EDUCAUSE | Open Source

Free digital texts begin to challenge costly college textbooks in California

ckeller — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:53:43 -0500

Would-be reformers are trying to beat the high cost -- and, they say, the dumbing down -- of college materials by writing or promoting open-source, no-cost online texts.

Latest EDUCAUSE Quarterly Now Available Online

cluckett — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:49:59 -0500

The latest EDUCAUSE Quarterly is now available, with feature articles about an institutional survey assessing learning and scholarly techniques, a faculty development survey for teaching online, collaborative development at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and lessons learned from adopting an open source learning management system at Royal Roads University.

EDUCAUSE Quarterly is also available via RSS feed. Click the orange RSS icon on the EDUCAUSE Quarterly home page to access the XML required to subscribe.

Queensland University of Technology: Three Generations of IT Governance (and Counting)

ckeller — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:18:43 -0500

This ECAR case study complements the 2008 ECAR study, Process and Politics: IT Governance in Higher Education, by Ronald Yanosky with Jack McCredie. ECAR undertook this case study of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to demonstrate how the underlying elements of a mature governance process facilitate the strategic development of information technology (IT) services. QUT has carried on a sustained program of IT governance development for almost a decade, in order to create a mature set of institutional supports, a layered advisory and decision-making structure that feeds innovation, and a network of involved governance participants, with the ultimate goal of developing a set of optimal IT services for the university. Characterized as "relationships underpinned by light-weight process frameworks in order to extract value from technology tools," QUT's IT governance structure relies on engaged people who drive the process as well as the project management and financial tools that assist with decision making.

Citation for this work: Pirani, Judith A., and Gail Salaway. "Queensland University of Technology: Three Generations of IT Governance (and Counting)" (Case Study 4). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Reforming IT Governance at Berkeley: Introducing an Enterprise Perspective to a Decentralized Organization

ckeller — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:07:47 -0500

This ECAR case study complements the 2008 ECAR study, Process and Politics: IT Governance in Higher Education, by Ronald Yanosky with Jack McCredie. ECAR undertook this case study of the University of California Berkeley to demonstrate how a large, decentralized research university approaches a complete rethinking of a campus information technology (IT) governance structure and the steps taken to initiate the transition to the new structure.

Citation for this work: Spicer, Donald Z., and Judith A. Pirani. "Reforming IT Governance at Berkeley: Introducing an Enterprise Perspective to a Decentralized Organization" (Case Study 3). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Happy Families, Good Fences, and Winning IT Collaborations

ckeller — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:12:46 -0500

This ECAR research bulletin introduces the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation research on successful collaborative practices in the context of higher education. It details 20 collaborative success factors and maps them to relevant examples gleaned from research on IT collaboration conducted by ECAR.

Citation for this work: Pirani, Judith A., and Toby D. Sitko. “Happy Families, Good Fences, and Winning IT Collaborations” (Research Bulletin, Issue 15). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Moving to Moodle: Reflections Two Years Later

ckeller — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:26:32 -0500

Adopting an open source learning management system combined benefits and challenges, with lessons for change management.

A Bridge Between Blackboard and Open Source?

ckeller — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:57:22 -0500

"Blackboard, the dominant player in course management software, has the ability to inspire devotion and, for the more fervid open-source adherents, not a little contempt. So today’s announcement may cause a stir among those more apt to liken Blackboard to the devil than a gentle giant: The company is partnering with Syracuse University to develop a way to integrate Blackboard with Sakai, one of the primary open-source alternatives."

Free and Open Source Options for Creating Database-Driven Subject Guides

ckeller — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:32:39 -0500

This article reviews available cost-effective options libraries have for updating and maintaining pathfinders such as subject guides and course pages. The paper discusses many of the available options, from the standpoint of a mid-sized academic library which is evaluating alternatives to static-HTML subject guides. Static HTML guides, while useful, have proven difficult and time-consuming to maintain. The article includes a discussion of open source database-driven solutions (such as SubjectsPlus, LibData, Research Guide, and Library Course Builder), Wikis, and social tagging sites like del.icio.us. This article discusses both the functionality and the relative strengths and weaknessess of each of these options.

"Open Source Reality": Douglas Rushkoff Examines the Effects of Open Source

agould — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:52:19 -0500

Yesterday, popular culture commentator and "cyberpunk" Douglas Rushkoff gave a talk on "Open Source Reality" at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. This lecture was a fourth in a series on understanding the culture and practices of Digital Natives, or the generation who has been raised with the computer as a central part of their lives.

