Exchange of Performance Assessments EPA Project State, Outlook Urs Hassler – Project leader ETH Zurich

Project Background  Students register for a programme at a home university and follow courses at partner university.  Performance assessments will be taken at partner university and the results must be reported to the home university.  Examples:  Joint-master-programs, e.g. ETHZ – EPFL: Nuclear Engineering  Exchange students  Courses taken at neighbouring universities: EPFL – UNIL, ETHZ – UZH

Project Goal  Define a data structure which allows to identify a performance assessment together with results / grades, credits taken at some university  Define and implement an electronic exchange platform for documents corresponding to this structure  Run a pilot exchange between EPFL and ETH Zurich  Invite other universities to participate in the exchange network.

Definition of the Exchange Process  Each university has a release process for performance assessments.  A partner university has the duty to inform a student‘s home university about performance assessments  A home university has the duty to acknowledge that the performance assessment message was correctly received.  The home university will not confirm that the data has been processed and integrated into the own information systems.

EPFL Technical Analysis: Core Components ETH Zurich EPA Node: Exchange of Perf. Assessement Messages EPFL Information system (IS Academia) ETH Zürich OIS EPA Adapter EPFL: Binding of EPFL ISA to local EPA node. EPA Node: Exchange of Perf. Assessement Messages EPA Adapter ETH: Binding of ETH OIS to local EPA Node.

Component: Node  An EPA Node will be operated by every participating university.  It is responsible for sending / receiving performance assessment messages.  Main deliverables:  Web Service interface definitions for receiving/sending messages to other nodes and for communicating with the local environment.  Web interface for administration tasks: Manage identity of local and remote nodes, suspend / continue message delivery, view node status and transaction logs (example screens below).  Enterprise application running on a JEE5 compliant application server.  Usage of the WSIT standard in order to achieve the reliable and secure exchange of data.

EPA Node Admin Console: Status overview

EPA Node Admin Console: Exchange partners

EPA Node Admin Console: Local Node Config

EPA Node Admin Console: Server Config

Component: Adapter  Integration component: Implements data conversion between local performance assessments and EPA performance assessment messages.  Uses an EPA node’s Web Service interface definitions to pass messages for the transfer to a remote EPA node or to request received messages for the further processing.  Adapter implementations can build on top of a Generic Interface written in Java that hides the complexity of the Web service interface. Examples: ETHZ Adapter, Web Adapter.  Adapters can bind directly to the EPA node’s web service interface. Example: Local IT env. does not build on Java.

Outlook: Final Milestones  : Start pilot exchange between EPFL and ETH Zurich.  Q3 2010: Start exchange between ETH Zurich and University of Zurich, faculty of mathematics and natural sciences

Outlook: Possible Improvements  Implemented Message structure allows to adopt software in other contexts.  Message envelope: Sender University, Receiver University, Transaction Times  Message content: Currently only 1 supported content: Performance assessments. Support for other contents can easily be implemented.  Extend AAA/SWITCH to support Ids of universities together with trust information (PKI Infrastructure).  Configuration in node console gets easier, since possible partners and trust information will be maintained centrally