Building Common Services Infrastructure James Dalziel Adjunct Professor and Director Macquarie E-learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE)

Overview Why do common services matter? What are common services? Where to next?

A Teacher wants to add a seamless link from the LMS to a specific library e-reserve article, and then add another link to a broad-ranging search across various repositories so students can search for other similar articles (with direct links to full text versions of relevant articles once discovered by student searches). A Librarian wants to ensure that digital rights, copyright and fair use are properly managed within a collection of resources aggregated by a Lecturer for use in the LMS, and then later to preserve any Lecturer- created resources within the aggregation, as well as persistent pointers to any external copyright materials, for the future. A Student wishes to gain easy access to various learning and information resources across a university, with contextual advice on searching techniques together with online help from a virtual reference desk. The virtual reference desk is able to see previous failed search attempts by the student if the student decides to share these failed searches.

A Students wishes to automatically gain access to a sophisticated weather data service, where access to the service should be anonymous, but the weather data provider needs to know that the student is authenticated at their school, and the anonymous access request has been approved by the teacher. An IT Administrator wants to provide a single login point to all staff and students for seamless access to all systems, but only to the systems they are entitled to use according to the security and policy requirements of each system and the institution itself. A Student doing remedial maths has used a diagnostic test to identify key gaps in their basic mathematical concepts, at which point an automated search system seeks out the ideal maths remedial learning object to present to the student based on their weaknesses.

A Student studying a Shakespeare play is struggling to understand an important soliloquy, so he/she conducts a special type of search for similar aged students across the world who are struggling with the same soliloquy, and then arranges with them to discuss their ideas within a dynamically created asynchronous discussion environment over the coming week. The group may also choose to search for a mentor to assist them. A Student uses a secure e-book reader to view a large teacher-created “coursepack” of readings sourced from many different publishers. The student can choose to print out individual sections themselves, or send off a request to their university printing service for overnight customi printing of large selections of the coursepack. Publishers receive an automated, fair return for their relevant contributions to the coursepack.

Why do common services matter? These use cases are only possible with: –Multiple e-learning and information systems –Distributed systems –Deep integration –Powerful and flexible access management –Sophisticated concepts of identity, trust, federation, privacy and automated policy –Implementation of agreed standards Covering data models and system behaviour

What are common services? Common services are components that play a similar role across software applications, eg –Portals –Access management –Identity management –Database management –File system management –Identifiers –Messaging/transport –etc

What are common services? More easily understood diagramatically NB: From a software vendor perspective, common services are the necessary infrastructure to make your system “run”, but are NOT your competitive advantage –That is, prior to web services models, you still had to build all the common services anyway to show you unique “thing”

Education IT Logical Architecture Client Security / Authentication Directory Services / Identity Application Modules ERP Finance and HR; Library systems; Student Information System Learning Management System; Learning Content Management System Customer Relationship Management; Content Management System Computer Assisted Assessment, etc Messaging, Integration, Workflow

Client Security / Authentication Directory Services Application Modules Messaging, Integration, Workflow Web Browser Portal Login / Single Sign On LDAP/X.500 Directory Services ERP Finance & HR Student Information System Library systems Learning Management System Core Services - Workflow Core Services - Integration APIs A Current (ideal) University IT environment

COLIS - Abstract model of University IT Architecture

IMS DRI Model

(early version)

Examples from UK Framework Discussions CETIS - Scott Wilson NB: Relevant framework slides are in the second section after the standards diagrams

Layered Framework for NLNZ Started with the question: “What would a national information infrastructure look like for the New Zealand National Library?” Layered web services model including portals, portlets, common services and data standards NB: Work in progress - many issues to solve

MD Schema CLIENT (BROWSER) “Others” - Archive - E-Learn - E-Gov, etc National Library NZ © J. Dalziel 1/7/03 Personalised Portal PORTLET SERVICES DATA STRUCTURES APPS COMMON SERVICES DB Various examples: LMS/ CRM/ Archives Authentication Authorisation Identity Messaging DRM Security Digital Preservation Service Description (WSDL) Service Discovery (UDDI) Integration Workflow Etc Package & Transfer Run-time & Tracking Identity -Objects, People, Organisations, Process Authorisation Policy Etc Other Business Apps Integrated Library Management System EtcRepository Access Management (ANON) Library Catalogue Federated Search Etc

Where to next? Need Demonstrator projects to trial common services infrastructure –Eg, DEST Systemic Information Infrastructure Need high level consideration of impact of web services on existing systems/vendors Need to accept there will be many different frameworks before we get it right –This is very hard stuff Need careful technical language and dialogue

Where to next? Two cautionary tales: –COLIS Integration –SCORM run-time interactions Easy to draw the high level, hard to do the detail If we could move ahead in time to when we have it all sorted and look back to today - how much have we solved so far? –5-10%?

Systems Chunks in COLIS Learning Space Application Integration Content Management Library E-Services E-Reserve E-Journals Integration Services Learning Management Digital Rights Management Directory Services Learning Content Management

Systems Chunks in COLIS Learning Space Application Integration Content Management Library E-Services E-Reserve E-Journals Integration Services Learning Management Digital Rights Management Directory Services Learning Content Management It was easy to draw the boxes and lines at a high level, but….

COLIS Phase 1 Industry Participants

..but the reality of integration was far more complex (and this view is still greatly simplified!)

API Adapter SCORM API Delivery Service Tracking Service Sequencing Service Content Management Service Learner Profiles Service Testing/ Assessment Service Course Administration Service Local Content Repository Remote Content Repositories SCORM Content Packages Browser (Presentation) Generalized Learning Management System Model Selection Launch SCORM Tracking Data SCORM Content (SCOs & Assets)

API Adapter SCORM API Delivery Service Tracking Service Sequencing Service Content Management Service Learner Profiles Service Testing/ Assessment Service Course Administration Service Local Content Repository Remote Content Repositories SCORM Content Packages Browser (Presentation) Generalized Learning Management System Model Selection Launch SCORM Tracking Data SCORM Content (SCOs & Assets) Many people discuss SCORM as if it is easy to do, but the complexity hidden beneath is not trivial