Rushkoff, who teaches media theory at New York University's Interactive Telecommuncations Program, said the Internet is allowing people to more easily gather information and participate in discussions and debates. He said the open source applications that have emerged from universities in past years have greatly helped by stirring innovation and encouraging dialogue. Rushkoff says that while previous generations were focused on competition and the individual, he believes the Internet has provided a powerful vehicle for networking and building ideas within communities. Indeed, he says today's digital natives are much more attuned to collaboration, whether in school or at work, due to the Internet's collaborative atmosphere.

However, all is not rosy if the participants are not willing to question the sources, information, and history that accompanies any application or website. Just as digital natives previously were early video gamers who eventually learned to write code, it is essential that today's Internet participants not only receive and read the information- Rushkoff says they must learn to write it as well. He believes that access to the Internet, accompanied by a questioning, seeking nature, will allow the formerly passive to become action-oriented. Otherwise, he says, the danger of not learning "the code" is that the code will be used on you.

Most will agree that applications, networking sites, and accessible information that encourage action, rather than passivity, are commendable. However, it is incumbent upon the participants that they develop a greater sense of history and background before simply acting. The ability to network and make a difference is fine, but not if the participant is uninformed or simply pushing forth the agenda of a self-selected, narrow network. One of the audience members at Rushkoff's talk suggested the phrase, "Those who do not know history are damned to repeat it," was outdated and inaccurate. She said now is the time for us to "write history" and not focus on the past. A man identifying himself as a historian said later that it is vital that people have a concept of what has taken place in the past in order to better understand the present. He disputed the notion that the generations that went to the movie theaters and later watched televisions in their homes were merely passive recipients of the media's influence. Rather, he said people may have not understood the mechanics of the film projectors or televisions, but they had opinions and arguments on what media was directed at them.

The ability to explore a plethora of sites does not equal intellectual curiousity, nor does it prevent the participant/student from suffering from ideological or educational insularity. So, the notion that the Internet has made some sort of demarcation between the passive and active, depending on a person's generation, is not quite accurate. While Rushkoff is hopeful that technology and networking will result in greater teamwork and dialogue, there are folks in other disciplines who would not seem so hopeful (see Putnam's Bowling Alone). Furthermore, what does it mean for a society when the students have excellent Internet skills, but cannot place the American Civil War in the correct century?

Perhaps the concern is not so much with the applications themselves. It is with the approach we take when we get caught up with the novelty of easier communication, and forget the substance and power the Internet can wield for each of us.

(The thoughts expressed in this blog are not necessarily reflective of the positions taken by EDUCAUSE or the higher education community. They belong solely to the blogger.)

Community Source Software: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?

drupal — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:25:46 -0500

Community source is designed to coordinate the work of different user IT organizations sharing the same purpose and requirements. An alternative to commercial applications and custom development, it gives users control and shares risk across peer organizations. Although several such public sector communities exist and yield great promises, many struggle with achieving critical mass and a viable business model. This panel will compare and contrast community source with more traditional software sourcing options and explore critical sustainability success factors.

Large-Scale Open Source E-Learning Systems at Open University UK

gdobbin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:25:04 -0500

This ECAR research bulletin examines the factors leading to the selection of the open source learning management system at the Open University, details the many aspects of development work that had to be undertaken, and describes the issues involved for institutions participating in an open source community. It also looks at some of the many business and cultural challenges the institution has faced, and at how faculty are being encouraged to move toward a model of education incorporating increasing amounts of e-learning content and activity.

Ccitation for this work: Sclater, Niall. “Large-Scale Open Source E-Learning Systems at Open University UK” (Research Bulletin, Issue 12). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Podcast: Community Source Software: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?

gbayne — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:46:16 -0500

This hour and seventeen minute podcast features a panel discussion from the EDUCAUSE 2008 Enterprise Conference in Chicago. This lively discussion, "Community Source Software: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?," includes:

Laura McCain Patterson, Associate VP, Information Systems, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Richard Spencer, Acting CIO and AVP IT, The University of British Columbia
Brad Wheeler, VP for IT, CIO, and Professor, Indiana University
Session moderator: Andrea Di Maio, VP Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, Inc.

Community source is designed to coordinate the work of different user IT organizations sharing the same purpose and requirements. An alternative to commercial applications and custom development, it gives users control and shares risk across peer organizations. Although several such public sector communities exist and yield great promises, many struggle with achieving critical mass and a viable business model. This panel compares and contrasts community source with more traditional software sourcing options and explores critical sustainability success factors.

