esup-portail: a global approach of digital services for higher education in france

June 10-15, 2012

Growing Community; Growing Possibilities

ESUP PortailA Global Approach of

Digital Services for Higher Education in

France

Alain Mayeur University of Valenciennes

Mathilde Guérin University of La Rochelle

2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 2

ESUP-Portail The French Consortium

Goals & Strategy


Overview Since 2002: Project “Digital working

space” portal of digital services (ENT in France)

80% of French students and establishments staff use the platform to access to services and information

4 years (since July 2008) for the new structure (non profit structure with its own budget)

70 members in France

The ESUP Portail Consortium


2012 : 17 UNR covering national territory More than 90% of students have a digital

working space (ENT)


UNR RéunionUNR Midi Pyrénées

UNR PCL

ACOR

UNR LR UNR PACA

UNR RAUNRA

UNR CUNR PdL

UNRB

UNR Normandie

UNPIdF

UNRNPdC

UNERA

UNIRA

UNR Picardie


Objectives Facilitate learning and campus life for

students... but also the daily work of the staff members

Pool the development of digital services to divide costs between universities

Share technological evolutions and new services amongst the members

Imagine and plan the evolutions of the French students' personal portal (Espace Numérique de Travail - ENT)



Some of the main services that have already been deployed so far: access to LMS

staff member's personal file

selective admission management for staff members and internship candidates

student electronic office

digital community management

mobile services for smartphones

integration of Content Management System (CMS) in the students' personal portal



Strategy Solutions are open-source to enable a

constant evolution of tools and services Each establishment can adapt the

technological groundwork to fit its own strategy and needs

Collaborate with other consortiums such as Jasig and Sakai, whose solutions are the basis of the French projects

Assure the perpetuity, the adaptability, the technological developments



Give access to the Information System depending on the user's profile

Integration of e-learning platform, access to pedagogical services, integration of documentation components…

Encourage team brainwork and sharing of experience/feedback

Support on the standards



ESUP-Portail : The French Consortium

Organization


Organization Strategic board composed of 9 people Director of the consortium: Alain Mayeur Technical Coordination Team:

14 collaborators

Gatherings: 4 meetings a year

annual seminar for global coordination


That’s me!


Support of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research: evolution of digital plans and services for

training, employability and academic life

Financial contributions from the Ministry and other French local self-governments



Working Groups Work regarding uPortal: package, tutorial, etc.

Group management: Grouper internet 2

Portal/CMS

Communication (mail, calendar, digital desktop)

ESUP-Mobile

ECM-Nuxeo

IHM (ergonomics, look-n-feel, etc.)

OAE Sakai Group (created in April 2012)



Framework for development: ESUP-Commons2

Portlet, web mobile

Contribution of universities and engineering schools (development)

Lively community, encouraging debate Mailing lists and Wiki ESUP-Days: 2 conferences a year in Paris

more than 100 participants each time

#14 on June 27th 2012



Trainings to help members acquire or improve their technical skills

Offered by ESUP Portail members: esup-commons-v2 (followed by 90 developers)

esup-uportal

Provided by external companies: HTML5 / CSS3

jQuery (UI, mobile, etc.)


15

Relationship with Jasig and Sakai

Increasing our collaboration JASIG/ESUP for the last 6 years

Following the reflection and discussion about the Jasig-Sakai mergence

Work regarding Jasig solutions

Work regarding Sakai solutions


2012 Jasig Sakai Conference


Collaboration with Jasigesup-uportal

esup-uportal: what for?

environment.build.ldap.url=ldaps://ldap1.univ.fr:636environment.build.ldap.pooled=false

esup.properties

<bean id="defaultLdapContext" class="org[...]LdapContextSource"> <property name="url" value="${environment.build.ldap.url}"/> <property name="pooled" value="${environment.build.ldap.pooled}"/> </bean>

LdapContext.xml

Packaging & configuration

Create French package

Centralize configuration properties into one file and/or encourage the use of runtime environment properties

18

Internationalization Improve French messages

Translate default and quickstart entities

Add/Edit design for French portals


2012 Jasig Sakai Conference


HCI & UI

Create new skins Tutorial on how to custom the design Find French companies to identify as

“privileged partners” for design customization

Reflection on usability, ergonomics and accessibility

Identify most used customization and integrate them



Shibboleth

Facilitate Shibboleth integration Documentation

Configuration

Proxy CAS Authentication

Grouper

Documentation / Best Practices Suggestion of “generic group structure”



Support

• Continuous support (french mailing-lists)

• Recommendations / Best practices

Infrastructure, What (not) to do?, …

• General documentation / FAQ

Data migration, layout management,…

• Find French companies to identify as “privileged partners” for portal deployment



esup-indicateurs

• Statistics on portal and services usage

Who? What? How much?

esup-uportal: Additional stuff


Web Services

• “Export” of groups and user attributes…

• … usable from portlets

Monitoring Servlet

• Real-time data on portal status

Memory, Threads,…

esup-uportal: Additional stuff


esup-uportal4 v1.0

• Beta release: late June 2012

• First production deployment: Sept. 2012

• Widespread adoption: Jan. 2013 and beyond

esup-uportal: Roadmap


Collaboration with JasiguMobile


French packaging?

