JISC

Richard Huish College staff who attended JISC Netskills training had the skills to implement a single sign on solution which allowed learners to access a variety of quality online resources.

Net gain

Great course, well taught and enabled me to use the UK federation quickly The JISC Netskills training programme was used to help Richard Huish College develop the technical systems and infrastructure to deliver Shibboleth on Windows Server with Apache. The comprehensive training offered by JISC Netskills enabled the College Assistant IT Services Manager to develop and implement a working system on the College servers by accessing a virtual machine remotely whilst still on the course.

About JISC Netskills

JISC Netskills helps individuals and organisations to make effective use of innovative technology. Their reputation is built upon exceptional quality training and staff development. However they also conduct research, develop materials, investigate new technologies and new uses of technology.

The JISC Netskills public training programme, delivered by experienced and expert trainers, is supported by a range of practical workshops held throughout the UK. Delegates are therefore able to attend workshops to suit their individual requirements. The JISC Netskills website lists all forthcoming events, fully searchable and available via RSS newsfeeds. JISC Netskills also delivers bespoke onsite training to meet the specific training requirements of an organisation.

JISC Netskills’ expertise and training programme covers a wide range of subjects, including:

• e-Learning
• Web technologies
• Information skills
• Training skills
• Software products
• Software development
• Team & individual skills

Challenge

ATHENS was used by the College Learning Resources Centre (LRC) to access resources and in the early days the IT team did not have a great deal to do with it. However, when they were informed by LRC staff that the free Athens system was being discontinued they decided to investigate alternatives. Their investigations identified two options, Open Athens, a chargeable service, or the UK federation, which was free. They decided to opt for the free service but did so because they wanted more control over the system and it gave them the freedom and flexibility they wanted. After discussions with the JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) they were offered free training on the JISC Netskills course.

The challenge from a technical point of view was to identify the issues involved, technical support necessary, what hardware and software was required to set up the new service and how it would benefit the College as a whole.

Solution

The solution was to join the UK federation and use their services to identify the way forward. The college IT staff decided that Shibboleth on Windows Server was the way to go and hoped that the course would make it very clear what the technical challenges were and the problems they would encounter in setting up the new system. A JISC Netskills training course was identified and took place in Cambridge University. The University was equipped with excellent resources and bandwidth. The college assistant IT manager attended the course and was able to link remotely to the College and build the system directly onto the college server. By the end of the course he had a working solution ready to go for when he returned to the College. By doing this he was able to ask the JISC Netskills trainers, whilst still on the course, if if he encountered any problems.

Since setting up the system the IT staff have also used lists in the JISC mail service to enable them to keep abreast with new developments and ask for technical help from the ‘virtual’ community.

Impact on the learning provider

A large amount of resources and tools are now available to both students and staff.

Access to the resources is now considerably simpler than the original Athens system and this has led to an increase in use.

They now have full control of the system and have been able to make it more flexible and accessible.

Only one username and password makes logins to both the College site and into Shibboleth protected resources on the web easier.

Impact on the learner

The learners already used Athens within the learning resource centre. However, at that time they needed to get access codes and passwords from the LRC issue desk and use the system from College sites. This was work intensive and not very flexible or user friendly.

Now both learners and staff have a single log in to a college branded, user friendly, interface for accessing the resources. The interface has the College corporate identity that the students and staff are familiar with and once they have logged in they can access the resources at any location with an internet connection.

Being an IdP also meant that staff and students can now use the Microsoft DreamSpark service. This uses the UK federation to authenticate into their services and members of the College can now use their own credentials to access DreamSpark and download full working versions of software such as Windows Server 2003 and 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Virtual Studio 2006 and 2008 at no charge.

Key messages

1. Only one username and password makes logins to both the College site and into Shibboleth protected resources on the web easier
2. Make remote access available during the training courses to the individual’s College servers so that they can build the systems directly
3. Make use of the JISCMail mailing list to ask questions and get answers quickly

Further information

JISC Netskills