[Announcements] Apereo Newsletter June 15, 2013

[Margaret Wagner]

Apereo Newsletter

June 15, 2013



Announcements

1.  Apereo Affiliates to Open Source Initiative

2.  Apereo Board Strategy Workshop -- Summary of Outcomes

3.  Open Apereo 2013 Conference Sessions on the Apereo YouTube Channel

4.  Apereo Advisory Board Forming -- Candidates Needed

Projects

5.  University of Michigan ITS Teaching & Learning Group Co-Develops New
Software Evaluation Method

6.  Research into Effective Site Templates

7.  Newframework has Landed

Community

8.  New to Sakai -- Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango

9.  Webinar -- Enhance Student Success with New Features in SSP

10.  April's uPortal Community Call is Now on SlideShare!


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 Announcements



1.  Apereo Affiliates to Open Source Initiative

Apereo was formed to both develop open source software in the service of
higher education, and to advocate the use of such software and its
benefits. As such, we recognize that higher education is not an island. Our
work is intimately connected with broader open source communities, and we
need to establish meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships with
such communities as we continue to develop our work. To this end, Apereo
recently applied for affiliate status with the Open Source Initiative. The
application was approved by the OSI Board.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation with global
scope formed to educate about, and advocate, for the benefits of open
source, and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open
source community. It is the steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and
the community-recognized body for reviewing and approving licenses as
OSD-conformant.

Ian Dolphin, Executive Director of the Apereo Foundation, said "Apereo
relies on work undertaken by the OSI. The affiliation is a mark of our
support and recognition of this work. Both parties will explore practical
ways of working together into the future."

More information about the Open Source Initiative (OSI) can be found at
http://opensource.org/history.



2.  Apereo Board Strategy Workshop -- Summary of Outcomes

The Apereo Foundation board met at New York University on April 16-17,
2013 with the objective of identifying sustainable strategies to
deliver the Apereo vision of a "common foundation" in the context of
the current and developing global higher education landscape. David
Kay of Sero Consulting was invited to facilitate the event, including
undertaking preparatory interviews with board members and supporting
the Chair and Executive Director in documenting findings and outcomes.

Six key areas of discussion will be of interest to Apereo members and
other stakeholders who have an interest in the potential of IT and
digital technologies to advance global higher education. The first of
these areas reflects discussion and deepening understanding of the
nature of Apereo itself, and the role of the board within the
organization. This is a necessary prerequisite and context for the
further elaboration of a strategy forthe Foundation, and an approach
designed to deliver against the objectives of that strategy

- The Role of the Board

Apereo is a network of organisations that share common needs,
ambitions and values. The board acts as a key enabler within this
network. It is the "glue" that adheres crucial points of connection
between Apereo and its constituents -- the range of projects, interest
groups and regional communities that Apereo comprises. It is also a
critical facilitator of relationships with other organisations. The
Board therefore has a multi-dimensional role: as a catalyst,
encouraging effective internal and external connections within and
without the Apereo network; as a collective strategist, ensuring
informed alignment of the goals of Apereo with the needs of global
higher education; as an agency of check and balance, ensuring prudent
and effective use of foundation resources in realising objectives.

- The Need for Targeted Advocacy

Whilst there is greater acceptance of the value of open source
software in higher education than there once was, the sector still
lags behind others in understanding and appreciation of benefits. This
understanding is also uneven. There is greater understanding, for
example, of the role of open source licensing and IPR management in
reducing consortial friction -- by providing an independent entity in
which to vest IPR -- than there is of open source approaches to
software development and coordination. In line with its mission,
Apereo must work with other organisations to demonstrate the value of
open source software in education, and particularly in areas that are
intimately connected with mission delivery -- learning, teaching and
research.

- The Landscape

A complex ecosystem of grounded and sustainable software solutions is
increasingly critical to the Higher Education community, the
expectations of its learners, educators and researchers, and by its
institutional ambitions. This is of particular importance at a point
where higher education faces the challenge of constricting resources
accompanied by demand for operation at significantly increased scale.
Unless the solutions to these challenges are open, their value to
higher education will decrease over time, as the issues of control,
lock-in and migration re-occur. The board identified a number of
potential points where investment and effort by the Apereo community
might begin to address this. In the coming period, the board will work
with the community to systematically investigate these opportunities,
including new resourcing models for projects, whilst recognizing the
continued responsibility to delivering support for existing committed
projects and communities.

