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Extending Sakai with a mobile interface
Sascha Watermeyer
WTRSAS001
ABSTRACT
Sakai is a learning management system that can be benefited by extending it with a mobile interface which introduces the opportunity for mobile-learning. This paper covers similar learning management systems – Blackboard & Moodle - and the mobile interface solutions supported by their frameworks. The paper focuses on the pros and cons of the different mobile interface solutions and concludes why Sakai’s interface outperforms the rest
1.
Introduction
Sakai is an open source course/learning management system – C/LMS- that provides the platform for an enterprises online learning environment by enabling the management, delivery and tracking of online and blended learning[7]. Resistance of vendor lock-in and escalating licensing costs have led many colleges and universities around the world to choose open source learning management systems such as Sakai over the limited proprietary options[10].
Due to the current influx in the number of mobile devices purchased, more and more students eventually will own a mobile device with internet access and opens the opportunity of e-learning on hand and not just in the classroom. To avoid platform specific dependencies – e.g. app for Android or iOS - an interface that is interoperable between all mobile platforms offers a better solution. This can be achieved by implementing a mobile optimised web learning management system that provides enhanced access throughout an institution. HTML5 is the new standard for presenting content on the internet and offers improved support for current multimedia and can be written specifically for mobile devices with smaller screens than standard desktops.
In this paper, we will cover learning management systems and the various mobile interfaces offered by these learning management systems. Then cover the advantages and disadvantages of these mobile interfaces and explain the different approaches taken to design the interfaces. Finally we will conclude which interface outperforms the rest by comparing the features offered by the interface.
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2.
Learning Management Systems
Learning management systems are software systems designed to support student learning. They contain a number of presentation, assessment, communication, and management tools, for example, Sakai, Moodle, and Blackboard[4]. A range of institutions use learning management systems for their operations; for instance corporations use LMS for their corporate training of record keeping or employee registration, Universities use LMS for the student self-service, trainer notifications – announcements to the students from lectures -, resource management of courses, collaborative learning – through chat room – and online learning courses. Learning management systems are a form of e-learning and can include e-learning tools that provide direct feedback from student to teacher. These systems have a large scope of features and some are even completely web-based to provide access to a learning environment throughout an institution.
Considering the past development of learning management systems there are three methodologies to implementing these systems:
a) Commercial LMS: e.g. Blackboard
These cover the proprietary learning management systems, that Blackboard Inc. has a near monopoly over the market. Blackboard expanded their dominance in 2005 by their merger of WebCT - its largest rival in the education software industry – [3]. The rapid growth of this company has forced institutions who previous had WebCT as their primary LMS to upgrade to a premium Blackboard licence by the end of the 2012 that would include Blackboard community features at triple the cost. As indicated in the introduction, resistance of vendor lock-in and escalating licensing costs have led many colleges and universities around the world to choose open source learning management systems over the limited options of proprietary options.
b) Locally Developed LMS: e.g. CourseWork from Stanford
These refer to the "in-house" developed software at a particular institution; in 2003 Stanford University announced the open source release of its course management system that the university had been developing since 1998[3]. Since the open source release of CourseWork, Stanford University has joined forces with three other institutions, the University of Michigan, Indiana University, and MIT, to develop a new Collaboration and Learning Environment now called the ‘Sakai project’ or as we will refer to it, ‘Sakai’.
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c) Open source/Community LMS: e.g. Sakai, Moodle
These include the learning management systems that are developed under open source licences and often include a community of developers who contribute to the lifecycle of the software. The Sakai project is an experiment in collaborative development, implementation, and productive use of eLearning software systems[5] between Stanford University, University of Michigan, Indiana University, and MIT based on the original Stanford learning management system called ‘CourseWork’. Moodle - originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment - is effectively the open source competitor of Sakai that was developed by Martin Dougiamas who designed the program while working on his Ph.D. at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia[9]. Both Sakai and Moodle offer viable solutions for institutions wanting to implement free learning management systems as opposed to the forced premiums of privately owned LMSs.