Dynamics of Supporting Sakai Through Local and Global Collaboration

gdobbin — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:06:36 -0500

This ECAR research bulletin discusses the adjustments that the Indiana University information technology organization made, and continues to make, in order to support membership in Sakai. It has been said that supporting Sakai can seem like trying to change a tire on a moving car. As co-founder of and active participant in the Sakai collaboration, the effects of IU’s decision—the unexpected, the challenging, and the delightful—are discussed in terms of the intra- and interuniversity realities of highly collaborative efforts.

Citation for this work: Goodrum, David, Jan R. Holloway, Anastasia S. Morrone, Lance Speelmon, and Elizabeth A. Van Gordon. “Dynamics of Supporting Sakai Through Local and Global Collaboration” (Research Bulletin, Issue 11). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Recasting the Centralization-Decentralization Debate: Advancing the Innovation Support Cycle

gdobbin — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:33:06 -0500

This research bulletin explores the importance of focusing on innovation in decision-making about IT. Acknowledging the apparent dichotomy between the efficient use of resources in a centralized IT model and the effective application of IT resources toward innovative research and pedagogy, the bulletin presents a model for IT service delivery that can be used or adapted in colleges and universities.

Citation for this work: Frederick, Lawrence W. “Recasting the Centralization–Decentralization Debate: Advancing the Innovation Support Cycle” (Research Bulletin, Issue 10). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

New EDUCAUSE Quarterly Reports on Top Higher Ed IT Issues

cluckett — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:00:10 -0500

The summer 2008 EDUCAUSE Quarterly spotlights the complete findings of the 2008 EDUCAUSE Current IT Issues Survey as well as feature articles on open source software in education, a first assessment of a learning studio, and student use of clickers in library presentations.

2008 EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Closing Session: Leading Ahead of the Curves by Brad Wheeler

llarsen — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:50:27 -0500

Leading Ahead of the Curves

Brad Wheeler, Vice President for IT and CIO, Dean, & Professor, Indiana University

[EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Conference Closing General Session, March 19, 2008]

The slides for this keynote are available at http://www.educause.edu/upload/presentations/MWRC08/GS02/Leading-Ahead-of-the-Curves-Wheeler20080319_inked.ppt

A podcast of the session is available at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/podcastleadingaheadofthec/46500

NOTES

Brad Wheeler began his talk on technology leadership with reminisces beginning in 1993 when he was an associate professor at the University of Maryland and Mosaic was the hot new tool and the Web took off.

Adapting the well-known “and then a miracle occurs” cartoon, he changed the text on the blackboard to show a sketch of “Campus Cyberinfrastructure” -> “then a miracle occurs” -> ”Cloud Computing Nirvana” and said that we can be the miracle in leading ahead of the curves but we need more explicit information in the miraculous step 2.

The Curves we must lead ahead of and balance are:

Technical possibility is where coolness is the key factor. Investors for innovations keep the frontier moving forward. However, for a CIO, technical possibility is not the question but rather technical maturity. When charted against time you end up with a set of steps up rather than a smooth curve.
Social desirability is where “Gotta have it” is the key factor. Social expectation is now a flat line at the top of the chart. Millennials want new technologies immediately. When academic organizations say that you can only upgrade and make changes every few years there are questions to answer for when you can test and when you can deploy - we can’t always wait those few years before implementing. The curve is really a set of steps again. The CIO needs to decide where and when it’s right to buy-in to the new technology.
Economic Feasibility is a matter of dollars where, over time, a product becomes less expensive so you do have a downward curve.

Wheeler has a box where he keeps prognostications and quoted an article in Campus Technology (Oct 23 2007) about five factors they said will have a synergistic effect. There are many who provide these predictions but because of the fog factor we begin to dismiss them. He described how CIOs feel as Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting The Scream.

Wheeler said the main question is:

“Can our actions substantively affect the shape of the curves or do we just adapt as they are revealed?” and asked are we only an industry that reacts to the curves or do we have the wisdom and ability to shape the curves?

His Curve bending examples were

open educational resources/scholarship
search of certitude
community source
licensing terms

Leading ahead of the curve loops us back to Scholarship 2.0 and the rise of IT, digital repositories, and electronic collaboration in achieving and improving the quality of the scholarly endeavors of research, teaching, learning, and service.

He closed by saying that we need to come together and collectively be the miracle to lead ahead of the curve.

In the Q&A, Wheeler answered questions on

supporting those who still want face-to-face
how to leverage across campuses (higher education) so everyone benefits including less wealthy institutions
outsourcing email and integration of applications
open vs commercialization of courses.