- The Apereo Portfolio

The sustainability of the foundation and the health of the network
Apereo represents is dependent on considered innovation and growth.
The board recognized the importance of building the Apereo portfolio
in terms of membership, adoption, and contribution; balancing the
attractions of breadth and scale with the core values of quality,
contribution and community. Growth should, however, be built on solid
foundations. In the coming period, the board will facilitate community
review of the Apereo portfolio, ensuring that each project is
appropriately represented and promoted in communications, that
governance structures are in place which are demonstrably effective
for each project and community, and that focal points of potential
future common strategic investment are discussed within the broader
community.

- The Software Community Lifecycle

Software and other communities brought forward, incubated and
sustained by existing and new members are the lifeblood of the common
foundation. Apereo must provide a firm yet flexible framework to
support the software lifecycle that combines local governance and
informed self-assessment with strategic guidance and value-added
support from the foundation. The current review and reiteration of an
incubation process is the first step towards articulating the flexible
framework we require. When this concludes, during July and August, the
community will begin to address further areas of the product lifecycle
in detail.

- Communication and Community Coordination

In order to nurture both community and opportunity, the board must
prioritize working with members, partner organizations worldwide and
core staff to establish realistic yet compelling approaches to
partnership, outreach and communications. This activity will add value
to the efforts of projects as well as to the overall reputation of the
foundation. More effective communications and community coordination
are key priorities for the immediate future. These will be supported
by further rationalizing infrastructure, consideration of new ways for
member organisations to share experience and form new initiatives, and
by additional staff as soon as this is judged prudent.

In continuing to work to strengthen the foundation in these ways, we
will not lose sight of the foundation's mission; in the next period
there will be renewed focus on support for projects and their
promotion -- the very point of the foundation's existence.

These areas present key challenges that will focus board attention as
ongoing priorities for 2013.



Ian Dolphin

Executive Director, Apereo Foundation

ian.dolphin at apereo.org



3.  Open Apereo 2013 Conference Sessions on the Apereo YouTube Channel

Are you disappointed because you couldn't attend the Open Apereo 2013
conference?

The Apereo Foundation is offering recordings of several of the enriching
presentations and birds of a feather discussions, including the welcoming
speech and keynotes,  through the Apereo YouTube Channel,
www.youtube.com/user/apereo.



4.  Apereo Advisory Board Forming --  Candidates Needed

As a project-oriented foundation, Apereo puts much of its collective energy
into meeting the immediate needs of its participants. This is as it should
be. But sometimes this causes us to miss the forest through the trees,
focusing on what campuses need in the next release at the expense of seeing
the big picture and finding opportunities to grow the community. In
response to this challenge, the Apereo Foundation Board is forming an
Advisory Council consisting of leaders in academic institutions that are
not active participants of Apereo projects -- or even adoptees of Apereo
projects -- but are interested in and sympathetic to the foundation's
mission.

The council will provide two kinds of help. First, it will review
foundation projects and activities at a high level and offer an outsider's
perspective on them, answering questions like,

- How do the foundation's projects and activities align with greater needs
the council members see in the educational community?

- Who, in the broader academic community, needs to know about particular
projects but probably doesn't know about them, and how can those people be
reached?

- What complementary projects and activities could the foundation be taking
on that would attract new members or offer new value to existing members?

Second, the council will help with outreach, mostly by simply being the
influential people that they are with a heightened awareness of what Apereo
does.

We are looking for good candidates to participate on the council.
Presidents, Provosts, CIOs, and CFOs are all welcome. The group
conversations will not be primarily technical; rather, they will be focused
on how the Apereo projects and community can better support the academic
mission. Meetings will be two to four times a year, with one being
face-to-face at the Apereo conference and the remainder being virtual. We
are interested in developing a group that is diverse in every sense,
including but not limited to academic role, type of institution,
nationality of the home institution, gender and race.  Most importantly, we
are looking for people who are thoughtful, generous of spirit, and capable
of giving good, honest advice.

If you can suggest anyone who would be a good candidate for the council,
please contact Ian Dolphin (ian.dolphin at apereo.org) or Michael Feldstein (
michael at mindwires.com).



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Projects



5. University of Michigan ITS Teaching & Learning Group Co-Develops
New Software Evaluation Method

Recently the U-M ITS Teaching & Learning Group (T&L) teamed up with
staff from CRLT (Center for Learning and Teaching) for the first ever
"Rapid IT Evaluation." The goals of this new type of evaluation are to
capture faculty insights on the pedagogical value of emerging
technologies and streamline the process of making the right tools and
capabilities available to support teaching and learning.

For this first event, the 17 faculty attendees evaluated Sakai's
LessonBuilder, a CTools module that allows instructors to set up a
"lesson" for efficiently accessing materials and features in CTools in
one or more learning sequences. For example, with LessonBuilder,
students can easily jump from a syllabus in the Syllabus Tool to an
assignment in the Assignments Tool to materials in Resources without
having to open each of these tools individually.

