A Standard Problem Buy, build, or share? Nothing new here - ranges from ERP

systems to instructional applications Buy – commercial product Build – local development Share – open source software,

consortium, shareware, etc.

Buy, build, borrow, or share? We all know the tensions

Control vs. Dependence Customization vs. Standardization Regular Upgrades vs. Local Support Community of users vs. being “on

your own” Then there is that nasty

documentation problem

Course Management Systems Repeat of many of the same issues Origins of CMS systems often

found in university “build” efforts: WebCT, Blackboard, Angel, Prometheus, etc., etc.

Many of us still “build” with all the advantages and disadvantages that come with that

Course Management Systems Some open source efforts (at least

for education) such as Angel from I.U.

Lots of us are buying software, sending in complaints, attending user conferences trying to influence the direction of the products, hoping for bug fixes in the next release, etc.

Aren’t Open Source Products the Best Answer to Our Needs?

Unclear – there are some issues Size of community of use – for problem

solving and product inertia How much customization of source code is

required that will complicate adding improvements made by others?

In general, I would encourage as much openness in source code as possible in education – that’s our strength: sharing information

Some Confusion: Open Source Products vs. Open Standards

Open standards for “Learning Management Systems” (LMS) – IMS, SCORM, IEEE

Enhancing those standards to put more of the “learning” in: Open Knowledge Initiative (MIT, Stanford, etc.)

Not really open source products

Maybe there is middle ground Blackboard’s building blocks program

at least offers some chance for a middle ground.

A commercially maintained, upgraded, and supported product with APIs that allow certain kinds of modification of the product, plug-ins, and standardized communication through the APIs.

We’re exploring this middle ground to see if its workable What do we need? What have we learned? Where do third-party firms,

universities, and Blackboard need to go to make all this better?

What do we need? A stable platform that takes care of

“course management” and lets us concentrate on building effective learning applications.

The capacity to add features without customizing core code (everything from security to incorporating applets into Bb courses that report to the grade book)

What do we need? To have a system that will allow

faculty who do develop instructional applications to avoid reinventing CMSes.

Adding administrative functions without customizing core code.

What does Blackboard offer? A set of Java classes that make up

APIs that appear to allow many of these things to be done through insertion of Java servlets (appropriately packaged) into their Level III products.

The methods in the APIs appear fairly rich, although (I think) this is v 1.0

Example of the Middle Ground? We’ve written one (simple, ugly)

“building block” that allows documents to be moved to any folder within the course through the APIs

It took one of our programmers about 4-5 days (including learning about BBs)

He has written a second administrative application I’ll show you today.

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

A Plug-in

What Have We Learned This API structure does work, although we

haven’t deployed anything in production Blackboard has been helpful to us and

reasonable in their pricing for educational institutions who want this additional feature

We *think* a developer/sharing community can develop around Bb plug-ins

What else is needed? It appears that Bb users will need to

develop a set of servlets that follow OKI standards as they develop to make this strategy both open and better for instructional applications

If Bb works with us to find the holes in the APIs and develop v 2.0, this may well be an attractive “middle ground” for many of us