1. Rob Allan SC’04 Portals for Integrated Services for e-Research and e-Learning Rob Allan CCLRC e-Science Centre Daresbury, UK

2. Presenter Name Facility Name Portal as an Application Framework Portals are a framework to deploy tools (aka rectangles) and focus on how the user wants to arrange their own “rectangles” The portal allows component integration, the goal is for the tools to work together closely and seem to really be parts of a larger “tool” Portals have a lot of features, (services, presence, notification, etc..) which bridge the gap between portal and application framework Collaboration tools are important –Calendar, News, Discussion, Chat, E-mail, Wiki, etc. Portals could provide the interface to many of our tools/ services

3. Presenter Name Facility Name http://www.sakaiproject.org

4. Rob Allan SC’04 Personal Learning and Research Environments report on discussion at JISC-CETIS workshop Oleg Lieber, Sharon Perry, Phil Beauvoir, John Swannie, Tom Franklin, Sarah Davies, Dan Corlett, Hugh Davies, Patrick Carmichael, Sandy Leaton-Gray, Michael Sellway, Rob Crouchley, Rob Allan, Adrian Fish, Christina Smart, Maia Dimitrova, Marcello Allegri, Charles Severance, Wilbert Kraan http://www.jisc.ac.uk/jisc_cetis_event.html

5. Presenter Name Facility Name Joint Information Systems Committee http://www.jisc.ac.uk

6. Presenter Name Facility Name Breakout session: VRE/ VLE/ IE projects Colloquia Interactive Log Teaching and Learning Portal TLRP - Teaching and Learning Research Program AERS ReDRESS - Resource Discover for Researchers in e-Social Science VRE Sakai Demonstrator GROWL - Grid Resources of Workstation Library VRE: Integrated Biology Demonstration CQeSS - Collaboratory for Quantitative e-Social Science

7. Presenter Name Facility Name Problem: Many “personal” environments Collaborative VLE/VRE/IE Requirements VLE “Experts” VLE Customers VRE “Experts” VRE Customers IE “Experts” IE Customers When we treat Virtual Learning, Virtual Research, and Information Environments as different, we end up developing divergent environments which satisfy similar requirements in very different ways based on the experts who are funded to produce the VRE, VLE, or IE solutions. Each expert group is often influenced by a different field of research: VLE’s are influenced by Educational Technology experts, VRE’s are often influenced by Computer Scientists, while IE’s are influenced by Library Sciences.

8. Presenter Name Facility Name End users are people too… Collaborative VLE/VRE Requirements VLE “Experts” Customers VRE “Experts” Customers IE “Experts” Customers As painful as it may be, the VRE, VLE, and IE experts must begin to coordinate so that some point in the future, users don’t have environments with completely different approaches to the same problem.

9. Presenter Name Facility Name A Personal Learning/ Research Environment? PLRE: Move from a provider or institution focused set of capabilities to an environment where users “assemble” their environment to suit their needs. System that maps to how I think and operate so that things are made easier for me. How do I bend this tool to suit the way that I work? Especially as my skills as a user improve. Move bits around arrange the way you like. This is both things like my own folder arrangements and things like accessibility (i.e. how I want to “see” these things) Different to a Managed Learning Environment (MLE): Assumes a domain expert is self motivated Does not need grading/ assessment Learn by example, e.g. using Grid tools

10. Presenter Name Facility Name Service Framework for e-Research From S. Wilson, K. Blinco and D. Rehak Service Oriented Frameworks DEST (Australia), JISC-CETIS (UK) and Industry Canada http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/AltilabServiceOrientedFrameworks.pdf Common services are highlighted

11. Presenter Name Facility Name Traditionally, there are some differences Locus of control Existing versus emerging information Fixed versus fluid agenda Different tools in use Similarity and Differences VRE Physics VRE Chemistry IE Social Science Teaching Learning Visualization Grid Computing Annotation QTI Scorm Attendance Chat Discussion Resources Repository Shared Data

12. Presenter Name Facility Name Why not apply it all to learning and integrate it together? VLE Visualization Annotation QTI Scorm Chat Shared Data Computing IE VRE The Personal Learning/Research Environment (PLRE) effectively adds a “productivity” layer to the VLE/VRE/IE space which unifies the look/feel/usability across the multiple sources of information

13. Presenter Name Facility Name Today’s PLRE is a Compromise Web browser with lots of bookmarks to many sites - each quite different Computer desktop with files, folders E-Mail client Calendar client … All quite different - user figures tools out as best they can and to the extent they can Cut and paste between tools, little real integration No single sign on, even within a single institution

14. Presenter Name Facility Name Someday the PLRE will not be a browser a. pure html web page b. web page based, but with browser enhancements c. browser extension d. dedicated desktop network client e. extensible desktop application platform f. common desktop application Better user experience Increased productivity More complex to build Difficult to keep up with changing technology

15. Presenter Name Facility Name Promising Trends Standards based portals - JSR-168, etc. –API standardisation Basic look and feel standardisation - CSS –Federating portals and tools - WSRP User control over assembly of many sources Ability to write portable full-featured tools –Java e.g. Swing –Eclipse –Flash MX SOAP, WSDL, UDDI Portlet Service JSR-168, WSRP UI to “heritage” application via command line or GUI and programming library.

16. Presenter Name Facility Name Our Conclusions Continue to invest in VLE/ VRE/ IE efforts, accepting the fact that for the moment they will not converge immediately; Continue to invest in portals and WSRP activities to explore federation within current presentation technologies; Invest in research into new technologies to federate information sources beyond the browser; Act to maintain communication between the VLE/ VRE/ IE and PLRE efforts so that common solutions can be shared and evolved over time; Investigate techniques for the learner/ researcher to “own” their information over their lifetime and “share” it with institutions and groups at the appropriate time; Encourage projects which support flexible roles and structures (i.e. not just instructor can write and students can read or anyone can create groups); Investigate techniques where PLRE’s can operate in both connected and disconnected modes.