannot be removed without the use of specialized machines, some software applications attach tags in a manner that prevents integration with other applications (rather than enable it).

One advantage to using metadata (tags) is that software applications can - if integration capabilities are enabled - leverage this information to exchange data. However, this ability is not inherent in the technology. The ability to exchange data requires that applications are designed and coded in a manner that allows individuals to import and export this content in a standardized manner. Efforts to standardize this data exchange can be seen in the now common virtual card (vCard) format that allow individuals to exchange personal contact information - such as information found on business cards - between software applications, computers and / or devices such as iPods.

When evaluating technology, the ability to import and export content becomes one of the factors that must be considered. This ability will be described in greater detail as we begin to assess the various technological tools and their total cost of ownership (TCO).

Don't commit to any specific technology other than tagging

Buy vs. Build vs. Subscribe vs. Utilize
There are many ways to bring software features into your project. With the success of open source and free software services this decision becomes more complicated due there being more good options. - Describe the 4 options - Describe the strengths and challenges for each option

Assessment Framework
When I refer to assessment I am referring to deciding which platform to use over another. And having the business identify the factors for the decision... more on this to come.

When considering technology investments, one must look beyond the original purchase price of software and hardware and look at the total cost of owning the product over the products lifespan. This number is often referred to as the items total cost of ownership (TCO). Evaluating software using this method allows organizations to consider a wider variety of factors when implementing technological solutions, including the upfront cost of purchase (if any), and costs associated with customization, integration, maintenance, and ensuring availability.

Once a the total cost of ownership (TCO) is estimated, decision makers can select technological solutions. Each of the factors considered have costs and benefits. To cover some of these consideration, we will briefly discuss the four alternatives and provide some insight into where these solutions may be appropriate to adopt. These factors will be considered in greater depth as we discuss the assessment framework for technological tools and applications.

Architectural Issues
what should be considered the high level architectural issues / decisions..

Once you have assessed and procured the necessary technology, organizations must begin the process of building their online space. As with the construction of a community center, the creation of an online space should be viewed as a long term investment with high cost for construction and even higher costs of modification once constructed. Carefully considering the long term viability and interoperability of an online space will help to ensure that the community flourishes for generations of online visitors.

Single Sign-On
One of the barriers to ensuring that individuals attain value from technical initiatives is ability for individuals to quickly and easily gain access to content and resources. This ability can be facilitated by creating directories that assign groups and access permissions to individuals based. The collection of groups and permission levels, however, must be kept secure as information may not be appropriate for public distribution. For this reason, server computers utilize files that can quickly exchanged between trusted authentication servers. These files are passed using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
 * LDAP
 * as it related to community
 * http://IDCommons.net :: identity commons - 'In Focus' organizational review insert (?)

Use of Standards

 * W3C - in particular UI related
 * WS-*

The use of standardized software communication methods will help to ensure that investment of time and energy from online visitors and contributors provide continued value in the constantly changing technology landscape. In it's most broad terms, the internet can simply be defined as an organization structure (or network) of interrelated objects (such as computer applications) that communicate. The ability to communicate using standards is an important component to creating an inclusive environment that encourages innovation

“Web-based services provide data to applications in a format that is not dependent on the platform of the individual user. *< The web, therefor, can be defined as an organization structure [or network] of interrelated objects (such as computer applications) that communicate. >* The ability to communicate between two computers is based on: the standardization that has occurred within the transportation of data across the physical network infrastructure, and the establishment of a common language.” Shawn Berney, 2008 LEGEND :: *< [content added to 2008 chapter] >* **Service Orientation** JSON - JavaScript Object Notation

Ubuntu One uses JSON to submit and modify content over a network environment. JSON uses special view documents with javascript functions to operate on the JSON content. This allows Ubuntu One to synchronize multiple instances and multiple users using the CouchDB database engine. Authentication for the CouchDB engine using the OAuth or the Open Authentication engine to allow third party access to content available within a network environment.