3.
Mobile Interface Support
In the rest of the paper we will discuss three examples of learning management system with mobile interface support. We will discuss approaches for implementing a mobile interface for one commercial learning management system – Blackboard - and two open source projects –Sakai and Moodle –then compare the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches.
3.1
Blackboard
Blackboard has grown rapidly since 1997 by overcoming their major competition through acquisitions, most importantly the buyout of WebCT in 2005 then the acquisition of Angel in 2009. At this time the only other major competitor left was Desire 2 Learn (D2L) however D2L had been embroiled in a three year-long multimillion-dollar patent infringement lawsuit from Blackboard. Blackboard’s patent infringement allegations were nullified but the long term impact for D2L was unknown[10]. WebCT had stopped having support from Blackboard in 2005 straight after the acquisition and Angel continuously losses support since its acquisition in 2009.
Blackboard being a profit seeking entity doesn’t have to rely on an open community driven project to develop a mobile interface to extend the Blackboard Learning System thus the enterprise has developed a complete mobile platform called ‘Blackboard Mobile’. The platform was released in 2009[2] that provides students with access to all learning and teaching content through a native mobile application. Blackboard developed applications for most popular mobile platforms; Android and iOS – not Blackberry- but this still leaves a gap in the interoperability between all types of mobile platforms. Students at an institute that
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support Blackboard Mobile will be able to download the application through their mobile platforms app store that has support for up to seven languages including Arabic.
3.2
Moodle
Moodle unlike Blackboard is an open source project that was founded by Martin Dougiamas who based Moodle from research on his Ph.D. in Perth, Australia. The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists[1]. Moodle has an aim of being as interoperable as possible; an important feature of this is the ability for institutions restricted by the premiums of Blackboard to migrate Blackboard sites into Moodle.
Under the Moodle page for their mobile app they provide a thorough rationale for mobile apps and explain the different approaches that an application developer could use for implementing a mobile app:
a) Mobile Optimised Web
Current mobile platforms have web browsers so Moodle works immediately without modification however an interface designed for a large desktop screen won’t necessarily be adequate for the small screen of mobile phones. There are frameworks designed for mobile devices like the UCLA mobile framework[12] which provides a solution for the small screens The advantages of this approach are that the app will run without an installation needed on all mobile platforms- write once, run anywhere – though the app won’t be able to run offline and doesn’t have the ability to utilise all mobile features.
b) HTML5 application
HTML5 introduces the ability to utilise all mobile features and act more like a native application including being able to run offline e.g. Google Apps .
This has the advantage like the mobile optimised web approach of being interoperable between all mobile platforms and doesn’t require a special client to run. An HTML5 app can also cache data offline however because the development of HTML5 is still in its early days, an application written in HTML5 wouldn’t be able to harness the full performance of a native application.
c) Native Mobile Apps
Apps are still the predominant paradigm for mobile development and have full capability of mobile features such as GPS. The Moodle community already has number of mobile apps but they rely on "screen scraping" the web interface, which means they can't work offline and don't add many features beyond the basic web interface. The advantage of a native application is that you can insure a stable build
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for a mobile platform which is easier to develop for than HTML5 however one would needs to develop a separate client for each mobile platform you support.
d) Native Mobile apps(cross-platform compiled)
Another approach to developing a mobile app is to use a cross-platform development framework (Airplay SDK, Appcelerator Titanium and Corona SDK) that produce native code for various mobile platforms. This has the advantage of being able to generate iPhone/Android apps at the same time and keep them synchronised however debugging is often not as pleasant than on a native SDK and has some features missing like push notification. The framework is also dependant on an external company that may be too expensive and might have some vital features missing from the framework.
