What we have now
1. SAIL
2. SAIL Data Service (SDS)
3. PAS Suite/Pas Researcher Pack
4. OTrunk
Miscellaneous
5. Plan to integrate OTrunk into SAIL
6. UCWISE's previous experience with SAIL/POD
7. How UCWISE can make use of SAIL/OTrunk
1. SAIL
SAIL stands for "Scalable Architecture for Interactive Learning". It is a java based open source framework (API) to support the development of E-Learning systems. It has been designed to support distributed learning and authoring, to be adapted for use by many diverse education scenarios, to continuously evolve (rather than becoming obsolete within a few years as many E-Learning projects have done) and to allow content (curriculum and bits of curriculum) to be re-used and revised. The SAIL framework is still under development and is evolving in response to needs and requirements that emerge.
2. SAIL Data Service (SDS) http://www.telscenter.org/confluence/display/SAIL/SAIL+Data+Services
The SAIL Data Service (SDS) is a Ruby on Rails web application that handles:
- Learner data persistence for SAIL applications
- Delivery of dynamically-generated Java Webstart jnlp applications customized for the learner.
- Providing detailed researcher reports about student interaction with SAIL curriculum.
3. PAS Suite/PAS Resercher Pack
PAS Suite that is built using SAIL: http://www.telscenter.org/confluence/display/SAIL/Using+the+Pas+Suite
PAS Researcher Pack: http://www.encorewiki.org/display/encore/The+Pas+Researcher+Pack#ThePasResearcherPack-pas
The Pas Researcher pack (PRP) is an open source suite of tools that can be installed by any research group and used as a platform for developing rich, interactive learning materials for students working in classrooms, at home, or in the field. Pas stands for "Project, Activity, Step", and loosely derives from a previous Web-based application called WISE, which offers a Web-based learning environment where students performed projects that consisted of a small number of activities which in turn consisted of individual steps to be completed by students.
The PRP is implemented in the java language with greater functionality and expandability than WISE. It is built from SAIL which has been carefully designed to enable small java-based curriculum elements to work smoothly together in order to form larger curriculum modules. The PRP portal system and easy-to-use authoring tool allows researchers (often graduate students) to create learning projects by opening each step in "author mode" and specifying its content, just as they did in WISE. The hope is that by offering these tools as a "research pack" we can encourage evolution of the an active open source community, supporting researchers as well as their technology team.
There are thus three key elements to the Pas researcher pack:
- The Pas VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) where students interact with the materials
- the Pas Authoring environment where researchers or teachers can author new content
- the Pas Portal, where all students and teachers are registered, and all student data (e.g., drawings, notes, simulation settings, etc) are stored.
These three elements are multi-layered applications that share common code and libraries. In addition, a basic collection of curriculum units (curnits) will be offered in the form of a project library to offer researchers a core set of content to get started. Much of this content was built during the WISE project and its subsequent center: Technology Enhanced Learning in Science TELS.
4. OTrunk (http://confluence.concord.org/display/CSP/OTrunk)
OTrunk is a Java framework developed at Concord Consortium that supports the creation and modification of rich Java component-based interactive content and the persisting of both author and learner state of this content. OTrunk uses otml, an extensible declarative xml-based language for both declarative layout and composition of content as well as for object state persistence (learner data).
OTrunk stands for Object Trunk. Trunk is used both to be a root of a tree of objects. And also to be a container of lots of objects like the trunk you would take to summer camp.
5. Plan to integrate OTrunk into SAIL
We are working on this. One of the things that we are currently doing is auditing the SAIL-core code and improve it by adding documentation and refactoring. Through this process, we're trying to see what the process of "integrating OTrunk into SAIL" would be like.
6. UCWISE's previous experience with SAIL
In the past, when UCWISE was trying to move to the next version, they tried to use SAIL as their back-end architecture for data persistence and curriculum management. However, the UCWISE programmers experienced difficulty, because of several reasons:
1) UCWISE's way of assembling a piece of curriculum (whether it is for the day, or for the entire semester) required the "steps" to be very modular- easy to take apart, easy to put together with other steps, etc. SAIL/POD does not provide such modularity easily.
2) Lack of references, documentation, support
7. How UCWISE can make use of SAIL/OTrunk
8. UCWISE's other needs
1) Versioning
easiest thing that UCWISE can do:
Activity-Step-Page: SAIL-OTrunk
Navigation : view of organization
PAS-SAIL-POD
PAS=content schema (Project-Activity-Step)
PAS-SAIL-OTrunk
- the way the different beans work
- one interface (to replace bean properlies) OTclass properties- defines schemas for different objects that you want to load in
- OTrunk UI bean implementation needs to be made interface
Plan to migrate to SAIL/OTrunk
How much refactoring/documentation needs to be done before we are confident that outside people can look at SAIL-code and try to use it
How much SAIL code will UCWISE folks need to see?
SAIL - VLE, content model, portal, SDS, architecture