Higher education is very different from other industries. It has its own process and a number of other applications. Most commercial vendors develop their own application-oriented applications, a wider distribution area in all sectors. These scientists complain that creates a clear separation between software producers and users in science.
To overcome these shortcomings of the education sector has begun to try to open source as an alternative model. About a decade back, are the institutions at the beginning of the total cost of ownership through the adoption of an open-source community approach vis-à-vis proprietary applications, the viability of open source based business models, sustainability and discuss security issues.
The success of the Community has developed an open-source software is well established. Linux and Apache are sufficient proof of his success. A similar trend, although not so widespread in its scope, the development of community projects in the fields of education, such as Moodle and Sakai are attributed.
During his formative years, the open-source community approach to education has several alternative models have been developed. Some of these models and schools of thought have flourished and have been successfully implemented in a wide large-scale industry. Progress and success of open source projects like Sakai, Moodle, Kuala, uPortal, Shibboleth, and many others closely monitored by the industry.
Community Source Model
One school of thought believes that open-source sharing is more a philosophical approach a viable alternative. The adoption of open source in higher education seems to think otherwise. FLOSS (Free / Libre Open Source Software) communities to thrive well in learning environments.
The FLOSS model was used heavily in initiatives such as MIT Open Courseware and Open Source Biology. Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia, Project Open Dictionary are excellent examples of how open source has been successfully adapted to education initiatives.
In a community behind the project brings together various institutions to partner in the project. All partners contribute financially, and the recruitment of staff for the effort. Originally, the partner institutions had on all the efforts and development, and in later stages of the project is open to the entire community. In this way, the initial support is guaranteed, and institutions have an important influence in deciding how to model the application and design.
The original purpose of the community projects of Origin is in the cooperation between the institutions. The focus in the first crucial steps towards a common economic vision and an appropriate administrative framework instead of forming a community around a common code. Most open source community projects slow migration towards open source in the later stages.
The Sakai project, for example, began as a joint effort of four institutions (Michigan, Indiana, Stanford and MIT). The original intention was to establish a framework of common objectives, the appropriate software to develop an agreed list of targets. The extent of participation was later by the formation of the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP) that other institutions can join and participate in the community for a small fee increases.
The current landscape
An education, society, like every organization has its own needs from the planning budget preparation. They also have typical needs such as the need to integrate programs of state funding to pay several cycles, and Student Information System (SIS) to admissions, grades, certificates of Notes administration, student records, and billing. All this calls for robust ERP systems. Until recently, leaving colleges and universities developed primarily on the two measuring systems, there are over 15 years, or the transition to commercial products from vendors such as Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft or SunGard are oriented as suppliers to the higher levels of education market.
Kuala Financials was supported by the lack of open source business solutions in the field of higher education is a mix of some application providers, owners and key initiatives of the open source community together. PeopleSoft, Oracle, SunGard, Datatel are major suppliers to well-integrated ERP packages provide for the education sector.
Recent consolidation in the industry, such as the takeover of PeopleSoft by Oracle, and WebCT, Angel, Blackboard, etc. has caused unrest in the brotherhood of education. The concern is the fear that the consolidation trend would lead the monopoly of a few large suppliers. The plans of these providers to offer tightly integrated systems reinforces the fear that it is unfair leverage to these vendors, as it would extend the length of the community against them.
A concern over proprietary applications is apparent between industry and developers of software applications to separate. Institutions also have strong reservations about the currently available software and administrative systems of course management. The feeling is that the applications from vendors such as SAP and PeopleSoft adapted to other industries and does not work well for educational efforts. Also includes the exclusive nature of the applications that the source code is not available and personalization efforts a substantial cost.
With such a variety of requirements, open source may be a useful alternative. In fact, these restrictions the impetus for open-source initiatives have provided for higher education. Some of this success has a solid foundation for the development of an alternative model provided support for the education industry.
The Sakai project, participating institutions have agreed to integrate and synchronize their educational software in a pre-integrated collection of open-source tools such as Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE) is known. Sakai has actively implemented are several institutions including the University of Michigan and Indiana University.