=======================

The slides are available at http://www.educause.edu/upload/presentations/MWRC08/GS02/Leading-Ahead-of-the-Curves-Wheeler20080319_inked.ppt

The podcast is available at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/podcastleadingaheadofthec/46500

Open Source Software in Education

elilly — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:02:16 -0500

Academia has adopted open source software for some online learning initiatives because it addresses persistent technical challenges

An Open Source LMS for a Mission-Critical, Enterprise-Level Application: Are We There Yet?

drupal — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:00:25 -0500

The open source learning management system has gradually reached maturity. In this session, we will share ideas and lessons learned about making open source LMS enterprise-ready. Currently SFSU has one of the largest Moodle installations in the United States and is the sole university hosting an anonymous Moodle CVS server.

An Outsourced Open Source LMS and a Pot of Gold?

drupal — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:14:58 -0500

Like many WebCT campuses, SUNY Delhi must select a new LMS and complete migrating to the new system in the next year. The total cost of ownership comparison led us to adopt a remotely hosted open source solution. We'll examine the facts, figures, and progress of moving from WebCT to Moodle and integrating with Banner.

Flickering (or is that Flickring?)

wallen — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:09:33 -0600

I teach a survey of art history class. I use digital images in the classroom and online. While I have several thousand of my own images, my collection is far from comprehensive in chronology and in geography. Arkansas State University twice purchased digital images under a contract with Saskia and others that places severe restrictions on where and how the images may be used (they may be seen only by faculty and students of the university under a secure sign-in system).

I discovered that Flickr has a large store of digital images that may be used for educational purposes. Of these hundreds deal with art and architecture (mostly architecture and sculpture, but with some surprisingly good images of paintings). I never prepare a presentation for my students without checking the holdings of Flickr. Additionally, when I find a particularly good source of images, I bookmark it in del.icio.us so that I may quickly find the collections (under imagearchive) and also share what I have found with others.

The image resources on the web, especially those that offer material unrestricted or under a Creative Commons license.

IT Engagement in Research: A View of Medical School Practice - Corporate Edition

ckeller — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:55:01 -0600

This ECAR research study was designed in collaboration with the Association of American Medical Colleges to analyze the practices and perspectives of IT organizations that support the academic research enterprise in medical schools and colleges. As the potential of biotechnology, proteomics, informatics, computational genomics, and other IT-intensive disciplines continue to offer breakthroughs in medicine, research in these fields requires greater and higher-level technology resources for infrastructure as well as IT support and services. The study is based on the results of a web-based survey sent to 125 medical schools and colleges in the United States, as well as qualitative interviews with leaders at 10 institutions. Respondents to the survey were predominantly chief information officers or other top administrators from 50 medical institutions, yielding a response rate of 39.7 percent. The findings contained in this report echo the results of the ECAR 2006 study, IT Engagement in Research: A Baseline Study, illustrating that the role and importance of IT in research is growing, while funding and budget decisions remain difficult. A non-profit edition is available here.

Citation for this work: Nelson, Mark R. IT Engagement in Research: A View of Medical School Practice (Research Study, Vol. 1). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

IT Engagement in Research: A View of Medical School Practice Roadmap

ckeller — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:27:19 -0600

This ECAR roadmap synthesizes the important issues and recommended actions drawn from the 2008 study, IT Engagement in Research: A View of Medical School Practice, by Mark R. Nelson. This ECAR research study was designed in collaboration with the Association of American Medical Colleges to analyze the practices and perspectives of IT organizations that support the academic research enterprise in medical schools and colleges. As the potential of biotechnology, proteomics, informatics, computational genomics, and other IT-intensive disciplines continue to offer breakthroughs in medicine, research in these fields requires greater and higher-level technology resources for infrastructure as well as IT support and services. The study is based on the results of a January 2007 web-based survey sent to 125 medical schools and colleges in the United States, as well as qualitative interviews with leaders at 10 institutions.

Citation for this work: Albrecht, Bob, and Judith A. Pirani. "IT Engagement in Research: A View of Medical School Practice Roadmap" (Roadmap). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2005, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

IT Engagement in Research: A View of Medical School Practice

ckeller — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:11:35 -0600

Citation for this work: Nelson, Mark R. IT Engagement in Research: A View of Medical School Practice (Research Study, Vol. 1). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Julian Lombardi, Executive Director of the Open Croquet Consortium

gbayne — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:36:51 -0600

In this 15 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Julian Lombardi, Assistant Vice President at Duke University and Executive Director of the Open Croquet Consortium. Croquet is a powerful new open source software development environment and software infrastructure for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses on and across multiple operating systems and devices.

