{"id":43,"date":"2004-04-26T09:36:37","date_gmt":"2004-04-26T13:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/2004\/04\/26\/what-i-saw-at-the-revolution-ope"},"modified":"2006-06-04T18:23:37","modified_gmt":"2006-06-04T22:23:37","slug":"what-i-saw-at-the-revolution-openacslrn-meetings-in-heidelberg-germ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/2004\/04\/26\/what-i-saw-at-the-revolution-openacslrn-meetings-in-heidelberg-germ\/","title":{"rendered":"What I saw at the revolution: OpenACS\/.LRN meetings in Heidelberg, Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Last week I went to Germany for the <\/font>OpenACS<\/font><\/strong><\/a> and <\/font>.LRN<\/font><\/strong><\/a> meetings in Heidelberg, hosted by .LRN Executive Board members Michael Hebgen and Carl Robert Blesius of Heidelberg University.\u00a0 These open-source software\u00a0projects for online communities and e-learning are thriving.\u00a0 Here’s my summary<\/a> of the trip.<\/font><\/p>\n

Last week I went to Germany for the <\/font>OpenACS<\/strong><\/font><\/a> and <\/font>.LRN<\/strong><\/font><\/a> meetings in Heidelberg, hosted by .LRN <\/font><\/font>Executive Board members Michael Hebgen and Carl Robert Blesius of Heidelberg University.<\/font><\/p>\n

(For the un-initiated, OpenACS — Open Architecture Community System — is a free, open-source software application toolkit (including many modules that work “out<\/font>-of-the-box”, as well as a sophisticated development framework) for online communities.\u00a0 Originally developed at ArsDigita (acquired by Red Hat in 2002), <\/font>OpenACS is maintained and has been significantly extended by the OpenACS project, a community of more than 7,000 people around the world who use it in their <\/font>organizations and as the foundations of their software and IT services businesses.\u00a0 The OpenACS architecture is the foundation for Siemens’ award-winning global <\/font>knowledge management application, Sharenet, which has been the subject of a <\/font>Harvard Business School case study<\/font><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 But, it is also used by many other smaller organizations, like Greenpeace, and by countless individuals <\/font>around the world, since it supports an entirely free-and open-source software infrastructure stack as an option for those who don’t\/ can’t use tools like Oracle’s <\/font>RDBMS.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

.LRN, also free and open-source, is a related project\u00a0 that uses OpenACS as its foundation and extends the toolkit for use in a variety of educational settings.\u00a0 MIT’s <\/font>Sloan School and nearly a\u00a0 million users at more than 25 other major universities<\/font><\/strong><\/a> and other organizations around the world are now using .LRN extensively in ten languages with another 20 on the way<\/font><\/strong><\/a>, in many cases as the main e-learning application platform <\/font>for thousands, and tens of thousands of users at each school.\u00a0 It was also selected as the foundation application technology for the E-Lane <\/strong><\/font><\/a><\/font>project<\/font><\/strong><\/a>, which was organized by Spain’s Telefonica and recently received a 3-million Euro grant from the European Union.\u00a0 Along with the better-known OpenCourseWare Project<\/font><\/strong><\/a>, .LRN is part of MIT’s Intellectual Commons<\/font><\/strong><\/a>.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

The .LRN pitch is simple.\u00a0 The educational world is still figuring out how best to deliver e-learning, especially to external audiences.\u00a0 While commercial vendors are adding zeros to their prices, .LRN\u00a0is providing a suite of applications and a development\u00a0framework\u00a0free and open-source so you can save your dollars and have the flexibility for the innovations that will work at your school.\u00a0 The more people that adopt and contribute to the toolkit, the more powerful the starting point.)<\/font><\/p>\n

Based on what I saw in Heidelberg, the projects are thriving.\u00a0 The\u00a0 number of registered users at openacs.org has doubled in the last two years.\u00a0 More than 60 <\/font>people came from various parts of Europe and the Americas to get to know each other, present their work, and coordinate their efforts.\u00a0 Examples of the work <\/font>presented:<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