In parallel, Sakai has also established a range of community activities that have led to active collaboration between industry and application providers. The Sakai Educational Partners program allows educational institutions to participate in the program for a small fee. There are also the Sakai Commercial Affiliates, the amount of payment for the installation, integration and support to offer ..
Kuala other hand, deals mainly with aspects of school administration. The Kuala Financial System (KFS) is the most important application. It manages the administrative and operational tasks, such as accounting, procurement, salaries and benefits, budgeting, asset management and grants. The system is designed around modules, which can be modified to work with the existing commercial applications. For example, at Indiana University, Kuala applications are compatible with PeopleSoft HR and students. Kuala Foundation is a consortium of several non-profit universities and some hardware and software. The Kuala Commercial affiliate program works in a similar manner as the equivalent of Sakai. The community has grown and now includes the University of California, Cornell, Michigan State University, San Joaquin Delta College (California), and the University of Arizona.
Significantly, according to the 2008 Campus Computing Survey, approximately 13.8 percent of respondents already have an Open Source LMS – Moodle or Sakai is identified – as the campus standard LMS.
Also provide several other projects functionality of the SIS. For example, openser student demographics, planning, organization, notes, certificates, health records management, and to contact their parent modules with additional functions such as monitoring of disciplinary procedures foodservice accounting support and bulk email / SMS in an emergency.
Other keys are intiaitives
Community Development JASIG uPortal and CAS (Central Authentication Services), two elements that serve as input to Kuala Rice.
Internet2 – a consortium of universities to develop, in partnership with industry and government and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, including products such as Shibboleth and Grouper LED
Open-source programs
As with any open source “means the activity, the open-source programs, by definition, is a distributed, which can be used freely, as amended. Such a model would appear to be contrary to the notion of higher education because it affects the credibility of the educational environment. Education Campus is intended as a methodology for structured learning function. The concept of cooperation between the community of scientists and students on the same platform brings a lot of uncertainty in the scenario
However, communities FLOSS (Free / Libre and Open Source Software) in education have to be very successful. A fundamental principle of the learning approach is rooted in the context of adaptation to the principles of experience. With a focus on learners and their preferences, the learning approach focuses more on learning through collaboration, communication and exchange.
Major initiatives include the connections project at Rice University, the MIT OpenCourseWare project, and the social learning of the Wikipedia encyclopedia.
FLOSS approach in higher education, in combination with traditional approaches exhausted teacher centered. The objectives of the FLOSS approach is not a substitute for traditional methods, but to realize synergies and combined to provide the students a better learning environment.
The Report on education as the transfer FLOSS “, published in September 2008 as part of the project FLOSSCOM noted that the FLOSS communities can create effective learning environments. The study also developed three different approaches that could be effectively combined with traditional teaching methods.
Economic models of Open Source
One aspect that clearly marked the acceptance of Open Source is a winner, the fact that often in this scenario, developers are also users of the software. This removes the discrepancy between the perception of the community of developers and end users, the difference in the case of proprietary applications. However, this is less obvious in the case of administrative applications, such as payroll and HR. In such cases, the adoption of open source must be a managed process.
Initiatives such as the Draft Kuala proved that open source and sustainable models to provide the appropriate support mechanisms. In these models, there is an active collaboration between the Community, which includes not only developers and end users, but also a support group consisting of expanded commercial suppliers. These support groups are available to provide timely support mission critical applications. The community approach also ensures that the code is not closed, and a vibrant community of interest is to ensure that improvements to keep happening as necessary.
Projects such as uPortal have been developed with minimal resources, but are used for hundreds of institutions. The EU approach has, as in the case of the Sakai project permanent. In terms of financing, the Sakai project on the value of an investment of $ 6,800,000 two years ago.
