the e-framework: achieving critical mass for effective collaboration scott wilson 21-11-2005

The e-Framework:achieving critical mass for

effective collaboration

Scott Wilson21-11-2005

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Who am I?

Assistant Director, CETIS

http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott

Beklager, jeg snakker ikke norsk!Tyvärr talar jag inte svenska!

What this talk is about

• The e-Framework• Where it came from• What it is• Where its going

Players in the story

• JISC– CETIS– UKOLN

• DEST, Industry Canada, SURF• IMS• MIT OKI

How did it all begin?• We (JISC) noticed something wasn’t

working with our public-funded development work

• We wondered how we could fix it, and make it better, and came up with some ideas

• We realized we weren’t alone in this, and started talking to people in other countries

Public-funded open source projects have a

sustainability problem. Why?

• Insufficient incentives to continue building on prior work

• projects have time-bounded funding• projects are conceived in an

isolated fashion• Lack of transferability causes an

accountability issue

Why do we use frameworks?

• Rapid development, with room to innovate/focus on new functionality

• Examples: Eclipse, Zope, Mozilla/XUL, Spring, Rails…

• The e-Framework is a bit more abstract, but shares similar principles

… but more importantly

• they pull together a diverse group of developers who might otherwise work in isolation,

• enable small groups of developers to build something together far broader in scope than any single group could, and

• foster a sense of community and facilitate shared understanding

The E-F: Dynamic tensions

• innovation is promoted, but placed within a paradigm that provides context

• Solutions can be radically different, but they must remain mutually comprehensible

What does the framework contain?

• Service definitions and specifications• Reference models• A community of developers and

researchers• A referenced set of artifacts - SDKs

and libraries, tools, exemplars and case studies but not systems and solutions

Development approach

• Provide libraries (not complete applications) to support deployment of services and service consumers

• Support development of both commercial and open-source applications (e.g. Moodle, Sakai, Boddington, WebCT, BB…)

• Support deployment of service-oriented architectures within education

• Aim to demonstrate practical web service architecture

Services and Models

• Services describe discrete functional relationships between agents and reference standards that can be used to realize them

• Reference Models describe patterns for connecting services and agents in common situations

Models in the e-Framework

• OAIS (Repository management)• FREMA (Assessment)• PLE (Personal Learning)• LADIE (Learning activities)• COVARM (Course validation business

processes)

Etc.

Models [1]

Models [2]

E-Framework in OSI terms…

E-Framework in OSI terms…

Service Orientation

• While each of the models in the framework are different, they are all intended to be decomposable in a service-oriented manner

• Service orientation is the e-Framework paradigm

Technical approach

• Pragmatic web services– ReST, SOAP, RDF are all considered viable

service technologies, and promoted where appropriate

– Initially concentrated on SOAP, but…

• Developing libraries and SDKs to accelerate service uptake

• Support flexible deployment/architecture

Enterprise view

Regional view

Personal view

Adapters

Adapters

Q: Is the e-Framework a model-driven architecture?

Collaboration approach

• Funding development and demonstration projects

• Promoting community• Promoting reuse of prior

development outcomes• International context: Australia, UK

and others (NZ, Netherlands, Canada…)

Collaboration

• Establishing a governance model across different government departments in different countries took a lot of work

• There was a lot of skepticism, and it needed a lot of explanation of what we were trying to achieve

• Some people still think we’re building an Open Source LMS :-)

Concepts

• Getting everyone to agree the core concepts such as “service”, “model”, and “framework” took a long time

• We’re still encountering terminology difficulties

• … but at least we have a place where we can go to try and overcome them

E-F as political instrument

• Partners have found one of the main uses of the framework is non-technical

• By setting out a “map” of the space it becomes easier to spot gaps, overlaps and issues in the development programme

• Having e-learning, e-science, information services, admin show as a single entity can be very useful

Promoting active reuse

• To ensure the artifacts developed for the framework have greater sustainability, JISC actively promotes the demonstration and further development of previous OSS projects

• Only with an active user community and developer community can OSS thrive

Where is the framework?

• Its connecting various systems together in colleges and universities

• Its weaving together parts of regional federations

• It’s a mostly invisible (to end users) set of service components, libraries, and architectural models

• So its not an easy thing to market!

Examples

• Rostering: IMS-ES SDK/SWEET.net, BEWT…

• Timetables: BERT…• Assessment and item banks: APIS, ASSIS,

PyAssess, SPAID…• Workflow: ISIS, SLeD…• Resource discovery: D+, MDC…

• Integrated into Boddington, Moodle, WebCT, Blackboard, uPortal… (and Sakai?)

Synergy

(APIS + ISIS = ASSIS) + JPLAG = ASAPASAP + uPortal = RoboProf (Dublin)APIS + Moodle = Serving Maths (York)(COPPERCORE +SLED + APIS = SLED2 +

IMS-ES) > Liverpool Hope

Q: Why didn’t we use this resource to build one

great big Open-Source LMS for everyone?

Success Factors

• based on practical experience• evolve in response to experiences

and reflection• support partial implementation • Doesn’t mandate a single

development environment• Support a wide range of

implementation patterns

Next steps

• Widening the agenda: e-Science, information environment, e-Admin/Management information

• Working with the commercial sector• Broadening the stakeholders - more

countries, organisations, agencies• Doing a proper job of dissemination

Thanks!More info at…http://www.e-framework.org

s.wilson@bangor.ac.ukhttp://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott