d3.1 system architecture and user requirements · nemesis project has received funding from the...

NEMESIS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770348.

D3.1: System Architecture and

User Requirements

Ref. Ares(2018)1130170 - 28/02/2018

D3.1 System Architecture and User Requirements 2

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Document details

Project Acronym: NEMESIS

Project Name: New Educational Model Enabling Social Innovation

Skills development

Project URL: www.nemesis-edu.eu

Project Type: Innovation Action (IA)

EU CALL: CO-CREATION-01-2017

Grant Agreement No.: 770348

Project Start Date: October 2017

Project End Date: January 2021

Deliverable: D3.1

Due date of Deliverable: Month 4

Actual Submission Date: Month 5

Name of Lead Beneficiary for this

deliverable:

Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg

(FAU)

Report Author(s): Dr Aristidis Protopsaltis

Reviewed by: Ms Ioanna Garefi, Mr Gerd Schmidt

Revision: 0.5

Dissemination Level: RE

http://www.nemesis-edu.eu/



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Document History

Version Date Comment Modifications made by

0.1 2/01/2018 1st draft Aristidis Protopsaltis FAU-ILI

0.2 15/01/2018 2nd draft Aristidis Protopsaltis FAU-ILI

0.3 20/02/2018 3rd draft Aristidis Protopsaltis FAU-ILI

0.4 27/02/2018 Review and

corrections

Ioanna Garefi STIMMULI, Gerd

Schmidt FAU-ILI

0.5 28/02/2018 Final version Aristidis Protopsaltis FAU-ILI

Disclaimer

Any dissemination of results reflects only the author's view and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Copyright message

© Partners of the NEMESIS Consortium, 2017

This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise.

Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through

appropriate citation, quotation or both. Reproduction is authorised provided the source is

acknowledged.



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Acronyms, abbreviations and definitions

Acronyms Definitions

LMS Learning Management System

GPL General Public Licence

SCROM Shareable Content Object Reference Model

LOM Learning Object Metadata

QTI Question and Test Interoperability specification

XML Extensible Markup Language

CSV Comma-Separated Values

IMS Instructional Management Systems

LTI Learning Tools Interoperability

GUI Graphical User Interface

PHP Hypertext Preprocessor

MySQL My Structured Query Language

GIF Graphics Interchange Format

PNG Portable Network Graphics

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group

DOM Document Object Model



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XSL eXtensible Stylesheet Language

PEAR PHP Extension and Application Repository

SIPs Social Innovation Practitioners

ILIAS Integriertes Lern-, Informations- und Arbeitskooperations System

SI Social Innovation

mp3 Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-3 Audio

wav Windows Wave

mp4 MPEG Layer-4 Audio

avi Audio Video Interleaved

RSS Really Simple Syndication

DBMS Database Management System

Auth Authentication

HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol

DB Database

XML-RPC eXtensible Markup Language - Remote Procedure Call protocol

cURL Curl URL Request Library

API Application Program Interface

AICC Aviation Industry CBT Committee

IMS-QTI Instructional Management Systems - Question and Test

Interoperability



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LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

CAS Central Authentication Service

RADIUS Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service

SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol



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Table of contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................... 8 1.

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 9 2.

System Architecture of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform based on ILIAS 3.

5.3 ................................................................................................................................. 10

Foundation Layer .............................................................................................................. 11 3.1.

ILIAS Application and GUI Layer ................................................................................... 11 3.2.

Responsibilities of the GUI Layer ........................................................................................... 11 3.2.1.

Responsibilities of the Application Layer ............................................................................... 11 3.2.2.

Code Directory Structure ......................................................................................................... 12 3.2.3.

Software Requirements ............................................................................................ 13 4.

License .............................................................................................................................. 13 4.1.

General Requirements ...................................................................................................... 13 4.2.

Web Server .............................................................................................................................. 13 4.2.1.

PEAR Packages ................................................................................................................ 15 4.3.

Requirements of Optional Features .................................................................................. 15 4.4.

Hardware Requirements .......................................................................................... 15 5.

Number of Users and Kind of Usage ................................................................................ 16 5.1.

Requirements .................................................................................................................... 16 5.2.

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform Installation ........................................... 16 6.

Main Features of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform ................................... 18 7.

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform User Requirements .............................. 19 8.

Predefined User Requirements ......................................................................................... 20 8.1.

Stakeholders’ Requirements ............................................................................................. 21 8.2.

Conclusion and Future Work ................................................................................... 24 9.



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Executive Summary 1.

The aim of the current deliverable is to describe the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform system

architecture and the stakeholders’ requirements. The aim of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning

platform is to grant access to the specific Social Innovation educational model and resources to all.

The platform will provide open access to an online collaborative environment, with useful

resources for teachers, students, members of the SIP community and other stakeholders This

platform will also facilitate the creation of a Community of Practice (CoP) of teachers, school

leaders and relevant stakeholders willing to break silos, engage in dialogue, drive organizational

change and experience the value of the NEMESIS educational model.

The stakeholders’ requirements were gathered from three different sources, firstly, from the

proposal and the description of the requirements there, secondly from the ILIAS platform itself and

its existing functionalities and thirdly, from a workshop with the NEMESIS partners during the 2nd

progress meeting in Seville.

The NEMESIS Open Learning platform system architecture describes the conceptual model of the

NEMESIS SI Open Learning environment, outlining the organisation, the structure and the

behaviour of the platform.



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Introduction 2.

The NEMESIS Social Innovation Open Learning platform aims to provide open access to teachers

training resources, educational resources targeted to students and open access to the community

of Social Innovation Practitioners (SIPs) that will be developed by the project. In that way, budget

constraints will not be a barrier for them since the adoption of the model will not imply any cost.

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will offer the tools to teachers to transform their schools

into connected learning communities, where SI learning and professional development never stops.

The platform will also offer the space for i) Connecting teachers interested in SI education, ii)

Communicating and sharing information, open educational resources, personal experiences and

best practices.

To foster NEMESIS potential to scale and be adopted by educational institutions around Europe,

the project aims through the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform to grant access to the specific

educational model and resources to all. This platform also facilitates the creation of a CoP of

teachers, school leaders and relevant stakeholders willing to break silos, engage in dialogue, drive

organizational change and experience the value of the NEMESIS educational model.

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will be based on ILIAS Open Source e-Learning platform

(http://www.ilias.de/) and will aim:

To grant access to the NEMESIS model and resources for all including those from

disadvantaged environments.

To facilitate the adoption and scaling of the NEMESIS model by interested institutions and

communities around Europe by offering to educators open access to SI learning resources,

methodologies and teaching practices.

To strengthen community ties across different schools, cultures and backgrounds, fostering

opportunities for creative learning collaborations.

To enable the development of a Community of Practise for teachers, school leaders and

generally education related stakeholders with the aim to promote the specific educational

model and achieve organisational change.

To develop a platform offering open access to SI education including tools, materials and

user-generated contents.

To integrate the platform in the web environment of the existing portals and platforms

used by teachers, with specific reference to SCIENTIX, ECSITE, EDEN, etc.

To provide information, guidance and support to the use of tools and sharing of learning

experiences.

To provide a collection of tools for efficient and effective communication, sharing of ideas,

expert articles, media, and delivery of materials such as files, documents, digital scenarios,

etc.


http://www.ilias.de/


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System Architecture of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning 3.

Platform based on ILIAS 5.3

ILIAS is a versatile web base learning management system (LMS) that supports course

management, learning modules, test and assessment, portfolios, surveys, wikis and blogs. All these

features are all built into the core, making ILIAS a "one-stop solution" for e-learning.

ILIAS is open source, available to developers to further explore and develop and requires no

licensing fees. It is available as open source software under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL)

and can be used without any restrictions. Due to the openness of its source code ILIAS can be

adapted easily to specific requirements. Any special requirements can be implemented either by

any developer who has the knowhow or by ILIAS’s service providers, a voluntary membership to

the ILIAS Society that guaranties the long-term development process.

ILIAS is adaptable. Developers can change its look, implement their preferred learning scenarios,

integrate it with other websites or intranet, activate only the modules you need, give each user the

exact access and permissions you specify.

ILIAS is standard-compliant: SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 learning modules. LOM metadata. IMS

QTI Test and Assessment. XML, CSV and Excel exports. IMS LTI to embed external applications.

Once installed, the complete ILIAS suite runs directly in the browser and no further software is

needed.

Finally, ILIAS is the Learning Management System that can cope with anything you throw at it: 100

or 100.000 users, desktop or mobile.

The main architecture of ILIAs 5.3 can be seen in the figure 1 below. ILIAS components are divided

into services and modules. Each module provides an implementation for one or more resources

that can be added to the ILIAS repository, e.g. a forum, a glossary or a chat. Services provide

general functionalities used in the modules (or in other services), e.g. the role based access system

or the news system.



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Figure 3 – ILIAS Basic Architecture

Foundation Layer 3.1.

The Foundation Layer contains all external systems and programs that ILIAS depends on, like PHP,

MySQL and Apache. To keep it simple, some helper tools like Imagemagick or the zip program are

omitted in the diagram.

ILIAS Application and GUI Layer 3.2.

The main idea is that every component consists of a number of User Interface and Application

classes.

Responsibilities of the GUI Layer 3.2.1.

Processes input and generates output

Accesses $_GET and $_POST variables

Calls methods of the Application Layer

Generates output with Template Engine

Responsibilities of the Application Layer 3.2.2.

Accesses database to insert, update and delete data

Calls other application or core classes to perform some tasks



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Figure 2 – ILIAS Application and GUI Layers

Example flow of control

The flow of control starts in a User Interface class that calls methods of the corresponding

application class. The example on the right shows the control flow through the different layers. The

scenario displays the title of an ILIAS group. The group GUI class ilObjGroupGUI creates an instance

of the application class ilObjGroup. In its constructor the application class accesses the database

and reads all the instance properties with the help of the query method of class ilDBx. After the

processing of the constructor ilGroupGUI calls the getTitle() method if ilObjGroup to receive the

group title and finally sets a template variable in the HTML output accordingly. Sometimes more

than one GUI and/or application class are involved in processing a user request. But method calls

may only targeted to objects in the same or underlying layers.

Code Directory Structure 3.2.3.

The architecture leads to the following main directory structure for the code:

Modules/ Glossary/ classes/ templates/ Survey/ classes/ templates/ Test/ ...



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Services/ AccessControl/ classes/ MetaData/ classes templates Search/ ...

Software Requirements 4.

In general ILIAS should be installable on every server that runs a common PHP/Apache. Supported

database systems are MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL (experimental).

License 4.1.

ILIAS is distributed under the General Public License (GPL), version 2.0. The text of the GPL may be

obtained from www.gnu.org.

General Requirements 4.2.

Web Server 4.2.1.

Apache web server: ILIAS should run on current Apache 1 and 2 releases. The development team

recommend Apache 2.2.x or higher.

PHP

PHP including support for GD (jpeg, png, gif), DOM, XSL, MySQL and PEAR.

Table 4 – PHP versions for ILIAS

ILIAS Version PHP Version Needed

5.3.x >= 7.0.x

5.2.x 5.5.x - 5.6.x, 7.0.x

5.0.x - 5.1.x 5.3.x - 5.5.x

4.4.x 5.3.x - 5.5.x

4.3.x 5.2.6 - 5.4.x

4.2.x 5.2.6 - 5.3.x

4.0.x - 4.1.x 5.1.4 - 5.3.x


http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0

http://www.apache.org/


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3.8.x - 3.10.x 5.1.4 - 5.2.x

3.4.x - 3.7.x 4.3.x - 5.2.x

3.0.x - 3.3.x 4.3.x - 4.x.x

The version of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will be based on ILIAS 5.3 version

Database

Regarding the database requirements, ILIAS suggests the use of MySQL as DBMS (PHP mysqli driver).

Table 2 – MySQL versions for ILIAS

ILIAS Version MySQL Version Needed

4.4.x-5.0.x 5.0.x, 5.1.32 - 5.1.x, 5.5.x, 5.6.x

4.2.x - 4.3.x 5.0.x, 5.1.32 - 5.1.x, 5.5.x

4.0.x - 4.1.x 5.0.x, 5.1.32 - 5.1.x

3.10.x 4.1.x, 5.0.x, 5.1.32 - 5.1.x

3.7.3 - 3.9.x

3.6.5 - 3.6.x

4.0.x - 5.0.x

3.7.0 - 3.7.2

3.6.0 - 3.6.4

4.0.x - 4.1.x

Another option regarding the database is MariaDB as DBMS. MariaDB's API and protocol claim to

be compatible with those used by MySQL ILIAS should run with it, too. However since it is not

tested by the ILIAS development team it is considered its support being experimental.

Alternately, another option can be the use of Oracle as DBMS. The appropriate version of the

Oracle versions can be seen in the table 1-3

Table 3 – Oracle versions for ILIAS

ILIAS Version Oracle Version

4.3.x - 5.0.x 10g, 11g

4.0.x - 4.2.x 10g



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Additional Software

ILIAS is using the Imagemagick "convert" command line tool through PHP exec calls.

Table 4 – Imagemagick versions for ILIAS

ILIAS Version Imagemagick Version Needed

4.2.x - 5.0.x ImageMagick 6.3.8-3 or higher

Earlier versions No specific version requirements

PEAR Packages 4.3.

ILIAS requires the PEAR packages Auth, DB and HTML_Template_IT. Since ILIAS 4.0.x all necessary

PEAR packages are included in the ILIAS package, so no additional PEAR installation should be

necessary.

Requirements of Optional Features 4.4.

Link Checker: PEAR package HTTP_Request

SOAP Authentication: PEAR: Auth 1.3.0 or higher

CAS Authentication: PEAR: Auth 1.3.0 or higher, PHP 4.3.1 or higher with CURL 7.5 or

higher

Radius Authentication: PEAR: Auth_Radius 1.0.5 or higher

LDAP Authentication: PEAR: Auth 1.4.0 or higher. Optional: PEAR: Log 1.9.11 for extended

authentication infos in the ILIAS log file.

Internet compliant E-Mail addresses: PEAR::Mail 1.1.14 or higher.

Installation instructions: Open a terminal window, and enter:pear install mail.

WebDAV: PEAR package Auth_HTTP

Lucene Search Engine: PEAR package XML_RPC, PHP cURL support

jsMath: for displaying mathematics (only until 4.2.x. Since 4.3.x jsMath is substituted by

MathJax)

SOAP server: php cURL support

Readable .html URLs: Add AllowOverride All to your apache virtual host configuration to

make local .htaccess files work.

Hardware Requirements 5.

The necessary hardware to run an ILIAS installation is always dependent from the number of users

and the kind of usage. An ILIAS installation with 5,000 registered users that download some files

from time to time needs less hardware than an installation with 30,000 users of whom several

hundred are running online exams on the server. The following example shall give an idea about

the necessary hardware for an institution starting with ILIAS.



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Number of Users and Kind of Usage 5.1.

ILIAS is set up for about 4,000 registered users. Based on empirical values this number of registered

users results in a number of around 40 concurrent users. The installation will be used to distribute

learning materials (files, learning modules, glossaries, etc.), to run courses, assessments and

surveys and for collaborative learning and team work.

Requirements 5.2.

A recommended web server to fit to these needs would be a common dual core web

server with 4 GByte RAM.

Bandwidth of the web server connection should be at least 100Mbit/sec.

Usually, 250 GByte are sufficient for the hard drive. 25 GByte would be used by the

operating system and ILIAS itself. 225 GByte would remain for the client's data base and

file system

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform Installation 6.

The Nemesis SI Open Learning platform installation, as presented in figure 3, will start with a single

server on a virtualisation platform for easily scaling to a growing number of users. The virtualisation

software runs on a HP-Proliant server with 64GB Ram, Xeon processors and lot of disk space. The

single virtual server for Nemesis LMS is carrying the webserver (Apache), the database server

(MySQL), a few services (e.g. pdf generation, chat, etc.) and the file repository and should be able

to serve 4000 users as described above.

The server is monitored by a nagios based system to detect the availability of all services and to

register the need of increasing the resources for the nemesis server.

With a growing number of users the services of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform installation

will be separated, first to multiple servers on the same virtualisation server, if necessary to multiple

virtualisation servers.

The services will be separated to:

1. one or multiple webservers that are connected to 2. one database server and to 3. one fileserver hosting all files that are available in the repository.

The file server is connected to the webservers via nfs4 and will also provide the java-server for a

rapid search inside the repository (Lucene) and a service for pdf-generating (e.g. creating

certificates for the users).

In the case of using several webservers the requests from the users/internet will be load-balanced

by a load balancer to send requests equally to all webservers.



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Figure 3 – NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform Installation



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Main Features of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform 7.

Some of the main features of ILIAS 5.3 and therefore the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform

include: full support of SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004, Powerful Test and Assessment tool that

allows users/creators to offer both self-evaluations for learners, as well as complete e-exams. ILIAS

is offering flexible Course Management for a multitude of didactical scenarios and study programs

that allow the reproduction of full curriculums with a single tool.

Another feature is content sharing with fast Drag & Drop File Upload, a personal workspace for

learners, allowing the easy creation of portfolios and blogs, simple creation of study materials with

authoring tools such us build learning modules, wikis, glossaries, and much more.

ILIAs has adopted a streamlined design, despite their usage differences, usability of all tools in ILIAS

is held very similar - making it easy to explore new learning scenarios!

Furthermore, the SI Open Learning platform will enable a large number of integrated

communication tools such as personal profiles, contacts, who is online?-tool, mail, chat and more.

A general characteristic of the SI Open Learning platform is the ILIAS concept of Personal Desktop

and Repository. While the Repository contains all content, courses and other materials structured

in categories and described by metadata, the Personal Desktop is the individual workspace of each

learner, author, tutor and administrator. The Personal Desktop contains selected items from the

repository (e.g. currently visited courses, groups or an interesting forum) as well as certain tools

like mail, tagging, a calendar and also e-portfolio and personal blogs.

The features of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform are:

Listing of selected courses, groups and learning resources

Personal profile and settings like password and system language

Bookmark Management

Personal Notes

External Web Feeds

Internal News

Personal Workspace

Blogs

e-Portfolio

Calendar

Internal Mail

Chat

Forum

Personal Learning Progress

Groups

Wiki

Courses

Weblinks



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These ILIAS features inform the user requirements of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform and

they will be adopted in the platform. Since the NEMESIS project builds on the EU initiative Open Up

Education and exploits open technologies to develop the online platform, it is only judicious and

practical that these features described above, will be part of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning

platform.

Figure 3 – ILIAS Characteristics

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform User 8.

Requirements

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will be based on the 5.3 version ILIAS Open e-Learning

platform. The platform supports learning content management (including SCORM 2004

compliance) and tools for collaboration, communication, evaluation and assessment. It can be run

on any server that supports PHP and MySQL.

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will be a powerful and flexible tool for learning and

collaborating online. It will serve as a knowledge and collaboration platform. The platform will not

be restricted to any particular didactical model but it will support a variety of uses and methods.

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will offer the opportunity to the users to create learning

and teaching materials, work flows and tools will be streamlined throughout the system making it

easy to learn and use. All users will have a personalised working space. Access to learning materials

and features can be controlled precisely and flexibly. Authoring tools for editing learning materials

such as learning modules, wikis and glossaries will be integrated. All learning and teaching material,

working material and communication tools are provided in a central repository. Access to the


https://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/File:ServicesIlias.png


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objects and tools will be granted by a flexible role-based access control system. All resources within

the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform, whether created within the system, imported or linked to,

can be described with metadata. This means that they can easily be found using the internal search

function. The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will be available in all the languages that the

piloting and evaluation will take place. Additional languages might be offered, if they already are

available in ILIAS.

The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform offers integrated tools for authoring learning modules, glossaries, and exercises. Teachers, learners and SIPs can cooperatively author content online like in a wiki.

Predefined User Requirements 8.1.

The user requirements for the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform were gathered in a twofold

approach, bottom up and top down. The top down approach was used to describe at the proposal

level the ambition of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform and the main functionalities that the

consortium envisage to be necessary in order to facilitate the NEMESIS objectives.

In more detail, SI Open Learning platform offers the following components based on the user

requirements as described at the proposal:

Personal Desktop. Every user will have his or her own Personal Desktop. It collects all resources

that are needed by the learner to fulfil the daily learning tasks. This is the individual working space

of each user. It is the starting point for all sessions - from here you could, for example, continue

working through a learning module or drop in to check on one of your study groups. You can select

learning resources or materials to put on your Personal Desktop, from where you can easily access

them. The calendar on the Personal Desktop shows your appointments and deadlines. The

NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will also offer email and news here as well as the ability to look

up and contact other online users. The Personal Desktop helps the user to organise and

administrate all his/her groups and courses and the personal settings, such as your preferred

language or personal profile.

