Hierarchy at Oxford

Adam Marshall and Matthew Buckett

University of Oxford

Overview

• The problem• The current solution• Solving in Sakai• Demo • What’s next?• Technical guff

Sakai at Oxford

• Current VLE/LMS is Bodington• Moving to Sakai

– Pilot 08/09– Production 09/10– Bodington decommissioned 11/12

• Must offer equivalent functionality• Big problem: lack of Hierarchy

Hierarchy?

• Reflect University structure• Provides context to material• Reuse of sites• Meaningful URLs• Anonymous access

– Search engine indexing

• Devolved administration

Bodington supports above.

Hierarchy in Sakai

• Resources tool– File hierarchy– Can collapse some

• Chuck’s subsite work• Ian Boston’s work• Internal tool hierarchies (Evaluations)

Chucks’ Subsite

• Lots of small hierarchies• Useful for tying courses together• Not very invasive

But• Only presents sites you’re a member of• Not browseable from Gateway site• No tool support• No nice URLs• No site reuse

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Chucks Subsites

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Oxford Hierarchy

• Initial development from Ian Boston• One overarching arrangement of sites• Sites exist in multiple places in hierarchy• Meaningful URLs

– Site URLs– Page Aliases

• Tool Support

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Hierarchy diagram

GatewayGateway

CollegesColleges

ExeterExeter

HelpHelp

ASUCASUC

MyWorkspaceMyWorkspace

Sites

Oxford Hierarchy Demo

• Movie for backup

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Devolved Admin

• Why? Small central team• Encourage first level of support to local IT• Increase self reliance

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Devolved Admins

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English Admin SiteEnglish Admin Site

Sue(Admin)

Joe(Member)

Early Medieval English SiteEarly Medieval English Site

Joe(Manage)

Rita(Access)

Devolved Admin Demo

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Technical Implementation

• Skin Changes• Portal changes• Hierarchy API• Site Manage changes• Sites tool (search)• Helpers hurt (brittle).

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Hierarchy Enhancements

• Hierarchy navigation as a tool in site.• Drag and drop interface for management.• Other related sites.• JCR for storage of tree.• Tabs aren’t right for parent nodes, anything

better?

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What else is possible?

• Search downwards from here• Different toolset based on position• Site template based on position• Inheriting permissions (parent realm)?

But:• Tools should not be hierarchy aware

Further Details

• http://beta.weblearn.ox.ac.uk/ - Pilot Instance• https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/tetraelf/

hierarchy/ - Hierarchy code.• https://svn.oucs.ox.ac.uk/projects/vle/sakai/build/

- Our build including WL-7 patches and skin changes.

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