Software for Higher Education Economics, Innovation, and Open Source as Transformative Forces Brad Wheeler Assoc VP for Research & Academic Computing Assoc Professor of Information Systems Indiana University

Two Challenges for IT in Higher Ed Delivering sustainable economics to satisfied users Serving the frontiers of innovation for user expectations IU Strategy Maintain control of our destiny Consolidate redundant services via integration Create economies of scale via standards Partner with like minded institutions Use/develop open source products

Fall 2003 Semester Faculty 7,531 Faculty logins 5,657 Percent Usage 75% Students 95,272 Student logins 78,721 Percent Usage 83% All Campuses IUPUI Faculty 86% Students91% Bloomington Faculty 75% Students83% >88,000 Distinct Users this Semester

Annual Cost Measurement Units Activity Measurement Unit Cost User Satis- faction $ 862,246 82,747Users $ % Activity-based Costs for CMS Total unique users Source: UITS Report on Cost and Quality of Services,

Changes in How Oncourse is Used  More storage/retrieval of files 43% growth from ‘02 to ‘03 in bytes transferred  More time in Oncourse 62% growth from ‘02 to ‘03 in number of minutes logged on (even with faster hardware)

1 December 2003

Challenge: Innovation Frontiers Library Integration Special Character Sets Math/Languages/Sciences Sophisticated Assessment Streaming Multi-media Direct Manipulation User Interfaces Textbook Integration w/ Publishers Current CMS Ongoing Maintenance IMS/SCORM Self-paced Tutorials Research/Committee Support E-Portfolio How will Higher Ed meet these growing requirements for CMS functionality in a period of relatively flat resources? Workflow Integration/Leverage w/Enterprise Services Greater Personalization

Where are we today LibrarySIS OncourseUITS, etc. www  Users must know the path to each silo…one size fits all  Silo’d data/services not integrated…user must consolidate and find related information and services  Redundancies abound, interface inconsistencies, expensive maintenance… it will get worse. Services: Data:

Portal to IU services/information LibrarySISOncourseUITS onestart.iu.edu Portal Authentication Customization Workflow Delegation Services: Data:

Post-PC future of mobile computing Portal Services connect to the Portal and the Portal connects to the evolving plethora of wireless, mobile computing devices headed to campus. Connecting each service is infeasible.

Fit with Require- ments Acquisition Cost Maintenance Cost Support Options Control of Destiny Build  Tailored to requirements  Full cost  Expensive permanent staff or contract  Discretionary  Full costs for changes  No on-going fees  Institution  Very high  Own the code Buy (vendor)  Standardized  Tailored via add-ons  Shared cost + vendor profit as license fee  Mandatory  Shared costs + vendor profit via annual license fees  Vendor(s)  Warranties and service level agreements  Very low  Limited/no access to modify the code  Extensive add- ons may complicate upgrades Borrow (open source)  Assembled from standardized and tailored  Nil, minimal, or shared  Discretionary  Nil, minimal, shared, or full  Institution  For fee vendors  Partners  Community  Very high  Full access to the source code

Oncourse-Next Generation Strategy Partner with U. Michigan, MIT, Stanford to develop a standards-based Course Management System Designed for integration with OneStart Portal Personalization, Integrated calendar, etc. Foundation for discipline-specific innovation

Open Source ….the answer or the question?

‘Code Mobility’ is the essential economic bet for higher education

Gartner By 2007, 80 percent of e-learning platform functionality will be available through open source (0.7 probability). 16 Dec 03

Gartner: e-Learning Meets OS E-learning is emerging as the focal point of higher education's rising interest in open-source applications. Nevertheless, it will be several years before commercially supported open-source software e-learning products will become available. In the short term, enterprises that pursue OSS initiatives will have to weigh the benefits of OSS vs. potentially high internal support costs. 16 Dec 03

Gartner: Strategic Assumptions  By 2005, e-learning will emerge as the first mission- critical application in which Type A institutions experiment with open-source solutions (0.8 probability).  By 2007, 80 percent of e-learning platform functionality will be available through open source (0.7 probability).  Through 2006, colleges and universities adopting open-source e-learning systems will need the ability to address urgent system failures entirely with internal staff resources (0.8 probability).  Seventy percent of current academic e-learning open-source product initiatives will fail by 2006 (0.8 probability). 16 Dec 03

Gartner: Open Source Mobilization  Tight budget times in the United States, which have focused attention on software acquisition costs  A growing resentment of vendor power, particularly in the wake of price increases and licensing changes that many institutions felt powerless to reject  Political pressures in some parts of the world to favor local software industries and to pool government software development costs  The strong cultural appeal of OSS in academia, where a vocal part of the cyberculture participates in the movement 16 Dec 03

Some Recent Open Source Projects

Mellon Foundation Grants  uPortal, 2001, $3M  Open Knowledge Initiative, 2001, $3M  Fedora, 2001, $800k  Assessment Manager, 2002, $250k  VUE, 2002, $450k  Chandler/Westwood, 2003, $1.5M +  LionShare, 2003, $1.2M  ePortfolio, 2003, $500k  Sakai, 2003, $2.4M

ModelFeaturesExamples Lead Institution  Institution takes lead in writing an application for its own needs  Develops for code mobility using a framework/standards  May lead a community that becomes more of a consortium model over time  CHEF Project - U of Michigan Partnering  Formal or informal agreements among a small group of institutions to write tools  Tools integrate as part of a planned application framework  Navigo Assessment Project - Indiana, Michigan, Stanford  Fedora – U. of Virginia, Cornell Consortium  Extra-university entity that coordinates application requirements, standards, and releases  Coordinates a community  uPortal– JA-SIG  ePortfolio Project - Open Source Portfolio Initiative  Chandler Project - Open Source Application Foundation  Sakai Project Consumer  Institutions or vendors that implement open source systems with minimal/no participation in its development;  Waiting to adopt code from others  Any institution that downloads and implements open source application software  Most institutions will consume open source code for some needs as that is part of their sourcing strategy Open Source Development Models

Software for Higher Education Economics, Innovation, and Open Source as Transformative Forces Brad Wheeler Assoc VP for Research & Academic Computing Assoc Professor of Information Systems Indiana University

Application Development Guiding Principles 1.Standards: IU will enhance our opportunities for code mobility among universities by architecting on a common layer of OKI services (OSIDs) as our baseline infrastructure for new IU applications. The complementary data standards will be based on IMS specifications (or other applicable data standards groups) whenever applicable. J2EE, AIX/Linux, and Oracle are the standards for enterprise-scale application development. 2. Sourcing: For in-house developed systems, whenever possible, IU will participate in open source approaches – both importing existing solutions and exporting IU solutions. IU will partner with like-minded institutions whenever goals and resources align to share costs.

Application Development Guiding Principles (cont.) 3.Delivery: IU will focus on personalized delivery of information services and activities via the OneStart Portal through an unbundled, Web services approach to application development. 4.Leverage: IU will aggressively seek efficiencies in consolidation of redundant application services whenever feasible.