SI Online Communities, Groups and Collaboration. The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform allows

the creation of groups and it is an ideal tool for collaboration. Groups in SI Open Learning Platform

allow cooperative learning and working without additional tools. Groups can use all SI Open

Learning Platform tools like wiki, forums or file sharing. Users can create groups that are open for

everyone or have specially defined access restrictions, e.g. access with a password. These

elements will enable the creation of a Community of Practice (CoP) and the Online learning

community of students sharing their digital stories. Collaborative learning and authoring online

material together will be one of SI Open Learning Platform’s strong points using the ILIAS

components. Learners will not be seen as mere consumers of knowledge but as active producers.

SI Communication. The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will support a variety of

communication methods such as chats, forums and emails. The personal desktop will include an

awareness function that shows users that are currently online. The platform also sends information

via RSS to the user and displays external RSS feeds in the system. Furthermore, an internal news

system will be available and with that users will be able to inform and communicate with group



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members. Furthermore, forums can be used for topic-related discussions or to discuss

organisational issues. For real-time communication SI Open Learning Platform will use an

integrated chat-tool.

SI Educational Resources. The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will offer multiple ways to

deliver learning content. All types of document files can be uploaded; SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2

and AICC are supported. NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform includes also an internal authoring

environment to create XML-based learning modules that can include images, videos, flash, applets

and other web media files. It is possible to create glossaries and reuse term definitions within other

learning modules.

SI Open Learning Platform Standard Compliance. The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will

accomplish the e-learning-standard SCORM 1.2 and it achieves the maximum conformance level

LMS-RTE3. It also supports LOM metadata standard, AICC and IMS-QTI. NEMESIS SI Open Learning

Platform will also be compliant to SCORM 2004 3rd edition.

SI Authentication. The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform will support a lot of different

authentication methods: Standard Login/Password Authentication (Database), LDAP, Shibboleth,

CAS, Radius and SOAP based Authentication.

NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform SOAP Interface. The NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform

could be integrated into a larger environment of institutional administrative systems. To enable

information exchange with these systems, the platform will offer a SOAP interface that allows

controlling almost everything in the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform with an external

application.

All these requirements will form the basis for the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform

development. Additional requirements will also be implemented to address the specific needs that

the consortium and the stakeholders might have. These additional requirements will be gathered

from the consortium workshop, described below, and after the evaluation of the alfa version of the

NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform.

Stakeholders’ Requirements 8.2.

At the bottom up approach, the existing ILIAS requirements were evaluated and additional

requirements were gathered in a more detailed way, focusing at lower level functionalities. Based

on the ILIAS main features 42 requirements were developed, seeing in table 5 below. The 42

requirements served as the first level of negotiation between the consortium members. At the end

of January 2018, at the second project progress meeting in Seville, a workshop took place with

focus on identifying the NEMESIS platform user requirements. The members of the consortium

were split in 4 teams of 7-8 people with mixed expertise and worked through the user

requirements. They were asked to go through the requirements negotiate, reach a consensus and

give one rating as a team to each requirement. By doing so the participants had to prioritise and

rate the requirements as follows:

M Mandatory requirement. 'This feature must be built into the final system.'



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D Desirable requirement. 'This feature should be built into the final system unless the cost

is too high.'

Optional requirement. 'This feature can be built into any system we have.'

E Possible future enhancement. 'This feature may be used in the final system; however we

just want the feature in and of itself.'

The rating was explained and given to the participants at the beginning of the workshop. Each user

requirement was uniquely identified with a number. Participants were also asked to suggest

requirements that felt they were missed and should be included in the list.

The table below shows the identified requirements and the rating of the 4 workshop teams.

Table 5 – NEMESIS SI Open Learning Platform User Requirements

Section/ Requirement ID Requirement Definition

Priority Ranking

R1. The system shall allow user registration MMMM

R2 The system shall allow different user types MOMM

R3 The system shall allow administrator registration MMMM

R4 The system shall allow teacher registration MMMM

R5 The system allows users to add personal information, describe their groups and schools etc.

