• Home
• GOVERNMENT CXO
• E-GOVERNMENT
• CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
• TAX AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT
• GREEN GOVERNMENT
• GOVERNMENT DATA MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT SECURITY
• GOVERNMENT CLOUD
• GOVERNMENT ANALYTICS
• GOVERNMENT GIS
• CONNECTED GOVERNMENT
• DIGITAL INCLUSION
• EDUCATION IT
• HEALTHCARE IT

Education IT, Technology

Open source software more suitable for Oxford

By Xinghui Guo | 29 November 2010

Open source software is more attractive and better suited to traditional education needs, the IT head of Oxford University has said.

According to Director of Computing Systems & Services at Oxford University, Stuart Lee, using open source allows the university flexibility to modify software and make it more applicable to the Oxford style.

“When we were looking at Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), commercial VLEs, like BlackBoard, just to name one, didn’t understand that students want to move around the university and look at different areas of interests.

“And when we explained the Oxford learning experience to them, it completely threw them off so we went with open source product instead,” said Lee.

The Oxford learning experience, as Lee put it, is when students have a short eight-week term with a crowded timetable, but are still keen to attend any lecture they want if it interests them—and that is why the ability to capture lectures is very important for the university.

Lee told audiences at the recent FutureCampus event in Kuala Lumpur: “We have to develop our own systems off the shelf for things like tutorial recording. No one is going to be making a product for that because it is really only Oxford and Cambridge who do it.”

With open source products in hand and service-oriented architecture to boot, the university is able to “take one bit in and one bit out”, he said.

The technology that supports the campus can then be customised to enhance the “immersive learning experience”—letting students manage their time and material, moving around campus and using all kinds of technologies they want.

The VLE that Oxford uses is called Sakai. Used to support the intimate face-to-face teaching that Oxford is known for, Sakai is an archive of materials for students to read.

Said Melissa Highton, Head of Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University: “When a student goes to a lecturer’s Sakai, they have links to the tutor’s lectures, researches, reading list recommendations and things in the library that the tutor thinks students should look at.

“Even if they can’t find the tutor, students still have access to all the materials and recommendations.

Lee said that customising a technology is not easy to do when you buy “a monolithic solution” like Blackboard.

Apart from customising, another benefit of open source is that it supports open learning materials. Using Sakai means the university is not tied down by a license.

Lee said: “If we suddenly want to open up a big area of our Sakai VLE, we don’t have to renegotiate a license with the vendor.

“In this way, we can break down international silos in education. We can open up our VLE to anyone in any country.”

---