Open-CLE: An Open-Standards-Based Collaboration & Learning

Environment

Angela Rabuck

Rice University

Outline

The Open-CLE project, a collaboration between Rice University and IBM, aims to develop an open-standards-based, service oriented architecture to help educational institutions loosely tie together open source applications (e.g., Sakai, Connexions, and D-Space). We will share our model and describe how the tool can be used to further online learning.

• Introduction• SUR Grant• Use Case• Current Design• Summary

Currently at Rice

• Sakai - production ~1 year• MDID - currently “pilot”; production Spring

2008• DSpace - currently “pilot”• Connexions - since 1999 • ExTemplate - since 1999• Etc . . .

Connexions

• Developed by Rice U• Collaboratively developing,

freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web

• Organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses.

• View and share educational material in small knowledge chunks called modules

• Can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. • Creative Commons license• http://www.cnx.org

ExTemplate

• Developed by Rice University• Specifically designed for language instruction• Create a variety of interactive multimedia exercises and tests• Multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank, short answer, essay

questions, and speaking• Use Wimba voice recording or Flash Media Server Plug-in to assess

speaking• Languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian,

Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Tibetan, and Spanish• http://lang.rice.edu/extemplate/index.htm

Currently

DSpaceSakai

Connexions

MDID

ExTemplateEtc . . .

Goal

DSpaceConnexions

MDID

ExTemplate Etc . . .

Sakai

IBM SUR Grant

• IBM Shared University Research (SUR) Grant– Open-standards-based– Service oriented architecture – IBM WebSphere and WebSphere

Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) products– Loosely coupled

Project Goals

• Help education institutions loosely tie together their open source applications

• Explore development of Open Standards using Bus Architecture

• Allow flexibility when choosing applications

• Better utilize current shared resources

First Use Case

(Hub)

“Repository”“Repository”

“Repository”“Repository”

Architecture

Examples of Use

• Instructor chosen materials for student use• Resource finder for student projects• Combined content/bibliography for collaborators• Easily find relevant course related materials • Pull from much broader base of available materials• Find information/images/etc that you didn’t know existed• Generate lessons from known, trusted sources• Take advantage of lessons already built in Connexions• Take advantage of work of other departments

– Ex. Art History scanning in thousands of images, DSpace archives

Initial Screen

Search

Advanced Search

Search Results

Ordering

AnnotateAnnotate

Publish

Saved Keywords

Student View - Initial Screen

Title Release Date End DateAutomata 10/11/2006 07/21/2007 Java ME 12/12/2007 04/12/2007Search Theory 02/05/2007 03/01/2007

Student View

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Title:Automata

Package Description

Automata are abstract mathematical models of machines that perform computations on an input by moving through a series of states or configurations. If the computation of an automaton reaches an accepting configuration it accepts that input. At each stage of the computation, a transition function determines the next configuration on the basis of a finite portion of the present configuration. Turing machines are the most general automata. They consist of a finite set of states. Since Turing machines can leave symbols on their tape at the end of the computation, they can be viewed as computing functions: the partial recursive functions. Despite the simplicity of these automata, any algorithm that can be implemented on a computer can be modeled by some Turing machine.

Description

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Student View

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Title:Automata

What is a Broadband Network? This module explains about broadband networks, an entity to be considered in future Telecommunication Networks..created: 2006/02/12 08:36:16 US/Central revised: 2006/02/15 00:33:51 US/Central Module: m13365 - Authors - Keywords - Similar Content

Network Information Theory: Multi-Access and Broadcast ChannelsThis is a brief summary of what has been known about network information theory. It covers multi access and broadcast channels, in an attempt to summarize about two dozen scattered papers in both subjects.created: 2002/03/21 revised: 2004/08/10 09:31:27 GMT-5Module: m10542 - Authors - Keywords - Similar Content

What is the role of teletraffic engineering in broadband networks? created: 2006/02/11 09:40:37 US/Central revised: 2006/02/19 15:11:36 US/CentralModule: m13376 - Authors - Keywords - Similar Content

In communications, a technique for transmitting a large amount of information, including voice, data, and video, over long distances.

Network information theory is the study of reliable communication in a network setting, where there are many sources and users who wish to communicate with one another.

Teletraffic engineers use their basic knowledge of statistics, the nature of traffic, their practical models, their measurements and simulations to make predictions and to plan telecommunication networks at minimum total cost

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Title:Automata

In a previous work we have analyzed a family of antibody and B-cell network models (basic AB models) of the immune system. This analysis focused principally on the physiological interpretation of their parameters. Our approach consisted in building a detailed and general mathematical model (referred to as the GIB model) and then simplifying it formally to a version (named the RIB model) that belongs to the family of AB models, but which is more general than the basic AB models. From that study it was clear that some of the assumptions necessary to simplify the GIB model into the RIB one, as well as to recover the basic AB models from the RIB one,

are quite unrealistic from physiological point of view All this raised the issue of the reliability, or even the heuristic value, of theoretical studies based on current network models for experimental immunologists. One approach to clarify this issue is to ask whether the unrealism of the assumptions implicit in the RIB and AB models entails qualitatively different behaviors between them compared to the GIB one. We initiate here such a work by performing a comparative study of a two-clone system of the AB and RIB models, and a variant of the GIB model in which the different molecular compartments were merged into a single one (labeled IGB model). Because all those models rely critically on certain B-cell activation functions, which constitute the core of an implicit model of individual B-cell reactivity or "local rules", we focused the present numerical study, to a great extent, on two parameters determining those activation functions (Hill coefficient and thresholds). Our results indicate that: (1) the RIB and IGB models display in general a much larger diversity of steady states than the AB models; (2) only under a very restricted parameter regime did all studied models behave similarly; (3) the parameter regime under which the AB and IGB models, but not the RIB one, behave similarly is still rather restricted through not as much as in (2); and (4) even relatively small quantitative changes (within reasonable values) in the postulated "local rules" can induce very large quantitative changes in the behavior of the AB and RIB models but not the IGB model. In the light of the present results, we discuss the need of postulating a set of "local rules" solidly based on experimental evidence as a necessary condition for the reliability of current network models.

Next Steps

ConsideringDSpaceSakai Connexion

s

MDID ExTemplate

Etc . . .

uPortal

Journal articles

Coursereserves

Banner Google

”Possible” future features

• User definable repository priority weighting• Favorites

– keywords– results

• Personal resource repository searching in MyWorkspace• Packaging (Import/Export)• Ability to add/replace repositories easily• Link directly to known repository item• “Freeze” resources• Printable pdf• Drag and drop functionality• Cross system publishing

Summary

• Loosely coupling open source products• Exploring Open Standards using Bus

Architecture• Sakai (CMS) - Hub• Other systems as repositories

– DSpace– Connexions– etc

Contact Information

• Want more information, have ideas, comments, etc:

• Angela Rabuck

adehart@rice.edu