Dr. Julian Lombardi is the Assistant Vice President of Academic Services and Technology Support with Duke University’s Office of Information Technology, Senior Research Scholar with Duke University's program in Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS), and an adjunct professor with Duke University's Department of Computer Science. He is also one of the six principle architects of the Croquet Project, executive director of the Open Croquet Consortium, and a co-chair of MacLearningEnvironments.org. A former biology professor, Lombardi combined his interests in information technology, complex systems, and the phenomenon of emergence in biological systems and began designing and developing computer-supported collaboration systems involving self-optimizing massively multiuser online 3D environments in the mid-1990s. He eventually founded VIOS, Inc. in 1999 where he acted as the venture capital-backed company's first CEO and then Chief Creative Officer/Software architect. From 2002-2005, he managed a learning technology research and development group in University of Wisconsin-Madison's Division of Information Technology.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2007 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Alex Chapin, Principal Curricular Technologist at Middlebury College

gbayne — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:53:42 -0600

This podcast, from the Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2007 Task Force Meeting, features an interview with Alex Chapin, Principal Curricular Technologist at Middlebury College.

Alex Chapin is an Educational Technologist at Middlebury College. He has been directing the development of a number of innovative web applications including systems for content management, digital assets management, assessment and knowledge bases. He is the multimedia designer of the CD-ROM, Fluent Tibetan, The Dialogues and Vocabulary, distributed by Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, NY.

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Mara Hancock, ETS Associate Director of Learning Systems at UC Berkely.

gbayne — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:57:20 -0600

In this 17 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Mara Hancock, Associate Director for UC Berkeley's Educational Technology Services department. Educational Technology Services promotes and supports the effective integration of technology in teaching, learning and communication at the University of California, Berkeley. We are dedicated to service, partnership, and innovation.

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Michael Korcuska, Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation.

gbayne — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:13:19 -0600

In this ten minute podcast, we feature an interview with Michael Korcuska, Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation. Sakai Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the community and development of Sakai, a course management and collaboration system for higher education.

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Mark Notess, Development Manager & Usability Specialist at Indiana University

gbayne — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:47:36 -0600

In this 12 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Mark Notess, Development Manager & Usability Specialist at Indiana University. He is involved in several online learning and research tool development projects including the Variations 3 Digital Music Library Project, and Integrating Licensed Library Resources with Sakai. He also co-authored an article with Lisa Lorenzen-Huber entitled, "Online Learning for Seniors: Barriers and Opportunities". He spoke with Carie Windham at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference in Seattle, Washington.

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Ulrich Rauch, Director of Arts Instructional Support & IT at The University of British Columbia

gbayne — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:21:27 -0600

In this 21 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Ulrich Rauch, Director of Arts Instructional Support & Information Technology at The University of British Columbia. He has recently been involved in a project called Ancient Spaces at UBC, which uses gaming and virtual world technology to recreate locations from antiquity. He also participated in a session at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference entitled, "Indigenous Cultures: From Observing to Experiencing, from Videography to 3D VR Immersion".

Ulrich Rauch organizes the implementation of educational technologies for instructors, students and staff in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia. As the director of a technical and an instructional support unit, and as trained sociologist, Ulrich combines his experience as an instructor with his perspective on learning technologies to research and apply e-learning strategies in support of collaborative learning.

Poke 1.0 afterthoughts

catherine — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:45:38 -0600

On 15 November 2007, Matt Riddle and I attended the “Poke 1.0” symposium at London Knowledge Lab organised by Neil Selwyn. Some brief thoughts and notes on the day here: overall, it was a really exciting and energising event, and I felt there was a strong sense of a nascent research community starting to coalesce. Here are parallel reviews by Lewis Goodings and Juliet Eve.

“Poke 1.0” sought to bring together UK-based social science researchers with an interest in Facebook, as an example of an innovative “social networking” application that is currently used by the majority of students in UK higher education. The audience heard a range of research papers, from media consultancy Human Capital's “macro” view, involving web metrics from Nielsen NetRatings, to Sonia Livingstone's “micro”-level qualitative study of UK teenagers’ use of social networking sites. Our paper represented a “mid-point” between these two extremes, presenting a single-institution case study and focusing on Facebook’s impact on staff/student relations at Cambridge. We also demoed a Facebook mashup widget developed by CARET developers Nicolaas Matthijs and Nick Desmet. The widget allows Facebook users to expose personal Sakai VLE resources on their profile (only the owner can see / access their personal resources). So, we've proved it's possible to do it, the real question now is do students want it, and is it desirable, both educationally and in terms of privacy?

