Athabasca University

1
Athabasca University

• Community Development and Interaction Through
  Portal Technologies

2
Topics

• The future of e-learning
• What is a portal?
• Why develop a portal?
• Communities of Interest
• What is uPortal?

• How to start building a portal
• Content management
• What is Plone?
• Conclusion

3
The Future of e-Learning

• (Hodgins, 2000, p. 32)

4
What is a portal?

• a secure, single point of interaction with
  diverse information, business processes and
  people personalized to a users needs and
  responsibilities (IBM, 2003).

5
General characteristics

• A gateway - a single point of entry to
  information and tools
• Web-based aggregation point
• Meeting place (voice and video over IP)
• My place for the co-creation of new knowledge

6
Conditions of Satisfaction

• Easy - access, navigation, reduced bureaucracy
• Accessible from anywhere, anytime
• Customizable
• Fast access to key knowledge and tools
• All I need to do I can do through here

7
Principles for Killer App Design

• Decision-making passes to learners.
• Shift management emphasis from groups of learners
  to individuals.
• Build knowledge or learning communities bonding
  relationships.Community centre and hub for
  interaction.

• Reduce registration and tracking to a bare
  minimum and focus more on providing extremely
  easy access to high-value content.
• (Rosenberg, 2001, p. 256-258)

8
Creating communities of interest

• News
• Calendars
• Individual
• Group
• organizational
• Sticky features
• Search
• Maps
• Dictionaries
• Courses
• Bookmarks
• Resources
• Library
• RSS
• Communication tools
• Email
• Instant messaging
• Discussion fora

• Specialized postings
• Classified
• Jobs
• Résumés
• Travel
• Feedback
• Forms
• Polling
• Transactions
• Conference registration
• Course registration
• Memberships registration
• Financial transactions
• Workflow
• Project management tools
• Drop boxes, file sharing
• Access Devices
• Wireless push technology

9
Why develop a portal?

• Reduce information overload
• Customer relationship management
• 24x7 access
• Reduce batch communications
• Reduce expense of traditional communications

10
Related concepts

• Websites
• Gateways
• Agents
• Intranets
• Portals thick thin

11
What is uPortal?

• uPortal
• is a free, sharable portal under development by
  institutions of higher-education.
• is an abridged and customized version of the
  institutional Web presence...
• adds "customization" and "community" to the
  campus Web presence.
• provides community tools, such as chat, forums,
  survey, and so on, build relationships among
  campus constituencies.
•  (http//ubcpe.sourceforge.net/apidocs/main/)

12
Who is using uPortal?

• Ja-Sig
• http//mis105.mis.udel.edu/ja-sig/uportal/
• Sakai Project
• http//www.sakaiproject.org/
• Unicom

13
Key elements of uPortal

• Tabs
• Channels
• Log-in
• Brand Identity

14
elements

• Tabs
• - Pages or units of related content
• - Customarily along the top of the portal

• Channels
• - Discrete applications, services, or content
  feeds
• - Metaphor a paragraph within a page of text

15
elements

• Log-in
• - Authentication Authorization
• - LDAP (or other)
• - Security

• Brand Identity
• - Customize with logos, colours, layout

16
How to build a portal

• Determine
• Audiences
• Stakeholders
• Leadership (clearly articulate)
• Information resources
• Transaction-based services
• Collaborative tools

17
building

• Select technology
• Servers
• Central authentication
• Authentication database
• Portal software
• CMS software

18
building

• Stakeholders
• Buy-in / Ownership
• Participation
• Speed (time to market)
• Continuous Improvement
• Dont Reinvent the Wheel (steal!)

19
Content

• Adding Content
• Updating Content
• Managing Content

20
Content Management

• Why use a content management system?
• Easy to update content in the portal with no
  knowledge of HTML, XML, or RSS.
• Separate content from presentation
• Repurpose content easily
• Workflow control
• Staging areas

21
The Plone CMS

• Plone content management system (CMS)
• Plone is an out-of-the-box ready content
  management system that is built on the powerful
  and free Zope Application server (plone.org)

22
Plone is

• Open source
• Extensible
• International
• Standard
• Technology neutral
• Supported

23
Plone provides

• Workflow
• WYSIWYG editing
• Security
• Customizability/Branding
• News Events RSS
• Metadata (Dublin Core)
• Access to alternate access devices

24
Conclusion

• We believe that the value of a portal to a
  campus is that it can be used to engage
  constituent groups, empower them with access to
  information resources and communication tools,
  and ultimately retain them by providing a more
  encompassing sense of membership in an academic
  community.
•  
• (Institutional Portals, p. 11, 2003)

25
References

• Dolphin, I., Miller P. Sherratt, R. (2002).
  Portals, PORTALs everywhere. Retrieved February
  11, 2004 from http//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue33/por
  tals/
• Institutional portals A review of outputs.
  (2003) Retrieved February 11, 2004 from
  http//www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/downloads/staker
  eq.pdf.
•  
• JA-SIG uPortal. (2002). Retrieved February 11,
  2004 from http//ubcpe.sourceforge.net/apidocs/mai
  n/.
•  
• Miller, P. (2003). Towards a typology for
  portals. Retrieved February 11, 2004 from
  http//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue37/miller.
• Rosenberg, Marc J. (2001). E-learning Strategies
  for delivering knowledge in the digital age.
  Toronto McGraw-Hill.
• Hodgins, H.W. (2000). Into the future A vision
  paper. American Society for Training and
  Development and National Governors Association.
  Commission on Technology and Adult Learning Feb
  2000. Retrieved September 4, 2003, from
  http//www.learnativity.com/download/MP7.PDF.