The attendees represented a broad cross-section of the university: six
LS&A departments and eight schools, including the Medical School,
Engineering, Business, and others. After an introduction, the faculty
members performed specific tasks on their laptops using pre-populated
CTools sites. CLRT and T&L staff observed but refrained from helping
in order to more accurately gauge the usability of the software and
the areas of confusion. This was followed by small group discussions
about what the faculty liked and what could be improved, a large group
question and comment section, and finally written feedback in which,
among other things, faculty were asked to share ideas of how other
faculty in their departments might use LessonBuilder.  The entire
process took under two hours.

Directly after the session, several refinements were made to
LessonBuilder that will be shared with the Sakai Community. They will
also be shared with the same group of faculty to demonstrate the
results of their participation. Given the open source nature of
CTools, UM developers can adapt tools like LessonBuilder to meet
specific instructional requirements based on faculty feedback.

CRLT, the Library, and the T&L Group plan to use the Rapid IT
Evaluation protocol in the future to ensure that new offerings meet
the needs of the users as closely as possible.

The event was sponsored by the Collaborative Domain Group, a combined
advisory group convened by the Knowledge and Teaching & Learning
Domain Stewards (Paul Courant and Deborah Ball, respectively).  For
questions or further information, contact Anthony Whyte
(arwhyte at umich.edu)


6.  Research into Effective Site Templates

"Derivation of Electronic Course Templates for Use in Higher Education"

Abstract -- Lecturers in higher education often consider the
incorporation of web technologies into their teaching practice.
Partially structured and populated course site templates could aid
them in getting started with creating and deploying web-based
materials and activities to enrich the teaching and learning
experience. Discussions among instructional technology support staff
and lecturers reveal a paucity of robust specifications for possible
course site features that could comprise a template. An attempted
mapping from the teaching task as understood by the instructor to the
envisaged course website properties proves elusive. We conclude that
the idea of an initial state for a course site, embodied in a
template, remains useful and should be developed not according to a
formula but with careful attention to the context and existing
pedagogical practice. Any course template provided for the use of
lecturers should be enhanced with supporting instructions and examples
of how it may be adapted for their particular purposes.

-----------------

This abstract is from a paper written by Jill Fresen, Fawei Geng and
Robin Hill, that was published in the "Journal of ALT: Research in
Learning Technology" at the end of last year.  Adam Marshall
(adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk) posted this abstract on the WebLearn Blog,
http://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/adamweblearn/2013/01/research-into-effective-site-templates/.



7.  Newframework has Landed

I'm pleased to announce that the "newframework" branch, which has been
used as a development branch for the new UI, has finally landed and
has been merged into master. This is a significant step, indicating
that the main focus in the coming weeks will be increasingly on
stabilisation and bug fixing, targeting a first release of this new
code base by July 1.

This also means that any pull request can from now on be submitted
against the "master" branch.

Kind regards,

Nicolaas Matthijs

nicolaas.matthijs at caret.cam.ac.uk



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Community



8.  New to Sakai -- Universidad Juárez del estado de Durango

Hi Community!

I'm happy to tell you that we have a new University in Latin America with
Sakai. The UJED (Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango in México) is
working with Samoo to be in production very soon.

Each day the Latin American community is growing and I'm sure in the next
years there will be an "explosion" of Spanish Sakai's all over America.
Thanks to all for your efforts in 18n and l10n. This makes it easier for
all of us.

Diego del Blanco Orobitg

Apereo LATAM Representative

diego.delblanco.sakai at gmail.com



 9. Webinar -- Enhance Student Success with New Features in SSP

When: June 26, 2013, 2 p.m. EDT (GMT -4)

Institutions are seeking ways to target student populations and help them
succeed. In this webinar, learn from Russ Little, Project Director, Student
Success Plan (SSP), on how SSP impacts student success. This webinar will
discuss the latest SSP release, 1.2, and the My Academic Planning tool, MAP
(available in SSP 2.0 later this year). Learn more and register at
http://www.unicon.net/ssp-webinar

Lisa Di Pietro

ldipietro at unicon.net



10. April's uPortal Community Call is Now on SlideShare!

If you missed the last uPortal Community Call in April, the recording is
now available through SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/uportal .

The community call covers general uPortal and Portlet updates, including
Tomcat 7 support, the bundled calendar portlet and additional statistics
reports.  Drew Wills discusses the new Notifications portlet enhancements
and Eric Dalquist demonstrates the University of Wisconsin-Madison's
portlets integrating with their employee HR system (PeopleSoft).

If you have ideas for future calls or would like to demonstrate some of
your portal functionality, please email
uportal-steering-committee at lists.jasig.org.

Sincerely,

The uPortal Steering Committee
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