It's getting harder to categorize software solutions, what with CourseGenie enhancing Microsoft Word so that it becomes a SCORM/IMS/Blackboard/WebCT authoring tool and now content management solutions or portals crossing over into learning management system (VLE) territory. Like meek and mild Clark Kent's transformation to Superman, some of these latter solutions can metamorphize, with apparent ease, into something looking awfully like a learning management system or VLE … Earlier articles in Auricle considered how simple content management systems like those driving weblogs had potential as 'alternative' virtual learning environments. I've kept looking and touching, and the more I look at what's currently available in the open-source landscape the more convinced I become that the swiss-army-knives of functionality that are quasi-monolithic VLEs are cul-de-sacs, which we will want to reverse out of … eventually. But of course other, non-educational, imperatives will then inhibit us from doing so:(
Our earlier taste of PostNuke for instance showed how easy it could be to plug-in a new package of functionality, thus substantially enhancing the core environment. We also found it a breeze to have one application, i.e. the open-source VLE Moodle, authenticate through another, i.e. PostNuke, thus having one login serve for both.
Again, with Moodle we found it easy to have it authenticate against our University's LDAP directory thus eschewing multiple logins (but we didn't have time to investigate authorisation for specific Moodle courses:)
Although all of these black arts are usually the province of high priests and priestesses in information and computing services, the availability of open-source code and information, however, certainly provides us with experiences which makes us better informed and helps us make better decisions … hopefully:)
So to help me warm to my theme first let me assert that there's a lot of e-learning activity in the world … right?
There must be! There are thousands of Blackboard, WebCT et al 'courses' out there.
Now let me pose a really difficult question.
How much so called e-learning is really using a proprietary VLE as a content repository with perhaps a smidgen of noticeboard?
Go on do the audit!
How often is that institutional VLE being used primarily for purely administrative purposes and is standing in for functionality that should exist within the instituiton's core IT infrastructure; or even worse is replicating functionality that already exists?
How often do faculty actually do more than post a few links to a few resources or upload some content?
How often is it a faculty or departmental administrator who's actually making more use of the environment than academic staff?
Go on do the audit!
The knowledge transfer model (or is that the information/content model?) is pretty ingrained in the culture of particularly undergraduate higher education. It's little wonder, therefore, that technology is first perceived as a wonderfully efficient way of disseminating content. Which it is. Diana Laurillard's 2002 Educause Review article Rethinking Teaching for the Knowledge Society on the inadequacy of the knowledge transfer model puts the case far more cogently than I could ever do. However, like an antibiotic-resistant disease (or is it a comfort blanket:) the content transfer model still predominates.
So what should we do?
We could become a cabal of fundamentalist visionaries who expend a lot of energy trying to bring the 'contentcentrics' around to the 'one true faith':) Instead, it may be more productive to adopt an embrace and extend strategy, i.e. go with what they feel comfortable with and provide them with opportunities, tools and support which extend what they want to do.
So we give them access to an enterprise class proprietary VLE, right?
Well … not quite.
What I'm suggesting here is that in many cases a VLE (as we currently know them) may be expensive overkill (licensing, training etc) for what after all is relatively simple initial requirements, e.g. post up some course content and make a few announcements. Before the hit squad arrives note the emphasis on initial🙂
So what's brought me to propose this heresy?
I've been looking at content management systems, more specifically open-source ones, and again find myself increasingly impressed with what I see. One of the beneficial side effects of open source development, with potentially multiple developers, is that the technical architectures tend to be modular which means that the core functionality of whatever software artefact is produced can be enhanced by additional functional modules. Add a vibrant user and support community and you get an explosion of optional additional functionality. Note the emphasis on optional. As a result, a barebones content management system will do just that. But want a weblog, instant messaging, discussion board, Wiki et al then, sir/madam, select from this list and voila! you've got something that begins to look awfully like a virtual learning environment. Which begins to propose a very interesting question, i.e. if that's the case, instead of a proprietary VLE why not use an such an extensible content management system over which you have some control?
Let's focus on one example of such a system.
There's an open source content management system called Plone, which, in its basic configuration, is a perfectly reasonable open source content management system and portal. There's a vanilla Plone demonstration site available for those so inclined.
However, because Plone's architecture is modular, developers in continental Europe (Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands) are currently enriching and adapting the basic Plone to increase its basic usefullness in an educational context. This latter initiative is now called EduPlone.
At the same time there is another initiative arising from Italy called Plone Campus. There's an interesting set of slides about Plone Campus from this year's Plone Conference.
To reiterate, what I'm describing here is a core product, which albeit useful in its own right, is designed in such a way that it can be adapted, extended and enriched so that Clark Kent can become Superman.
Have a brief look at some of the extensions on offer for Plone. Not enough? Then try more extensions here. Or for some of the latest work there's always the Plone collective offerings.
For those so inclined it could be worth a visit and registration at the EduPlone demonstration site. It looks just like the plain vanilla Plone demo site but enables users to add EduPlone functionality to their structures.
We've installed and used the vanilla Plone without apparent problems but we've had less success in our local install of EduPlone. EduPlone installs fine but only some things work well, e.g discussion board, but other aspects appear less robust. To be fair, EduPlone is still very much a work-in-progress and the hosted demo site suggests it is possible to do better than we've managed to. I was concerned with the apparent lack of activity on the support sites for Eduplone but a visit to the CVS code repository suggests that the project is still very active. With EduPlone, it's important to grasp that this is not a different product from Plone but is instead using Plone's extensible architecture to add a suite of extensions (products in Plone speak) which the developers believe are most relevant to educational contexts.