MDMM

R6 The system should allow Integration/upload of text (pdf, doc, …)

MMMM

R7 The system should allow Integration/upload of images in common

file formats (jpg, png, gif)

MMMM

R8 The system should allow Integration/upload of video in common

file formats, mp3, wav, mp4, avi)

MMMM

R9 The system should allow file upload. File uploads should be

restricted to a defined maximum size per file or quota per user in

order to prevent server overload

MMMM

R10 The system should allow material collection and creation of

containers like folders for topics.

MMMM

R11 The system should allow messages communication MOMM

R12 The system should allow email communication OMOM

R13 The system should allow communication via forum DMMM

R14 The system should allow chat EMMD

R15 The system should allow Video conferencing tools (if available as

plugin, else external solution attached via link)

EMOO



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Priority Ranking

R16 The system should allow Communication with mentor/tutor via

messages/mails

MEMM

R17 The system should contain a discussion board for

individuals/teams to ask questions; questions can be answered by

mentors or by other students

DMMM

R18 The system should allow a Star rating system so that students can

rate the responses- mentors/tutors can provide qualitative

feedback

EEOO

R19 The system should contain Group collaboration tools (wiki) DDMM

R20 The system should support portfolio development OOOO

R21 The system should allow Surveys to decide upon open questions within groups

OEOE

R22 The system should allow the formation of groups MMDM

R23 The system should allow the formation of different modules/lessons

MMDM

R24 The system should allow the use of a calendar OMMM

R25 The system should allow the use of a notice board (to post short messages)

EDDD

R26 The system should allow for the teachers to change individuals group membership

DMOM

R27 The system should allow connection to a database DMMM

R28 The system should be able to be used on different operational systems

DMMM

R29 The system should be able to be used with different web browsers

MMMM

R30 The system should allow for personalization (e.g. personal desktop)

DMMM

R31 The system should contain a repository MMMM

R32 The system should allow for password protection MMMM

R33 The system should allow for password reset MMMM

R34 The system should allow the use of metadata MMMM

R35 The system should allow the users to search for content MMMM

R36 The system should allow the users to search for other users DMMM

R37 The system should allow the use of icons for resources DMDM



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Priority Ranking

R38 The system should allow icon customisation OOOO

R39 The system should allow different permission settings for accessing different resources

DMMM

R40 The system should allow bookmarks DMDM

R41 The system should allow users to see who is online EMDD

R42 The system should allow for public or private user profile MMMM

R43 The system should support multiple languages M

R44 The system should allow not logged in users to access resources M

R45 The system should allow the development of SIP community area

M

Most of the user requirements were considered to be mandatory from the majority of the

stakeholders. All the mandatory requirements will be implemented. The desirable requirements if

they are part of the core ILIAS system will also be implemented as part of the NEMESIS SI Open

Learning platform. The same will happen with the optional requirements and the future

enhancement. The participants suggested as mandatory three new requirements, marked in blue

colour in the table 5. These requirements will also be implemented. Especially the requirement

regarding the SIPs is core for the successful implementation of the project. SIPs participate in the

co-creation of the educational resources and the implementation of the learning activities with

students providing thus a strong link to the business, social economy and civil society world.

Therefore their needs and requirements are essential in the SI Open Learning platform. After the

alfa release of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning platform the same stakeholders will evaluate the

features at a hands on workshops. Special attention will be placed on customisation of the user

interface, functionality of the components and the community of SIPs area. The feedback will feed

in into further development and improvement of the NEMESIS Open Learning platform.

Conclusion and Future Work 9.

The presented deliverable presented the system architecture of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning

platform and the user requirements that will define what the system should be able to do. The

system architecture is based on ILIAs 5.3 version and the user requirements were gathered from 3

sources. The ILIAS system, the expected features as defined at the proposal and the stakeholders.

After the release of the alpha version, on month 10, where all the functionalities will be

implemented, the consortium will test the functionalities of the NEMESIS SI Open Learning

platform and the feedback will provide valuable guidance for further development. All elements of

the SI Open Learning platform will first be developed and tested in restricted areas of the platform.

It’s a good practice to start with a common development in English and have a pilot test with

selected end users, the consortium members. Then, the integration of the platform will follow



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together with further testing that will lead to the beta and final version of the NEMESIS SI Open

Learning platform, on month 15.


d3.1 system architecture and user requirements · nemesis project has received funding from the...

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