The best came at the end of the day, with a really lively discussion on research ethics and methodologies. The problematic bits are always the most interesting... The consensus in the group seemed to be that many of us are finding that many "gold-standard" research ethics guidelines (e.g. BERA, BSA, Assoc. of Internet Researchers) are not adequate to cover this new research terrain. Is it possible, or desirable, to do "covert" observational research in a "semi-public" environment, for example? (There seemed to be some general agreement among the group that social networking sites are effectively "semi-public" environments, despite their privacy settings and access / searchability constraints.) It's early days yet of course and this sense of newness generated a certain collective enthusiasm, alongside the feeling that, to some extent, we're re-inventing the rules as we go along.

Spock's Risky Take on Trust, Privacy, and Identity Management Online

catherine — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:38:34 -0600

This post sort of follows on from my musings on Pownce, and the relative (in)utility of the current glut of social networking "services".

Received any Spock trust invitations lately?

Spock, a self-described “people search application that allows you to see what your friends and colleagues are doing on the web”, could potentially tell us something about the future of metasearch engines—those clunky crawlers that tried, and mostly failed, to bridge the gap between structured web directories like Dmoz, and the chaotic openness of Google’s PageRank™ technology. Although its interface design, a web-2.0-ified “Google Classic Home”, is so trendy that I’m afraid it’s already terribly dated.

The Spock team have got one thing right: web search is now the primary vehicle for information discovery, and the sudden realisation of this (by the media, at least) has created all sorts of headaches for identity management and privacy online.

We, i.e. the affluent, educated, Western audience that remains the dominant internet consumer group, have made search engines, and the companies that run them, immensely powerful because we have enabled them effectively to constitute our interface to the world. Consequently, we have endowed search engines -- and their enabler, internet connectivity -- with powerful social meanings. “Searchability” means potential, openness, connectedness, currency, agency—qualities that are socially desirable in early 21st century cultures; or at least, the “globalised” cultures of the developed world.

Spock’s positive appeal to consumers is to tap directly into these powerful social meanings. Its negative appeal to consumers consists of using the language of risk to talk about identity management on the web:

“The first step towards managing your online identity is putting the information you want seen about you online. That allows you to control what is being said about you. The second step is staying up to date on new information about you as it appears.” (Spock blog)

Both aspects of Spock’s appeal, positive and negative, come at absolutely the right time for the consumer market: in education, careers advisors are trying to convince students of the need to “clean up their profile”, while teachers, counsellors and youth workers grapple with issues around cyberbullying; in the media and political spheres, the risks posed by ID theft loom large.

So, no argument on my side that managing online identity is important, and becoming increasingly more so. But if you already have an online identity, and if you proactively manage your online identity by publishing indexable information that allows others to locate you, then I don’t see value in the “service” Spock provides. Instead, I see considerable risk.

If you read through Spock’s Terms of Service, it becomes immediately apparent that the Spock folks are terribly worried about two things: the currency of the information on Spock, and the potential for individuals to create profiles that do not belong to them.

Like many, if not most, social networking services (e.g. StumbleUpon, Flickr), Spock is largely reliant on its user community to create value. The first cause of anxiety for Spock, of course, is that if Spock user profiles become out-of-date, then Spock is a useless “non-service” and people will just go back to Google. So, Spock talks tough, threatening to terminate your service if you do not maintain your information.

The second worry for Spock is that a user profile might not “authentically” represent an individual. Again, Spock is totally reliant on users to co-operate in this way to create a community of trust, because Spock itself cannot guarantee identity, and if users do not trust the identities they find on Spock then Spock again is exposed as a useless “non-service.” Doing a couple of sample searches on Spock for people that you already know have a well-established web presence reveals an intrinsic problem for Spock: Spock can and often does generate multiple search results for a single individual, just as happens on the “open” web via a traditional search engine.

Spock tries to solve this problem by encouraging users to consolidate these results into a single profile, by “claiming” them. In this way, Spock is asking users to help conserve its overall aim of having one Spock profile represent a single individual.

But why would you choose to help Spock by doing this? One of the things about the web in general is that information has a short life, and that is exactly what enables people to retain some control over their privacy. What if I change my personal or career goals, leave an organization or group of which I was a member, or move to a different city? Life happens, and people reinvent themselves all the time. But that might not necessarily mean that I want to reject or withdraw “obsolete” information about me – at times, it’s best to just let it alone, and let new information take its place.

