EDUCAUSE | Open Source

The Enterprise Application Market in Higher Education

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:07:29 +0000

Learn which solutions colleges and universities have deployed for 16 enterprise-level applications, ranging from financials to student information to CRM. Using data from the Core Data Service, the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research studied the installed base of enterprise applications. EDUCAUSE Vice President Susan Grajek will present the findings, which shed light on use of open source and vendor solutions, market diversity, and outsourcing, as well as which types of applications are more widespread in higher education. This is your opportunity to learn about the higher education enterprise marketplace but also to provide input into the types of enterprise application data and reports you would most like to see in the future.

The 2011 Enterprise Application Market in Higher Education

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:42:00 +0000

ECAR RESEARCH HUB, PUBLISHED JUNE 12, 2012

Authors: Susan Grajek, Leah Lang, David Trevvett

This research report explores the enterprise application landscape in higher education. Learn which types of applications are more—and less—widespread, which solutions are most common, when open source is most widespread, and the frequency of outsourcing and the system office in application management.

Report and Supporting Materials

Report

Data Tables

Survey Form: Core Data Service Module 8

Subscribe to receive all ECAR research and analysis about IT in higher education.

Subscribe Now

DuraCloud: A Community Cloud for Higher Education

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:23:12 +0000

DuraCloud is an open-source solution for managing and persisting content in the cloud that’s offered as a service by DuraSpace, a nonprofit serving the higher education community. DuraCloud’s key value proposition is allowing organizations to connect easily with and take advantage of cloud computing and storage, without getting locked into any one specific cloud vendor. DuraCloud works with multiple cloud providers, both commercial and noncommercial. Alternatively, the service can be deployed locally at an institution or among a consortium of schools. The DuraCloud platform supports a number of use cases identified by our community. The initial use case developed provides online backup and archiving and a set of preservation services for managing and persisting digital content.

DuraCloud may be integrated with other DuraSpace supported platforms (namely, the DSpace and Fedora repositories) to provide a complete solution for managing, persisting, and preserving digital artifacts. DuraCloud for backup, archiving, and preservation is available today as a service. This year we are extending DuraCloud to manage research data sets and help institutions meet their data management plan mandates without needing to add local infrastructure. DuraCloud for Research will be an extension of services offered in DuraCloud. We’ll give a strategic overview of DuraCloud and present the planned development and partnerships on the roadmap.

Kuali Open Library Environment: A Look at the 0.6 Release and a Roadmap to OLE 1.0

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:18:39 +0000

Kuali OLE is in the second year (2011̫12) of building a community-source library management system that takes advantage of existing Kuali Foundation software for middleware (RICE) and finance (KFS). Operating since July 2010, and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Kuali OLE is one of the largest academic library software collaborations in the United States.

Kuali Open Library Environment: Reflections on Our First Year of Collaborative Software Development

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:14:43 +0000

The Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) has just completed its first year of building a community-source library management system. Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and part of the Kuali Foundation, the Kuali OLE project is one of the largest academic library software collaborations in the United States. Our community of nine research libraries is working together to build the first open-source system designed by and for academic and research libraries for managing and delivering intellectual information. We’ll discuss the challenges and opportunities discovered in our first year and offer insight into our design and collaborative methodologies. Finally, we’ll review our first code release and our roadmap for future releases.

Please note: Due to technical difficulties, only 2 out of 3 speakers were recorded

Tune In January 18 -- Kuali Open Library Environment: Reflections on Our First Year of Collaborative Software Development

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:23:55 +0000

This free hour-long session, “Kuali Open Library Environment: Reflections on Our First Year of Collaborative Software Development,” will discuss the challenges and opportunities the Kuali Open Library Environment discovered in its first year, review its first code release, and offer insight into its design and collaborative methodologies.

Those unable to attend may wish to visit the archives after the event or browse related resources:

CNI Podcast: Tom Cramer on the Open Geoportal

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:29:13 +0000

The Open Geoportal combines an intuitive, map-based search interface along with traditional text-based metadata search tools for rapid data discovery and for use in teaching, learning, and research. I spoke with Tom Cramer from Stanford University, who has worked extensively on the project.