• Nothing planned for now

Internationalization

• French Messages

Development

• Patches

• New features

uMobile: Made in France


Examples of new modules

uMobile: Made in France


New features

RC release: late 2012

Deployment in France

First production deployment: Sept. 2012 Widespread adoption: Jan. 2013 and

beyond

uMobile: Roadmap


Collaboration with JasigPortlets


esup-filemanager

• v2.2.0 (May 2012)

• Lets the user access (and manage) their homedirs (up/download, rename, delete, move, ...)

Portlets: Shareable services


esup-lecture

• v2.0-RC8 (GA: late 2012)

• Aggregates XML feeds (RSS, RDF, …) and handles the users' preferences (subscription, (un)read items,...)



esup-annuaire2

• v0.2.2 (June 2012)

• Searches through a LDAP directory for students, staff members or structures



esup-messages

• v2.0.0-SNAPSHOT (RC1: late June 2012)

• Lists mails in the user's inbox and displays the mail content



esup-twitter

• v0.6 (March 2012)

• To follow someone’s tweets



esup-portlet-sympa

• v4.0 (November 2011)

• Displays the mailing-lists the user has subscribed to or is the owner (or moderator) of



Collaboration with JasigThe How and the Why


The How

• The new GIYF: “Google Git(Hub) Is Your Friend”

• Contributing in mailing-lists and joining specific WGs

Collaboration with Jasig

uPortal

uMobile-app

esup-uportal

EsupPortailjasig

uMobile-app

Pull request

Pull request

Fork

Fork

uPortal


The Why

• …

• Really?!

• …

• Do you even have to ask?!

Collaboration with Jasig


Collaboration with Sakai

Feedback on OAE


Sakai CLE

• Sakai CLE in two French universities

UPMC: used as an e-learning platform

ULCO: used as a teaching and collaborative tool

• Mainly used in two French universities for collaborative needs (Poitiers, Valenciennes)

• Presentations in 2 of our ESUP-Days

July 5th 2007: Sakai functionalities and usage at UPMC

July 2nd 2010: evolution of Sakai deployment and method of integration in ESUP Portail

Sakai in French Higher Education


Sakai OAE

• Deployment of test instances in 3 universities

• Powerful ergonomic environment:

Simultaneous collaborative writing and document sharing

Different levels of workspaces

Various settings available

Sakai in French Higher Education


Mainly focus on collaborative activities

• Staff collaboration

• Teacher/student or student/student collaboration

An asset as a collaborative tool

• Student projects and internship

• Collaborative assignments

May respond to future portfolio needs

• External users

• Document sharing

Feedback on Sakai OAE


Main limitations (early 2012)

• “Poor” online documentation

• Customizing styles seems laborious

• No quota limit

• * No French translation

• * Needs to be compatible with the French digital workspaces (ENT) and CAS


* : now available


Conclusion (early 2012)

• Quite different from the LMS solutions used in French establishments

Is such a migration worth it?

• Some tools, praised by teachers in our LMS solutions, seem to be missing

Tests, tracking, …

To be used in addition to regular LMS as a social network and collaborative tool




ESUP SakaiOAE Working Group


Creation of the ESUP SakaiOAE Working Group

Objectives

• Maintaining the French version

• Organizing thematic days with feedbacks of partners

• Thinking about implantation strategy in the information system of establishments

• Widget development



Roadmap

• First meeting: Sept. 2012 What? Who? When? => to define the roadmap!

Concretely speaking...

• JIRA tickets

• The return of GIYF Git(Hub) Is Your Friend



ESUP-Portail A Global Approach of Digital Services

for Higher Education in France 2012 and beyond...


Objectives

• New French esup-uportal package

• Customized skins (uPortal, OAE, etc.)

• Grouper: user profile management

• New features/services

• …

• And increase collaboration with Jasig and Sakai!

2012 and beyond...


And... Voilà!(aka “That’s all Folks!”)

Questions?

esup-portail: a global approach of digital services for higher education in france

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