3. progress inbolton(summer2010)

GLUE!: An architecture for the integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments. Progress during the research stay in Bolton. UNIVERSITY OF VALLADOLID GSIC/EMIC http://gsic.tel.uva.es Carlos Alario Hoyos September 22 nd , 2010

Outline GLUE!: main ideas regarding its design and development Comparison with other existing approaches Opinions of experts Events and opportunities for dissemination Additional links

VLEs: Virtual Learning Environments Limitation => Number of tools included in their distribution.

Integration of external tools Integration problem: Heterogeneity of contracts in VLEs and tools. Integration cost, development effort. Decisions affecting the integration cost. Political issues Technological issues C. Alario-Hoyos, J.I. Asensio-Pérez, M.L. Bote-Lorenzo, E. Gómez-Sánchez, G. Vega-Gorgojo, A. Ruiz-Calleja. Integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments: main design issues and alternatives. Proceedings of the ICALT 2010 , 384-388, Sousse, Tunisia, July 2010.

GLUE!: Main requirements Reduce to development effort and the integration cost. Simple architecture. Loose integration with the tools. Keep the core functionality of VLEs. Groups. Creation of different tool instances. Different configurations for each tool instance. Learning design. Educators and students should see the external tools as another VLE tool. Easy to install in a VLE. Just as another module or extension.

GLUE!: Current prototype Web content

Creating and configuring instances (educator) 1.- Select the “GLUElet” activity

Creating and configuring instances (educator) 2.- Select the external tool

Creating and configuring instances (educator) 3.- Select the configuration of groups/groupings

Creating and configuring instances (educator) 4.- Configure this tool for each group created in Moodle

Creating and configuring instances (educator) 5.- Visualize the instances for each group

Comparison with other existing approaches Main contribution and progress during the research stay. Paper accepted for publication in an international conference. Approaches: Learning Tool Interoperability Guidelines (Full LTI) Basic LTI Apache Wookie (Incubating) GLUE! C. Alario-Hoyos, S. Wilson , Comparison of the main Alternatives to the Integration of External Tools in different Platforms Proceedings of the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (accepted for publication) , ICERI 2010, Madrid, Spain, November 2010.

Analysis of the integration approaches (I) 1.- Number and diversity of tools FLTI , BLTI , GLUE : any tool with the correspondent adaptor (effort). AW : Only W3C and Open Social compliant tools (no adaptor). Large potential number of widgets FLTI : Oriented to “big” SOAP applications. BLTI , AW , GLUE : oriented to web applications and widgets. 2.- Platforms in which tools can be integrated FLTI , BLTI , AW : different platforms (CMSs, VLEs, portals, etc.). GLUE : VLE-oriented (roles of educators and students). All of them need special plug-ins or extensions.

Analysis of the integration approaches (II) 3.- Degree of coupling involved FLTI : Tight integration Many additional services must be developed. BLTI , AW , GLUE : Loosely coupled REST-based integration Limitations: passing back information and interaction analysis. 4.- Richness in the communication between the tool and the system BLTI AW GLUE FLTI

Analysis of the integration approaches (III) 5.- Opportunities for tool configurations FLTI : ad hoc configurations. BLTI : some parameters can be useful but are fixed for every tool. AW : Late binding. GLUE : Early binding (very flexible configurations). 6.- Possibilities of using the same groups that are defined in the learning platform BLTI , FLTI : addresses (endpoints). AW , GLUE : instances.

Analysis of the integration approaches (IV) 7.- Degree of standardization FLTI : Released in 2006 (LTI v2.0 2010?). Lack of adoption. BLTI : 2009. Real adoption. AW : 2009 Under incubation in Apache Software Foundation. GLUE : Not an specification yet. 8.- Security issues involved None of them has solved the SSO problem.

Analysis of the integration approaches (V) 9.- Development effort that must be assumed FLTI : Time consuming and complex task. BLTI : Less effort. It depends on the additional services. AW : Small effort in the VLE side. Convert tools into W3C widgets. GLUE : Small effort in the tool side. More effort in the VLE side. 10.- Development status FLTI : Just for a couple of assessment tools. Blackboard. BLTI : Several VLEs (Sakai, Blackboard). Moodle and LAMS in progress. A few tools (increasingly). AW : Many VLEs and CMSs (Moodle, LAMS, Elgg, etc.) + several connector frameworks. GLUE : Moodle and several tools.

Some reflexions about GLUE! Strong points: Instantiation and configuration of instances regarding groups. List of tools for the educators. Integration with Google Docs, Wookie Server (and BasicLTI?). Limitations: Loosely-coupled integration. Not published yet and lack of community behind. Next steps: GLUE! specification and distribution. Reflect about the need of gathering results (IMS Outcomes?) or additional specifications. SSO problem.

GLUE! as a middleware for the loosely-coupled integration approaches

Opinions of experts James Dalziel (LAMS) “ This process (Basic LTI) has taken about 6 years to get to where we are today, and I still think there is much more work to do. (…) So if your plan is to develop your own integration framework to show what is possible, then I think this is great and you should move ahead with this; but if you are hoping to develop a framework that will become widely used by the big players, then I’d caution that this is very challenging – mostly due to political rather than technical issues.”

Opinions of experts Chuck Severance (Sakai + Basic LTI) “ I have mixed feelings when I read about GLUE. At some level it makes perfect sense in the context of Phd. Research to invent your own approach and implement a few prototypes, write some papers and get your degree. By building your own software solution you can quickly change and adjust any aspect as you need without coordinating with anyone. But as James and Scott will both tell you, it takes a lot of hard work to get something broadly adopted and with so many solutions to the problem already in the marketplace that are well ahead of GLUE in terms of adoption. It seems unlikely that even if GLUE is better in some subtle respect than Wookie, LAMS, IMS Tools Interoperability, or OpenSocial, it still will have a difficult time building a community of developers that choose to build GLUE-compliant tools. ”

Events during my stay Introduction of my work to the IEC (Bolton, July 1 st ) First external presentation about GLUE! + demonstration. ICALT 2010 (Tunisia, July 5 th -7 th ) Paper with the design issues and alternatives (1 st paper about GLUE!). LAMS 2010 European Conference: design bash (Oxford, July 16 th ) LAMS contacts and opportunities for dissemination DLE technologies in use (Bolton, September 14 th ) Presentations related with the integration problem (Wookie, Basic LTI). More dissemination opportunities and interests. Future of Interoperability Standards (London, September 24 th )

Additional links http://gsic.uva.es/projects/sofocles/index.php/WP3 Technical documentation Short presentations Publications http://pandora.tel.uva.es/pruebamoodle/ Demo server Ask for credentials to calahoy@gsic.uva.es

3. progress inbolton(summer2010)

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