It’s not especially useful, and it could even be dangerous, for a company to try and create a public expectation that “identity management” equates to an individual actively “controlling” all the personal information that is available about him/her on the web. And I can’t help thinking that it’s naïve at best, stupid at worst to think that an individual can solve the problem of managing his or her online identity (which consists of a complex mish-mash of information, some generated by the individual, some created by others) by creating Yet Another Profile on this type of system. At this stage, Spock’s goal of a single profile per user looks fundamentally incompatible with the way people—and the web in general—works.

Spock is behaving a bit like the banks that try and stop consumers from sharing their PIN numbers, even with immediate family members. Its attempt to make one profile represent “one authentic user” already looks redundant. Try asking kids using Bebo or Xanga not to share passwords, or create new profiles for their friends -- an interesting theme of the recent symposium on Facebook research.

With my academic hat on, I’d say we’ve already got other, better mechanisms to do the things that Spock says it’s offering users. Mechanisms that allow people to selectively share their information with services and with other individuals, and that don’t rely on submitting personal information to a commercial third party provider. I recognise that my bias towards sharing information, and towards open systems and standards, isn't necessarily shared by tech firms or the general public. But if people are prepared to share information with a system like Spock, surely it's worth looking again at OpenID, ClaimID and FOAF for trust and authentication; or Explode as a way to display distributed networks of people. Somebody like Scott Wilson can probably explain this much better than I can; check out FeedForward, his alpha tool for personalized information discovery.

The 2007 Campus Computing Survey

drupal — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:39:00 -0600

Begun in 1990, the Campus Computing Project is the largest continuing study of the role of computing, e-learning, and information technology in American higher education. The session will present the results of the 2007 Campus Computing Survey, including new data on P2P policies, open source deployment, IT security issues, strategic and financial planning for IT, instructional integration of IT, campus IT standards, course management systems, and Web site services.

E07 Podcast: The e-Framework for Education and Research

kellywalker — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:46:33 -0600

This 41-minute podcast recorded during the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference features Ian Dolphin, Head of e-Strategy, University of Hull, Sarah Porter, Head of Development, JISC - Joint Information Systems Committee, and Malcolm Read, JISC Executive Secretary, JISC - Joint Information Systems Committee speaking on "The e-Framework for Education and Research."

The session abstract:

The e-Framework for Education and Research is an initiative created by public funding bodies in Europe and Australasia. It coordinates information relating how educational institutions across the globe are using technology to support their strategic priorities and how this can be supported by a service-oriented approach to technologies based on open standards. The session will give an overview of the e-Framework and raise some points for discussion.

E07 Podcast: The 2007 Campus Computing Survey

kellywalker — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:17:42 -0600

This 36-minute podcast recorded during the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference features Kenneth C. Green, Founding Director, The Campus Computing Project speaking on "The 2007 Campus Computing Survey."

The session abstract:

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Per Wising

kellywalker — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:37:05 -0600

In this 8-minute podcast, we feature an interview with Per Wising, Product Manager, Stockholm University. He discusses open source software development and the state of cyberinfrastructure in Sweden.

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Martin Ringle, Chief Technology Office for Reed College

gbayne — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:26:34 -0600

In this 26 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Martin Ringle, Chief Technology Office at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. For more than 20 years, Marty Ringle has contributed to the higher education IT profession as a change agent, a collaborator, and an organizer. A deep believer in the role and mission of small liberal arts colleges, his career has been marked by his ability to meld diverse entities into a coherent whole. This interview was recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference in Seattle, Washington.

Implementing, Supporting, and Maintaining Sakai

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:40 -0500

Learn how Indiana University has successfully implemented the world's largest installation of the Sakai open source collaborative learning environment on eight campuses statewide. This presentation will cover migration from an enterprise legacy system, tiered support model, virtualized hardware solutions, source code management techniques, and balancing local needs with community-driven development.

The Kuali Group: Effective Practices and Structures Foster a Successful Collaboration

ckeller — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:53:04 -0500

This case study complements the 2007 ECAR study by Philip J. Goldstein, IT Collaboration: Multi-Institutional Partnerships to Develop, Manage, and Operate IT Resources. Researchers undertook this case study to understand the methods and practices used to manage ongoing collaborative activity and how the Kuali group partners plan for the sustainability of their collaboration. The case study highlights the collaborative nature of the Kuali Project to meet its goal of building a suite of administrative software, rather than the project’s history, structure, or operations.