The viability of the open source model of community is not from the monetary or cost, but also the flexibility it offers. The debate over the costs of ownership transfer between proprietary software commercially available and open source applications has not yet been proven empirically. However, the fact that the code does open, it can be easily adapted to new requirements and should not be greater investment in the form of adjustments or additions. This is an important economic sense, at times.
The case for open source in higher education is also in a study by the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness documented conducted. In a 2005 report of the study, entitled “Open Source Hat Software has become a major institutional strategy in higher education?” Notes Rob Abel, how open source is a form of “great for higher education.” The study is based on a Analysis of Open Source projects in education, believes that community outreach is an interesting model that also reduces the risks in introducing an open-source approach.
Regarding the cost model, notes the study that while open source has helped to generate savings of around 20-30 percent for the commercial sector, one can not quite true education. The community approach, the author notes, are the costs associated with participation may prove beneficial in some relation to costs. Institutions that have their own infrastructure and resources may continue to benefit from significantly reduced costs for their open source initiatives.
Future
Open source has to be a platform for scalable and reliable collaboration and learning. In their quest for an ideal software application management, operational and training platforms, most CIOs are looking for interoperability, reliability and scalability of control applications. Applications like Sakai and Kuala have beyond any doubt that open-source applications offer great configurability proved.
Community development and support of commercial vendors, such as in the case of Kuala and Sakai, fuel greater innovation. In addition, the advantage offered by this collaboration is an incentive for continued improvement. Support systems and improvements for future requirements are ensured.
To the question, such as address or adopt open source as a model, the response to the needs is from, skills and infrastructure available to an institution. The community development model has shown that costs can be distributed among the participants. Experience shows that cooperation between the universities and colleges to open source software that meets their needs in a manner which can produce more than some commercial products. The collaborative model allows schools to pool their financial resources and technology. In addition, to ensure a larger community that helps applications to be tested in a variety of test environments, to build robust solutions.
In terms of developing the basic science, learning systems, is to reflect formative assessment and evaluation outside of the classroom. Many universities have taken the initiative of MIT offers course materials online, accessible to all, free. It was at Yale University, Notre Dame, Tufts, and adopted the Stanford School of Engineering, to name a few. The United Nations has launched an initiative that Social Media will use technology and ideas, higher education opportunities for people who otherwise would not be able to offer afford the costs.
Commercially, the open-source projects have their first steps on the market. The model results helped by some support major commercial suppliers. For the community of origin is open to, to thrive, significant financial resources is an absolute necessity to prevent the slow and avoid the pitfalls that arise in the form of source code is easily modifiable and noticed by another manufacturer. From a business point of view, projects like Sakai and the Foundation Kuala develop as they have key players in the academic and business world.
What could derail the acceptance of others? There are several areas potentially at risk:
* Lack of understanding of the issues for adoption
* Lack of support for the acceptance of applications
* Minimum stay of personnel to support applications
* Lack of training / documentation for the training of staff
* An “outlier” of the project that consumes a lot of press and develops a negative bias against the project
Many of these risks could be reduced if looking for the initiatives of development cooperation between the Foundation and leading open source and commercial partners to support the solutions – and develop solutions complementation. Some examples:
* Advertising through more conventional channels of non-education in the field, such as Google and industrial sites such as edu1world
* Chains Furrther been innovation and cooperation – be it by “Code collaborations, or a community that will transform the current mailing lists of items easily accessible
* Commercial training partners, and Webinars
* Easy deployment of commercial subsidiaries crossing points used as pre-installed such as servers or virtual images that are downloaded and used out of the box can
As a result, the open-source initiatives in higher education, a long road before entering the commercial market have to go far. But with the industrial and scientific cooperation, it has great potential, the landscape of higher education in the long-term change.
About Innovative Consulting Partners: Innovative Consulting Partners is a leading educational consultant in the country. Innovative Consulting provides services to customers in higher education and public sector industries. Innovative is a Principal Consultant and provides open-source products and services in support of Kuala solutions. The team made innovative Drupal consulting and led successful implementations for clients in the education sector and public sector industries Innovative is an Oracle Partner
