Project OZ. Managing collaborative tool suites for courses with Grouper ad-hoc groups. Elizabeth Wendland, Shilen Patel, Mark McCahill Duke University

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1 Project OZ Managing collaborative tool suites for courses with Grouper ad-hoc groups Elizabeth Wendland, Shilen Patel, Mark McCahill Duke University

2 what s the problem? suppose you are teaching a class - or organizing a collaborative group? you want to use great tools you want it to be easy web 2.0 = everyone expects easy integration

3 wait a minute... monolithic e-learning systems vs. tool suites limited tools are a high price to pay for simple group management in monolithic systems distributed tool suites can be a real pain - why specify students plus ad-hoc groups of visitors, guest lecturers, etc. over and over?

4 monolithic vs distributed systems

5 collaboration tools go beyond the web resources provided in the cloud simulations and immersive environments virtualized application environments - VCL (virtual computer lab) realtime communication and presence

6 the dream Instructors and assistants should be able to select collaboration tools use the course roster from registrar add and remove guests and auditor access on-demand use best-of-breed tools with simple group and authorization management

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8 the landscape at Duke Oracle Identity Management Grouper for group management LDAP Shibboleth for single sign-on & federated access OZ to define ad-hoc groups / application suites

9 IDM architecture LDAP.DUKE.EDU Read Group Data from LDAP OZ Outgoing group and people data Update Group Data in Grouper using Web Services Oracle Identity Manager Incoming group data C H A N E L O G Grouper Class roster added to Grouper using API Course Data Files Produces data extract Incoming people data Student System

10 OZ group schema OZ uses the schema described by John Spardo from Brown University at last fall s Common Solutions Group meeting: Infrastructure Support for Teaching and Learning Applications at Brown work1.pres/spadaro.htm

11 OZ group schema

12 OZ groups and tools OZ is authoritative for ad-hoc groups ad-hoc groups + registrar s official course enrollment = course participants sync of groups and authorizations to applications

13 OZ architecture LDAP.DUKE.EDU VCL Web Svc API ListServ (Sympa) OZ Web App (Ruby) Web Svc API Web Svc API Wiki (Confluence) Grouper Web Svcs XMPP Command-Line API Grouper Jabber (ejabberd) WebFiles/AFS/WebDAV Oz Architecture

14 Authorizations authorizations are very dependent on the application OZ defaults authorizations to handle the most common cases more flexible group to authorization mapping planned for version 2

15 group authorizations pushed into wiki

16 grouper naming conventions course group names format: subject : catalog_nbr : section : class_nbr : term : { all admin instructors managers TAs contributor developer mentor learner students visitors auditor }

17 initial OZ tools suite VCL - virtual computer lab IM chatrooms - XMPP/Jabber wiki - Confluence webfiles / webdav / AFS mailing lists - Sympa

18 virtual lab computers? VCL is a reservation/provisioning system authenticate select the virtual lab computer you need virtual machine instance is created and personalized log in via Remote Desktop client for Windows or VNC / X-windows for linux

19 1.) user makes reservation at VCL web server 2.)VCL presents user with list of possible environments - users selects one 3.) VCL provisions a node with tan image and gives user access information 4.) user runs Remote Desktop to access the VCL node public network private network for provisioning

20 VCL remote compute environments provisioned from a cloud Shibboleth and NCTrust federation means Duke and NCSU can share cluster resources...but instructors still need a way to handle ad-hoc groups

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23 XMPP/Jabber VCL virtualizes the computer labs...but how do students ask questions and interactions with others? meeting spaces with JWChat - a javascript XMPP/Jabber client why not embed chat and presence in apps?

24 Webfiles / WebDav / AFS shared course storage accessible via AFS WebDAV Webfiles - FileDrawers AFS front-end from University of Michigan with Duke enhancements:

25 Sympa An industrial strength mailing list manager with a SOAP API for external group management REST-ful web services would simplify integration... Web 2.0 embedded mailing list archives - once we shibbolize Duke s Sympa instance

26 Confluence wiki one of many possible containers for embedded web widgets (Webfiles, Chat, etc.) web service API for group management

27 User access to OZ tools OZ springboard - a simple list tool suites can be embedded into many sorts of containers - portals, wikis, content management systems... Jabber chat embedded in web pages Webfiles embedded in web pages

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29 OZ summary perform ad-hoc and system-of-record group management once then push results to userdefined application suites portal / container-agnostic integration via web embeds combine web, virtual desktops, presence

30 lessons Collaborative applications should provide methods for mapping LDAP groups to applications groups API for external management of groups and authorizations

31 lessons some applications have limited or nonexistent APIs for external group management but you can work around this example: Confluence does not have a get_members function for groups in the web services API

32 lessons what about external users? create a Duke identity? add user@identity_provider to Grouper groups? affiliate request process integration with OZ?

33 futures more application support via OZ plugins better support for cloud-based services federated VCL cloud? WebEx? tighter integration with Duke IDM system virtual world support (Cobalt/Croquet)

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35 futures OZ support for general collaboration is straightforward - just add group schema for the other collaboration cases