>An advanced Learning Management System (LMS) developed by Vienna University and now used by tens of thousands of users there for online self-testing.\u00a0 <\/font>Despite a fixed budget, by law Vienna U. has to accept all comers, and so needs to use e-learning extensively to leverage the school’s physical and human resources.\u00a0 <\/font>Vienna evaluated and rejected several commercial options as inadequate to their particular needs for features and support, and eventually selected .LRN as the basis <\/font>for their platform.\u00a0 Aware that most instructors at Vienna are already familiar with Microsoft Word, Vienna developed a set of custom styles which test authors can <\/font>use to designate certain parts of their documents as explanations, questions, instructions, answer options, etc.\u00a0 When saved, the document translates these styles into a <\/font>set of XML tags, based on SCORM, that transform the Word-based test into a structured data file that can be imported into .LRN.\u00a0 In Vienna’s implementation, this <\/font>structured data file is then administered as a test using the .LRN “Complex Survey” module.\u00a0 Vienna has pushed the envelope on scalability:\u00a0 this highly dynamic <\/font>application, using AOLServer as the web server and PostgreSQL as the RDBMS, gets 3.5 million page views per day and serves users with page load times that <\/font>average 0.5 seconds.\u00a0 Vienna has agreed to contribute all of this to .LRN shortly under GPL.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

>A multi-player (as in hundreds) simulation for Leiden University’s law school.\u00a0 This application uses the workflow and notifications capabilities of the OpenACS core <\/font>to coordinate interactions among the players in the simulation.\u00a0 While today all of the “work” is manual (students write and instructors and others respond), the system <\/font>has been architected for increasing levels of automated response using rules-based AI that will be implemented over the next several years.\u00a0 This also will be <\/font>contributed to .LRN under GPL.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

>a highly sophisticated knowledge management system being developed for the UK’s Camden City Council (the “county”-equivalent counterpart to the municipality of <\/font>London).\u00a0 This too will\u00a0go into OpenACS\/ .LRN under GPL after it launches in August 2004 to over 1,000 initial users (government staff workers).<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

There were several other ambitious and useful innovations using OpenACS and .LRN shown during the meetings that will also be released into the public domain <\/font>under GPL shortly.\u00a0 (Professionally-shot and -edited videos of these presentations will be streamed shortly from a server at Heidelberg University, courtesy of <\/font>Michael Hebgen and his staff, and I’ll post the the URL when it’s available.)<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

The meetings offered useful insights into the dynamics of successful open-source projects.\u00a0 This was not the stereotypical gathering of hacker volunteers with outsized anarchic visions<\/font>.\u00a0 80% or more of the work being done on OpenACS \/ .LRN is done in-house by, or funded under contracts with\u00a0 major organizations and <\/font>institutions.\u00a0 Several CIO’s from these organizations attended, as did CEOs from several new IT services firms looking for alternatives to commercial software <\/font>partnerships that have not met their clients’ needs.\u00a0 .LRN\/ OpenACS development is being done by extremely talented and experienced engineers, who have now <\/font>worked together long enough to take advantage of each others’ strengths and work around their shortcomings.\u00a0 Usability is a major focus area<\/font>, and the community includes users and administrators to help guide that.\u00a0 The toolkit itself is now nearly ten years old, and <\/font>the community has survived multiple process-related upheavals to prove its viability.\u00a0 Finally, the community is now organizing itself in a more formal way to fund <\/font>promotion and development.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

The perfect weather and setting helped assure a great time — the meetings were held in the Marstall (originally the royal stables) with views of Heidelberg’s lovely <\/font>schloss and the Neckar out the windows.\u00a0 And our hosts were extraordinarily gracious and well-organized (thank you again!).\u00a0 With the momentum I saw here, the <\/font>next year should be very interesting to watch.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I went to Germany for the OpenACS and .LRN meetings in Heidelberg, hosted by .LRN Executive Board members Michael Hebgen and Carl Robert Blesius of Heidelberg University.\u00a0 These open-source software\u00a0projects for online communities and e-learning are thriving.\u00a0 Here’s my summary of the trip. Last week I went to Germany for the OpenACS and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[589],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cesarbreastories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}