REST - Representational State Transfer


 * Client / Server architecture designed to capture the current representation state of a given resource...
 * HTTP and SOAP RPC are both examples of REST architecture at work.
 * In a REST architecture, their is a full separation of concerns, servers provide storage for content - improving portability, while clients are responsible for the presentation of content and user interface.

REBOL -- Relative Expression Based Object Language - http://www.rebol.com/what-rebol.html

Unlike JSON and REST which is designed around a server / client model, the Relative Expression Based Object Language (REBOL) can be setup in a peer configuration - providing control on both ends of the communication line. This control allows REBOL programmers to build more complex workflow process by mapping resource inputs to resource outputs. REBOL can be used to process raw data straight from Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Input / Output resources (low level) or it can process data destined for software applications for decoding (higher level on the OSI or Open System Interconnection stack). This ability to access the data from any layer on the OSI stack allows developers to define and structure how content is processed. For example, email messages can be sent to a mail application with a copy being created and sent to an archival hard drive.


 * Rebol Server Pages
 * One language, server and client = 500 KB

**Event Driven Architectures (EDA) & Event - Condition - Action (ECA) rules**
Workflow systems

The ability to define the way in which data is processed within a data stream can be very valuable when considering alternative techniques for defining how data is managed within the organization. For example, when considering data integration, aggregation and federation.

It is becoming more common for computer systems to include tools and applications that make the creation of workflows easier and more accessible for daily tasks. In the Macintosh OSX operating system, a tool called Apple Automator provides a variety of events that can be linked together to create a fluid and well integrated workflow. For more complicated tasks,

Critical Paths
When systems are mapped using data streams, it becomes possible to map computation resources to human resources. Event Driven Architectures and Event - Condition - Action rule sets can be used to define how data moves through the workflow, and Critical Path analysis can be used to track workflow progress and ensure that projects are meeting organizational objectives. Tools to manage the critical path of organization objectives include the use of PERT charts. PERT charts are simply diagrams used for program evaluation and review (or the Program Evaluation and Review Technique).

When beginning any project that has many sub-projects it is important to have a critical path of all the projects to identify the inter-dependencies. These inter-dependencies are often overlooked yet are critical for an integrated solution. -- Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT Analysis)

**A common platform?** If there could be considered a common platform for online learning it is more founded on technologies than on solutions. Upon review of the solutions available it becomes apparent that most open source educational solutions are built upon a LAMP technology architecture.

The LAMP architecture consists of a combination of four independent technological solutions. Linux is the first technological solution. Linux is an operating system that can provide basic communication to and from the computer hardware. Fundamental operations such as printers, screens, and keyboards are connecting through the computer operating system. Linux is unique in that it has been developed through a collaborative process and is distributed freely under various forms of open source licensing models.

Apache is a software application that provides web-based communication services to the computer operating system (in this case, Linux). Apache provides a fully configurable communication tool for managing information you would like to share over a network or the world wide web. Apache is released under an Open Source license and can be used freely for both commercial and non-commercial enterprises.

MySQL is a database tool used to store and relate content. Like Linux and Apache, MySQL is an open source and freely available application. MySQL is a robust database and is commonly used in combination with a dynamic website that can update database records and search existing records to identify relational information. These dynamic websites can use a variety of programming languages, but MySQL is known for being best integrated with the PHP language.

PHP is a programming language...

LAMP

 * Linux (Operating System)
 * Apache (Http Server)
 * MySQL (Database)
 * PhP (Programming Language)

Learning Solutions
 * Drupal
 * WikiMedia
 * Moodle
 * WPMU
 * bbPress

Featured Approaches

 * WikiEducator
 * Wikipedia

Contracting expertise
Sometimes you just have to pay... but be sure you write in knowledge transfer to the contract, and the social media is a good way to capture the tacit knowledge.

Subject Matter Experts
Ensuring they can still do their day jobs

Mediating & Facilitating
Strategic alignment The social contract

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Created: {$creationdate} Last revised by: {$revisioneditor} on: {$revisiondate} (UTC) This work is licensed under a [|Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License].