TSUGI: A Framework for Building PHP-Based Learning Tools

Nikolas Galanis, Marc Alier, Maria José Casañ, Enric Mayol, Charles Severance

§  Most learning institutions have adopted one

§  LMSs meet the structural and operational needs of institutions

§  Educators and learners are generally satisfied with what is offered

The Rise of the LMS

§  Too much offer

§  Most LMSs seem to be clones of one another

§  Less flexibility, less innovation

The potential fall of the LMS

§  Innovation on mobile devices

§  Social web

§  Learning content and its producers (commercial vs. open-access)

Looming changes

§  Flexibility •  Adapt to and embrace new technologies •  Mobile themes •  Mobile apps

§  Interoperability •  Provide support for external tools •  Implement web services •  Implement interoperability protocols •  Implement secure communication mechanisms

A solution?

§  Provide an approach to interoperability §  Decouple various blocks of the architecture §  Update blocks individually §  Students have access to a variety of tools §  Teachers can incorporate teaching tools form

within the LMS §  No interface changes

Service Oriented Architectures

§  Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) •  Standard architecture of common services across systems •  Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs) •  OSIDs are software contracts of interoperability •  Compatible with most specifications (SOAP, WSDL, etc.) •  Authentication, authorization, logging, internationalization,

configuration •  Advantages:

o  Ease of development o  Common service factory o  Reduced integration cost o  Reusable software

Interoperability Specifications

§  IMS Global Learning Consortium •  Learning Tools for Interoperability (LTI) •  LTI defines the way to reach an external application from the LMS •  A protocol for communication between a “tool consumer” and the

“tool producer” •  LTI focuses on the launch phase of the interaction, establishing the

necessary parameters o  Log in o  User information o  Course information o  Placement information o  Size information

Interoperability Specifications

LTI Example

§  Geared towards tool producers §  A framework to facilitate the writing of LTI tools. §  Supports LTI 1.x and 2.x §  Create a learning ecosystem that is LMS

agnostic

TSUGI

§  Tool hosting environment §  PHP, Java in the works §  Installed and hosted locally §  Data exists locally §  API inspired from Moodle

TSUGI Hosting

Container

Tool

Tool Tool Tool Tool TSUGI Hosting

Container

Tool Tool Tool Tool App Store

Install

§  Develop the Java implementation

§  Support for installing TSUGI on a cloud infrastructure

§  Promote and showcase TSUGI

Future work

QUESTIONS