Next Generation Administrative Systems: Philosophy, Principles, and Technology

ckeller — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:58:20 -0500

It is time to think differently about administrative systems in colleges and universities. Using the Kuali Student Service System as an illustration, this ECAR research bulletin discusses a vision, and a set of functional and technical principles, for the next generation of administrative systems. Although the vision and principles are being developed for a new student system, they can serve as a framework for the development of an administrative system in any area of higher education. They are also a guide to what to look for in planning to select and implement a next generation vendor-supplied administrative system.

Podcast: Service Oriented Architecture

gbayne — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:46:18 -0500

This podcast features a panel discussion from the 2007 Seminars on Academic Computing. The topic is Service Oriented Architecture and panel participants include:

Jens Haeusser, Director, Strategy, The University of British Columbia
Charles F. Leonhardt, Principal Technologist, Georgetown University
Piet Niederhausen, Web & Data Architect, Georgetown University

The abstract from this session:

This is a review of service oriented architecture from a number of perspectives. The panel will define SOA, discuss its value to higher education, and present use cases on how it can enhance our scholarly and enterprise systems. Challenges in organizing for and implementing SOA will be highlighted including a discussion of using SOA in enterprise open source development as well as distributed environments.

This podcast edited with assistance from Kelly Walker.

Human Futures for Technology and Education

ckeller — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:41:14 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. In January 2007, Michael Wesch released a video on the history of the Web called "The Machine is Us/ing Us." The video quickly tracks the transformations of the Web from its beginnings as a place to retrieve information into a vibrant user-generated and user-organized platform of RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social networks, and folksonomies that encourage, enhance, and capitalize on collaboration. At the video's end, Wesch suggests that these transformations require us to begin rethinking virtually everything, from authorship and copyright to our sense of identity and selfhood. These new technologies also have profound implications for education. What possibilities and challenges do they bring to our teaching? What should we be teaching to students who are habituated to a new media environment where Google and Wikipedia are always at their fingertips? How are these technologies changing the way students learn and assess information? In short, we need to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and whom we think we are teaching. For this presentation, Wesch creates another video in the same genre as "The Machine is Us/ing Us." Like the earlier video, this video quickly tracks the important moments in the history of education and attempts to capture the possibilities and challenges of the current moment in such a way as to pose and clarify some of the most important questions facing us as educators today.

The University in a Networked Economy and Society

ckeller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:14:50 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. When Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, came out, Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig said, "This is -- by far -- the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this." This work examines the ways in which information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that may have transformative consequences for economy and society. Benkler's presentation outlines the characteristics of the networked information economy and the roles of collaboration and commons-based production of information, knowledge, and culture, and it suggests avenues to apply these broad trends to education and education-related policy.

Intellectual Property and Cyberinfrastructure

ckeller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:47:25 -0500

The development of a new generation of cyberinfrastructure promises to increase and facilitate globally distributed scientific collaboration as well as access to scientific research via computer networks. But the potential for such access and collaboration is subject to concerns regarding the intellectual property rights that will be associated with networked data and with networked collaborative activity. Intellectual property regimes are generally problematic in the practice of science, because scientific research typically assumes practices of openness that may be hampered or obstructed by intellectual property rights. These difficulties are likely to be exacerbated in the context of networked collaboration, where the development and use of intellectual resources will likely be distributed among many researchers in a variety of physical locations, often spanning national boundaries. Such issues may be addressed by a combination of public and private approaches, including amendment of U.S. law to recognize transborder collaborative work, and adoption of clarifying contractual agreements among those who are collaborating via cyberinfrastructure, including cautious adaptation of “viral” licensing from the open source coding community.

The Fluid Project

ckeller — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:07:49 -0500

The Fluid Project is an international community of academic institutions, community source software projects and corporations working together to address the precarious values of usability, accessibility, internationalization, quality assurance and security within academic software projects.

Fluid combines both design and technology to create a living library of sharable user interface components that can be reused across community source projects. These components are built specifically to support flexibility and customization while maintaining a high standard of design quality. The Fluid framework will enable designers and developers to build user interfaces that can more readily accommodate the diverse personal and institutional needs found within community source projects.

Fluid will encourage user-centered design practices within community source software. To this end, we are creating a designer's toolkit that will offer useful design, accessibility, and usability strategies and documentation. Members of the Fluid team are available to provide usability and accessibility support within the Sakai, uPortal, Kuali Student, and Moodle communities.

Community Development

StuartYeates — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:25:51 -0500

At OSS Watch we've been focusing on community development recently, that is getting people up to speed on how to build a community around a project (usually a software project, standardisation effort or similar).

We've started a Community Development mailing list, the discussions have mainly focused, so far, on RSS and on the use of Google Analytics in education.

I've also written an extensive piece on how to improve a page on Wikipedia.