JISC

Connect, the Learning and Teaching Portal project, (co-funded by JISC and LTSN) has developed a set of services with the intention of their being embedded in end sites in HE and FE institutions' own portals or VLEs.  Current services in beta form can be found at http://www.connect.ac.uk/.  The proposal for this technical development project is to create a web services standard compliant package and interface within which any of the service’s data can be carried to HE/FE standards compliant portals or VLEs.  The development of a service oriented e-learning framework demands not just the internal HEI/FEI joining up through ‘services’, but the joining up of external application, and common services, including materials and resources publicly funded for widespread use.  This project will create a toolkit using standards that will enable the Connect services to expose their functionality for use by all those in the FE and HE sectors able to consume its services. The toolkit will also be available as open source code, for those who can adapt it for their own or other service data.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of the project is to build and first test a ‘Connect embedder’ toolkit that will enable service consumers in HE and FE to access Connect data for displaying in their own front-end sites. The project will create a packaged interface to Connect. This will enable the re-use of that service by standards-conformant service consumers. This packaged interface will form the basis of a toolkit and testbed, which will be reusable by others seeking to carry similar services.

The specific objectives are to:

1. develop a service specification for the ‘portal service embedder’ – to include at least:
   • a narrative description of the component and its role
   • a set of interface definitions, or references, to relevant specification
   • a set of data type definitions, or references, to relevant specifications
   • a binding to the implementation technology
2. build and test the application service toolkit with two service consumer sites

Project Methodology

Connect has built functionally separate services with the intention that HE/FEIs or organisations can choose to embed them into their own institutional sites where the service meets their needs.  The services are designed to support all those involved in learning and teaching and can be clustered in different ways for different displays and users.  To provide full integration of a Connect service into institutional portals or VLEs it is required that our data is presented in a format which is understood by services that are consuming it in the way that was intended by Connect; including the way in which it is transported, the formats and vocabularies used.  This project will create a package and interface to our data such that it can be used by service consumers who are configured to access such a service.  The toolkit (Connect embedder) will be built by the current system developers, System Simulation Ltd. who are building the portal services and as such, the proposed project will form part of the larger Connect project.  The toolkit developed will be tested at two sites, University of Hull and the University of Nottingham who both are in a position to trial the toolkit within their portals, and are using different portal technologies.  Open source documentation will be written to provide the architecture UML model (service layers, with implementations as components).

Implications

The findings will be used to support the Connect ambition to embed its services in HE/FE institutional sites to enable practitioners to directly access information, resources and materials that have been collected/identified through co-ordination and collaboration of many agencies.  The development towards a service oriented framework should help towards the joining up of the various aspects of resources discovery and acquisition in which Connect plays a specific role.  The Higher Education Academy sees itself uniquely placed to facilitate a range of activities that will contribute to supporting capacity building for all practitioners.  The Portal Service Embedder will provide one piece of the jigsaw needed for the development of the CONNECTed landscape. 

Project Partners

System Simulation Ltd. 
Bedford Chambers, London
Graham Moore              
Section Head Portal Services,
Nottingham University
Ian Dolphin                   
Head of e-Strategy, Hull University