Opening Up the Academy: The "Open" Agenda, Technology, and Universities

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:45:51 +0000

The author discusses the various "open" agendas which include; open access to the research literature, open data, open educational resources, open bibliography, and open-source software.

Harnessing the Power of Technology, Openness, and Collaboration

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:03:35 +0000

Supporting students at risk of not completing a course and ultimately, perhaps, of not completing college requires targeted data, guided intervention, and reduced costs.
Combining open educational resources, open academic analytics, and open-source software can address systemic challenges to college success and completion.
The Kaleidoscope Project is evaluating, adopting, and enhancing open educational resources for general education courses, while the Open Academic Analytics Initiative is developing an open-source ecosystem for academic analytics.
Together, Kaleidoscope and OAAI could facilitate a cost-effective systemic approach to address the challenge of college completion.

The Kansas State University Human Nutrition (HN 400) Flexbook

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:11:09 +0000

Flexbooks are “a free and open-source textbook platform” that allows users to “build and edit collaborative textbooks.”

Responses to and use of the Kansas State University Human Nutrition (HN 400) Flexbook (Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome are suggested browsers) differed significantly between campus and online students, in that the former were more comfortable with traditional teaching modalities.

Students in the Kansas State University Human Nutrition (HN 400) course primarily used electronic flexbook formats, with the majority using multiple electronic formats.

Most students appreciated the affordability, flexibility, and features of the flexbook over a traditional textbook.

New ELI 7 Things... Explores WordPress

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:41:45 +0000

WordPress is an open-source web application that is fundamentally a tool for publishing content, and a broad array of colleges and universities have made use of WordPress and encouraged its use among faculty members, staff, and students. For campus-wide use, IT staff can install a local instance of WordPress with the multisite feature enabled; where institutions have not undertaken an installation, some individual instructors have set up their own WordPress instances. WordPress offers a stable, flexible, and highly configurable platform that provides a one-stop shop as a web development tool and a publishing forum for students and faculty.

7 Things You Should Know About WordPress

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:03:56 +0000

WordPress is an open-source web application that is fundamentally a tool for publishing content, and a broad array of colleges and universities have made use of WordPress and encouraged its use among faculty members, staff, and students. For campus-wide use, IT staff can install a local instance of WordPress with the multisite feature enabled; where institutions have not undertaken an installation, some individual instructors have set up their own WordPress instances. WordPress offers a stable, flexible, and highly configurable platform that provides a one-stop shop as a web development tool and a publishing forum for students and faculty. It offers students the chance to write reflectively for various audiences, giving them practice in having their voices heard and their views considered by a wide variety of individuals.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

In addition to the "7 Things You Should Know About…" briefs, you may find other ELI resources useful in addressing teaching, learning, and technology issues at your institution. To learn more, please visit the ELI Resources page.

Kuali Mobility Services: In Production, Supporting HTML5 and Device Independence

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:20:01 +0000

Kuali Mobility is a freely available community-source project resource for colleges and universities that connects many campus services like the LMS, bus routes, athletics, maps, the library, and more to a common mobility platform. Mobile services are an urgent, strategic imperative for extending campus systems to the handheld devices students, faculty, and staff use. Kuali Mobility incorporates leading, industry-standard mobility software modules to support HTML5 and get beyond supporting native applications for each type of mobile device. Release 1.0 is in production, with Release 2.0 targeted for December 2011.

Got Open Textbook?

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:02:51 +0000

This session will focus on my journey of finding, adopting, and using open-source educational resources in physics and astronomy classes over the past three years. Enrollment in classes is up, students are happy, and I enjoy having complete control over all content in my courses. I will discuss resource discovery, implementation issues, and the pros and cons of using open-source materials and conclude with some recommendations applicable for any stage of open-source resource adoption. Participants will discover the joy of teaching with adaptable curriculum.

Introduction to Kuali for CIOs and Other Strategic Leaders

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:15:03 +0000

In this session, leaders from the Kuali community will be on hand to talk with CIOs and other leaders in higher education who want to learn more about what's happening in the community-source and open-source areas and to address future directions for Kuali and other strategic initiatives. Please join us for this informal networking opportunity.

