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

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

Topics  Context and challenges for higher ed  Build, Buy, or Borrow?  Recent convergence Technical Organizational/Institutional Industry  Open source projects  Sustainability and support?  IS research opportunities

Audience Survey  Course Management System? Blackboard, WebCT, local?  ERP? PeopleSoft, SCT, Oracle, local?  Portal? Sun, Oracle, uPortal?  Efficiency in administrative processes? Poor Excellent

Context & Challenges

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

Current 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

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

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

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,

Open Source ….the answer or the question?

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

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

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

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

Recent Convergence

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.

Converging Trends…why now… Data Standards Architecture Standards Institutional Mobilization Foundation $$ Investments Institutional Partnering Open Source Applications

Three Types of Inter-Operability  Data Specifications, real standards  Software Code Code mobility among institutions  Business Process Mix/match participants in a business process

Heterogeneous local systems Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs) Local Implementations App Tool 1 App Tool 2 App Tool 3 App Tool … Interop Framework UI Choices Portal JSR 168 UI Choices Silo’d App Towards Code Mobility

Authn/Authz SecurityWorkflow Comm. Tools Storage Unbundling enables sophisticated thinking about learning In Touch Syllabus Testing Gradebooks Schedule Ereserves Digital Repositories Full Text articles Federated Searching

Common Services(OKI) AuthnAuthz DBMS Workflow LoggingIndex/SearchMessaging CalendaringCRM Group tools Digital Repository Assessment Local Infrastructure DB File Servic es Securit y Storag e LDA P User Interface Stand Alone Implementation JSR-168 Portal * FMS = Financial Management System; SIS = Student Information System; HRMS = Human Resource Management System Educational Services FMS* HRMS * SIS* Eportfolio Learning Matrix Learner Profile Presentation Builder Reports Tool Advising Tool Administration Tool Course Management System Syllabus Tool Gradebook Test and Survey tool Assignment Tool OSPI v2

Some Recent Open Source Projects

Mellon Foundation Projects  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

Sakai Project Mellon Awards $ December 2003

Sakai Project Deliverables 1. Tool Portability Profile 2. Pooled intellectual property…best of  JSR-168 portal  Course management system  Quizzing and assessment tools  Research collaboration system  Workflow engine 3. Synchronized major institutional adoptions at Michigan, Indiana, MIT, Stanford, open-open licensing

Michigan CHEF Framework CourseTools WorkTools Indiana Navigo Assessment Eden Workflow OneStart Oncourse MIT Stellar Stanford CourseWork Assessment OKI OSIDs uPortal SAKAI 2.0 Release Tool Portability Profile Framework Services-based Portal SAKAI Tools Complete CMS Assessment Workflow Research Tools Authoring Tools Primary SAKAI Activity Refining SAKAI Framework, Tuning and conforming additional tools Intensive community building/training Activity: Ongoing implementation work at local institution… Jan 04 July 04May 05Dec 05 Activity: Maintenance & Transition from a project to a community SAKAI 1.0 Release Tool Portability Profile Framework Services-based Portal Refined OSIDs & implementations SAKAI Tools Complete CMS Assessment Primary SAKAI Activity Architecting for JSR-168 Portlets, Refactoring “best of” features for tools Conforming tools to Tool Portability Profile Sakai Core Project Team

Sakai Project Core  Commitments 5+ developers/architects, etc. under project leadership – no local responsibility for 2 years Public commitment to implement Sakai Open/Open licensing  Project $4.4M in institutional staff (27 FTE) $2.4M Mellon Foundation Additional investment through partners

Board Joseph Hardin, UM, Chair & Project Manager Brad Wheeler, IU, Vice Chair Amitava ’Babi’ Mitra, MIT-AMPS Lois Brooks, Stanford Carl Jacobson –JA-SIG Jeff Merriman, MIT-OKI Technical Coordinating Committee Chair: Chuck Severance Local Teams Tools Rob Lowden Architecture Glenn Golden Local Members Sakai Project Org Structure UM-IU-MIT-Stanford-OKI-JASIG Sakai Educational Partner’s Program

Sustainability & Support

Gartner: Commercial Support? Support remains the Achilles' heel of open-source applications and will restrict early adoption of OSS e-learning products to institutions with deep technical resources. Although growing OSS development communities can do a good job with bug fixes and product stability issues, they cannot provide the 24x7, context-sensitive, urgent support that most institutions demand for mission-critical applications. The initial lack of integration adapters for ERP, portal and other systems will complicate the support issue. Vendors will wait for OSS products to survive shakeout and reach version stability, and for adopting communities to become large enough to make a Red Hat-style support product viable. 16 Dec 03

Sakai Support  Developer and adopter support Sakai Educational Partner’s Program  Commercial support Red Hat like vendor (to be announced) No exclusive deals Open-open licensing

Sakai Educational Partner’s Program Fee: $10k per year, 3 years  Access to SEPP staff Community development manager SEPP developers, documentation writers  Knowledgebase  Developer training for the TPP  Strategy and implementation workshops  Early access to pre-release code

Other Open Source Applications  Open Source Portfolio Initiative $518k grant to develop version 2  Open Source Financial Initiative NACUBO – university finance officers $45k planning grant, proposal January 04  Chandler/Westwood PIM/ $3M + $5M Open Source App Foundation

Opportunities for IS Research?  Large, distributed software development projects with complex requirements and emerging standards  Inter-institutional partnering is a new frontier at this level  Adoption, implementation, and community building by many institutions  Competitive responses by vendors

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.