An archived article about portals on the CETIS site got me thinking.
First, let me declare my current position. I'm very concerned that higher education is, by default, allowing itself to be dominated by a few Managed Learning Environment (MLE) / Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) vendors. As a result institutions end up 'locked-in' to a particular vendor's range of educational services and pedagogical support structures which only change at a pace consonant with the vendor's roadmap. So I look with more than passing interest at the development of portal technologies which, theoretically at least, should be 'loosely-coupled' to the services which they front. Of course there are some who would argue that there is no problem since all a portal needs to do is connect with an underlying VLE. I can't agree. Current major league VLE's 'lock in' services. The vendor is selling you the whole package or nothing at all. Whilst there is certainly an ageing business logic behind this we need perhaps to rethink whether this is sensible from a consumer perspective. The MLE/VLE market place of the future should perhaps be more component and discrete services oriented and maybe, just maybe, the advent of portals will help rewire all our thinking. The SAKAI Project is a welcome step in the right direction.
