March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

The Navigo Project

Hans C. Masing, The University of MichiganLance D. Speelmon, Indiana University

An IMS and OKI Compliant Open Source Assessment Framework

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Copyright Statement

• Copyright Hans C. Masing and Lance Speelmon, 2003. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

The Short Story

• Navigo is a collaboration between Indiana University, the University of Michigan and Stanford University to create an open-source IMS and OKI compliant assessment engine that can be deployed in any environment as an HTML application and as a web service.

• Easy enough?

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Introductions

• Welcome!– Hans Masing – University of Michigan

Systems Project Coordinator – UM.Lessons.NG

CHEF Project – Senior Staff

– Lance Speelmon – Indiana UniversityUniversity Information Technology Services

Systems Integration Team

Principal Systems Analyst

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Agenda

• Background for Navigo– The need for a common assessment framework– IMS Project– OKI Project

• Navigo– Current architecture thoughts– Timelines– Participation

• Conclusions

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Background

• Navigo is an experiment in cross-university collaboration– Indiana University Oncourse– University of Michigan CHEF/UM.Lessons– Stanford CourseWork

• Ancillary participation– University of Melbourne, Australia– University of Texas (Austin)

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

What is Navigo?

• Each school realizes that development and maintenance costs are high

• Commercial products are expensive and constraining

• In January, Indiana and Michigan met for two days to discuss philosophies, approaches, and needs

• We found nearly 100% correlation of overarching goals

• Navigo was born

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

What is Navigo?

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

What is Navigo?

• At the same time, Stanford received a Mellon grant to make CourseWork OKI compliant

• Both Indiana and Michigan are dedicated to OKI compliance in our emerging next generation learning environments

• In February, the three principle universities and a UT representative met to discuss goals

• All five universities agreed that we have similar goals

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

What is Navigo?

• Three primary requirements– OKI Compliance– IMS Compliance (Question & Test

Interoperability)– Open Source – we want to give this away

when it works!

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

IMS QTI Compliance

• IMS Global Learning Consortium– Developing and promoting open

specifications for facilitating online distributed learning activities

– Focused on interoperability of applications and services

– The QUESTION/TEST INTEROPERABILITY (QTI) specification is in many ways the core of Navigo

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)

• A project managed by MIT• The Open Knowledge Initiative is

defining open architectural specifications to support the development of educational software

• Provides modular and extensible development platform for building learning applications

• Will allow Navigo to interoperate with other OKI compliant applications

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Navigo - An Assessment Engine

• What is “Assessment”?

• Not just quizzes

• Assessment can be a myriad of things– One-question embedded web polls– Double-blind fully randomized research

surveys– Everything in between

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Navigo - An Assessment Engine

• For Navigo, we are focusing on ‘response cycles’– Materials and responses are presented to respondents– Responses are returned to Navigo– Where possible, automated evaluation of responses is

performed and results are stored for later retrieval– Results may be presented to respondents– Retrieval of results can be via an online grade book, a

CMS system, or any other system that can securely interoperate with a web service

• Will also include statistical gathering, results management and other functions

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Navigo and IMS

• QTI defines a common data structure for Assessments, Sections, Items, Responses, etc.

• Allows exchange of data among learning management systems.

• QTI structured materials are now being distributed with textbooks!

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Navigo and OKI

• OKI addresses both the similar as well as the dissimilar among institutions.

• OKI provides a “pluggable” architecture where institutions can implement OKI compliant software and leverage their existing authentication, authorization, etc.– Similar: Assessment– Dissimilar: Authentication

• Navigo is being designed to plug into any OKI compliant infrastructure.

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Navigo – A Web Service

• Leverage emerging web services model.

• “Loosely coupled” service can interface to:– HTML applications– Your portal system– Paper! (No, really…)

• Standards based development allows this approach.

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Navigo – The Architecture

1. Data Storage – IMS XML for response objects

2. RDBMS for meta-data, statistics, results, etc.

3. Interface to Data Repository

4. Core Assessment Service

5. Interface to Portlet

6. OKI compliant connection from Portlet to Navigo Presentation

Localized System Portlet

OKI

NavigoPresentation

Navigo Service

AuthN, AuthZAssessmentClass AdminDictionaryDigital RepositoryHierarchyLocal IDLoggingUser MessagingWorkflow

OKI

OKI

OKI

Data Repository

XML DataStore

RDBMS

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Navigo – A Logical View

Localized System Portlet

Navigo Service

Question Pools(IMS XML)

PotentialAssessments

(XML &RDBMS?)

RealizedAssessments

(IMS XML)

IMS XML Management Interface

ResponseMeta-Data(RDBMS)

RDBMS Management Interface

IMS ObjectStatistics Data

(RDBMS)

OKI

OKI

OKI

OKI

Service Interface

Assessment Engine

Question Pools

Assessment Mgmt.

Security /Trust

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Project Timelines

• Now – Architecture decisions, models, development

• August 2003 – Proof of concept• Fall 2003 – Limited beta at lead campuses• Spring 2004 – Limited release• Fall 2004 – Production release• Beyond – Up to IMS, OKI, development

community

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

How Can You Participate?

• http://www.navigoproject.org … coming soon…

• We will encourage outside participation through the process.

• At some release point, code will be made available on SourceForge. – If you love something, set it free.

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

Conclusions

• We believe that this development model is the future – both the ups and downs.

• OKI and IMS compatibility should be mandatory for all learning applications!

• CMS should be built on modular frameworks that allow customization and addition of any OKI and IMS compliant pieces.

• Questions?

March 26, 2003 The Navigo Project

The Navigo Project

Thanks for your time!