For those interested in the history of the EduPlone initiative it's worth looking at the Plone-Educational archives in SourceForge
There's a growing number of Plone sites available, although you might not recognize them as such. Plone can be the hidden engine of content managed Web sites. For a helicopter view Plone.org's Plone Sites is a good place to start.
For a more focused example of Plone being used in an educational context then The Harvey Project may be of interest. The Harvey Project describes itself as:
“An international collaboration of educators, researchers, physicians, students, programmers, instructional designers and graphic artists working together to build interactive, dynamic human physiology course materials on the Web”. The site offers us an interesting example of what they call a 'reusable learning asset' … they just couldn't bring themselves to use the 'O' word:)
Another example of a Plone site, this time for educational community support, is Opencourse.org.
But like everything everything can't be that good so what's the potential gotchas?
Plone depends on the Zope framework. Zope.org describes their system as:
“an open source application server for building content management systems, intranets, portals, and custom applications. The Zope community consists of hundreds of companies and thousands of developers all over the world, working on building the platform and Zope applications. ”
Now some may see this as a good thing and I don't feel qualified to comment, but Zope is undoubtedly different. To me, it had become a highly respected but perhaps little understood initiative, only exploited by a high priesthood of 'opensorcedom'. And then along comes Plone which some would argue is the first major application of Zope.
So what's the issues? Well Plone depends on the underlying Zope and, to some extent, attempts to shield users from the complexities of the parent system. But use Plone for any length of time and you are going to have to understand and interact with the underlying Zope system. So basically, sure, start reading the Plone documentation but system administrators would benefit mightily from moving quickly on to the Zope documentation as well.
Next up is component dependencies. Adding a new function to Plone is usually as easy as it gets. Each new function is presented as a folder which contains the necessary code and resource elements. This folder is transferred into a designated part of the Plone directory tree. Plone is stopped and restarted and the new function and its interface becomes available in the 'Add item' control. So far so good. But sometimes the new function depends on the existence of another functional extension which, if missing, breaks the new addition. However, readers of manuals and documentation should have little problem with this concept:)
The next issue is where exactly should enhancements (products) be added? In Zope? In Plone? As described above the process is pretty easy, but now let me add some complexity. Some products are Zope compatible only and must be installed only in the Zope system and will not show up in Plone. Some products are Zope and Plone compatible and must be installed in the Zope system only. Some products appear to be only Plone compatible and must be installed in the Plone system only. Once you adjust to this tortuous way of thinking it's not too bad, but initially confusing or what? The problem perhaps arises because Plone is gaining traction and therefore the demand for Plone products is where it's at … but I could be wrong about this:)
Now we get on to what I consider the really serious issue, which will apply to all systems which place themselves in the content/document management/repository space. Ok, we can put our content/material/resources into systems such as Plone/Zope but just how easily can we get them out again?
How do we prevent ourselves exchanging proprietary system 'lock-in' for with open-source system 'lock in'? Plone, EduPlone, Plone Campus et al are based on the underlying Zope framework which is undoubtedly powerful but has ploughed its own furrow. In essence how easily can we get our content out of a system like Plone and variants once it's in there? This is a topic that has obviously been exercising some members of the Zope community. Reassuringly, the EduPlone community appear to be addressing the issue by working on the export of Plone folders as IMS compliant Content Package via their GoZip Plone product. I couldn't get this to work on my install but, as I suggested earlier, this is obviously a work-in-progress.
As with all open source projects a major weakness can be the lack of documentation. Documentation seems to be something that is done after the event or viewed as a supplementary activity instead of an absolutely critical component of a successful initiative, particularly complex ones. Forums can be useful but as we found in our recent explorations of Moodle the open source VLE, a vibrant mult-layer developer and user community can, ironically, make it very hard work building a coherent knowledge base. But heh! … great opportunity for wannabe authors of the definitive guide to whatever.
Having said the above, Plone's documentation isn't too bad with Plone.org offering the online Plone Book. The 'book' is based on Plone 1.x so is getting a little dated, but it's still useful. For something more up-to-date there's always Andy McKay's Definite Guide to Plone which is available both in print (Associated Press) and online, although the online version appears to be formatted in order to make producing a hard copy difficult.
EduPlone documentation is, again, best described as a work-in-progress. I found it particularly frustrating trying to build an accurate picture of this project. However, due credit to the EduPlone developers who are running a multi-lingual site (German, Dutch and English). Also, the mailing list archives and other documentation for EduPlone appear to be a bit sparsely populated, which kind of limits their usefullness for those, like me, who are trying build a picture of where the project's going. But pop in to the EduPlone CVS (Concurrent Versions System) archives and a different picture emerges … here is where all of the interaction and communication is happening.
So let's try and make sense of all of this.
What's started to emerge from the open-source community are solutions like Plone, Moodle et al which can be extended and enriched by communities of users and practice. What I find of particularly interest in the likes of Plone is the concept of 'plugging in' discrete elements of functionality, so that if all I want is, say, content upload and a weblog that's all I need to have.
To be fair to proprietary vendors some of them see the advantages of allowing users to extend the core system, e.g. Blackboard's Building Blocks. It's just that you only get such privileges when you've already bought into their whole enterprise package. The open source alternatives are building extensibility into the system architecture from the ground up and provide no barriers to entry based on licensing fees paid.
It seem to me that we are fast moving into a situation where, instead of having a paucity of choice and near monopoly proprietary provision, there is considerable scope for institutions to build powerful, customizable solutions based on open source foundations. The key question is, as I have addressed in previous Auricle articles, will HEI's who have already embedded proprietary systems into their infrastructure actually be in a position to participate. I suspect not, and that's a pity because the whole educational community loses much from their non participation.
