JISC

This project has now completed. See the project website and the final report available at the foot of this page.

Background / Context  

Recently completed development work on the Bodington VLE provides the facility for all users to create their own user-owned personal spaces in the VLE, and to take advantage of the features of the VLE normally only available to designated lecturers and course leaders. This has already proved popular, particularly with students, who until now have not been able to make full use of all the tools available. We anticipate a broad range of use-cases developing as uptake increases, all with the obvious requirement for a means of navigating to, or locating other personal spaces. It would also be very desirable if there was a way for users to 'tag' related personal spaces and other resources in the VLE, in order to build up networks of users, subject areas, research interests, etc.

Aims and Objectives

The project’s overall aim is to provide a means of:

• creating personal profiles
• discovering other user’s personal spaces
• linking to other personal spaces and resources within the VLE

To provide these features, we intend to integrate FOAF (Friend of a Friend) capabilities within Bodington. FOAF is a way of sharing information about people and their activities. We will provide an interface for users to create FOAF based profiles, and a navigation tool which makes use of the profiles to browse networks of related users, subject areas, research interests, etc.

Project Methodology

• Adopt an incremental and iterative approach to development.
• Produce mock-ups of user interfaces to aid requirements analysis.
• Focus initially on simple software deliverables, with a view to future expansion.

Implications/ Deliverables/ Stakeholders

• Proving a means for individuals with similar research interests to locate each other and resources in the VLE.
• Produce reusable user interfaces for profile creation and management.
• Document toolkit implementation experiences.
• Contribute possible toolkit enhancements.
• Contribute software developed to Bodington/Sakai/JISC communities.