Community Source Reception

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:30:35 +0000

Please join your colleagues in the open-source communities of Sakai, Jasig, DuraSpace, OpenCast and Kuali. Network with friends from institutions that have joined these communities, talk to colleagues from schools that may be considering joining one or more of these communities, and learn more about activities under way. The executive director from each community will be available to speak with attendees. Or, just come have fun!

Kuali Rice: Rapid Development of Workflow-Enabled Forms

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:45:13 +0000

All higher education departments need electronic forms that can be routed for approvals, either to replace paper forms or for a new purpose. Learn how to create forms with workflow using the open-source Kuali Rice software and how other universities are using Rice to quickly meet their form-generation needs.

Podcast: Laurie Antolovic Reconsiders the Enterprise IT Model

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:05:34 +0000

The global economic downturn has created significant financial challenges for institutions. In this interview, Deputy CIO for Indiana University, Laurie Antolovic, suggests how the current models for Enterprise IT might be improved, both financially and strategically.

Music: "Finding Frangipanis" by Jane Aubourg

EDUCAUSE Podcast Sponsor

Community-Sourced Kuali OLE Serves Libraries

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:56:03 +0000

The Kuali Foundation offers a lightweight administrative framework for developing new models for open source application development.
Using this open, lightweight approach, Kuali OLE is developing software applications for a library management system for research libraries.
In addition to the buy, borrow, or build options for developing local campus application solutions are open and community source software communities.
The Kuali OLE hybrid strategy involves pooling community-provided investment funds to outsource software development with a commercial vendor and offering community support for quality assurance, release management, and implementation.

An Open-Source Faculty Online Readiness Tool

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:32:01 +0000

This session will share an online tool that enables faculty to self-assess their readiness for teaching online. The story of its development across units without a budget, the open-source software decision, the tool distribution, and the tool itself will be shared. Bring a USB for download.

TC Apps: A Suite of Learning Resources

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:40:03 +0000

Teachers College Columbia University has replaced its aging course management system with TC Apps, a suite of online applications (mostly open source and hosted in the cloud) available via single sign-on through the college portal. We will describe the architecture of this system and how it was developed.

Governance and Support Structures for Moodle: Hearing Every Faculty Voice

Thu, 26 May 2011 14:45:04 +0000

Effective solutions for faculty governance and support in LMS usage are presented within operational overviews of two proven faculty-focused units. The emphasis on interrelated operations and impact on faculty Moodle usage provides participants with concrete strategies for oversight and support, which allow every voice to be heard.

Measuring Student Experiences in Moodle: A Classroom Research-Support Model

Thu, 26 May 2011 14:30:06 +0000

The e-Learning Center, Information Technology Services, and the Department of Psychology at Northern Arizona University collaborated on "Moodle Student Experiences," a classroom research-support project. We investigated student perceptions, frequency of use, navigation and support issues, and learning experiences using Moodle in an online undergraduate psychology course.

VIVO: A Semantic Web Network Enabling Collaboration Among Scientists

Tue, 24 May 2011 17:10:04 +0000

The University of Florida and Weill Cornell Medical College have implemented VIVO, an open-source semantic web application that promotes researcher collaboration within and across institutions by enabling local storage, control, and automatic update of data on interests and activities. Participants will explore VIVO while learning the perspectives of different institutional implementations.

The Sakai Open Academic Environment: Envisioning Learning, Curriculum, and Networking in a Global Context

Mon, 23 May 2011 19:20:10 +0000

This panel will address both the large-scale community vision for Sakai's next-generation open academic environment product and the translation of that vision into NYU's OAE pilot. OAE has been shaped by a conceptual framework of community-developed Design Lenses and its central governance by stakeholder institutions. Attendees will hear about the impact of these user-centered efforts on OAE design, see a demonstration of current progress, and learn about the ways NYU's Global Liberal Studies degree, which takes the network as a guiding metaphor, has constructed its curriculum and pedagogy in concert with the development of this new vision for instructional technology.