Table 1: Pros and Cons of the different approaches to developing a mobile app
Approach
Pros
Cons
• Interoperable on all platforms
without installation • Unable to run offline
Mobile-optimised Web • 'write once, run everywhere'
• Can’t utilise all mobile features
• Customising of theme is easy
HTML5 application
• Interoperable on all platforms without installation
• Unable to harness the full performance of a native application
• No special client required
• Easy to develop for stable platforms
• Need to develop each client independently
Native mobile apps • Full use of mobile functionality • Easier to develop than HTML5
Native mobile apps
(cross-platform) • All the benefits of a mobile app
• Debugging is often not as pleasant than on native SDK • Syncs development of
iPhone/Android apps
• Missing Features e.g. Push Notifications
Source: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Mobile_app
Considering the approaches covered above, Moodle decided to initially tackle Native mobile apps
because these have the most functionality and can assume safe builds when developing for mobile platforms. The apps would use the web services infrastructure developed in Moodle 2.x to communicate securely and consistently with Moodle sites. I feel the detailed discussion brought up by Moodle about the different approaches to developing a mobile app is extremely applicable and should be considered before implementing a mobile application.
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3.3
Sakai
This is the focus of our paper as Sakai is the current learning management system in use at UCT. The ‘Sakai project’ is an open source, community driven learning management system that started in January 2004 when four universities; the University of Michigan, Stanford University, Indiana University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began the development of a learning system to replace systems developed separately by each of the universities[5].
The Sakai architecture consists of two parts; the Sakai framework and ‘tools’. The framework supports the implementation of applications called ‘tools’ by providing appropriate web services and interfaces for the tool. To ensure compatibility between the tools of different learning management systems, Sakai decided to support the IMS Global Learning Consortiums Tool Portability Profile work group, if successful, this would ensure portability among learning systems like Moodle and Blackboard[6].
Sakai has had a portal for mobile devices since 2.4[11] that does minimum requirements to transform the data into a small screen:
It flattens the tool/site hierarchy so that they can coexist in the same location
It serves up an iframeless experience
It removes many elements from the portal that would be noise in a small screen The task of creating a finished interface that supports all the tools relies on community driven projects and until May 2011 mobile development efforts have been scattered across individual institutions with little coordination and collaboration. So the Universities of Cambridge, Florida, Indiana, and Oxford have proposed the establishment of a “Mobile Sakai” collaborative project to expand upon current, limited mobile functionality, build upon current work in progress, and to develop frameworks usable by local institutions to integrate Sakai into their own mobile initiatives[8].
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This collaboration will become the core component of Mobile Sakai and extends an invitation to any other Sakai institutes that want to engage in the development of Mobile Sakai. The project is still early in its life cycle and has the opportunity for improvement as more tools can be integrated into the mobile interface but offers a stable platform to develop on.
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Critical Comparison
The LMS mobile interfaces discussed in the previous chapter were chosen for comparison because they are the current major learning management systems in operation at institutions throughout the world.
When comparing the mobile interfaces of the learning management systems, there are certain features of some systems that outdo the other. For instance, Blackboard doesn’t support the migration from a different learning management system into a Blackboard installation, this feature is particularity useful to an institution investing into Blackboard after a dissatisfactory experience with a previous LMS. Both Moodle and Sakai – the open source LMSs – offer features to migrate from different learning management systems but both quoted that Blackboard is tough to migrate from seeing as it has three diverse versions.
Table 2: Summary of the features offered by the LMS mobile interfaces LMS mobile
interface
Supports migration from
another LMS
Supports Mobile Optimised
Web
Commercial Open Source
Licence Fees
Native Mobile Platforms supported Blackboard × × √ × √ iOS,
Android
Moodle √ × × √ Free iOS, Android, Blackberry
Sakai √ √ × √ Free none
Blackboard and Moodle both don’t support mobile optimised web interfaces as there is more mobile functionality through a native application though this restricts the interoperability between mobile platforms. Sakai mobile interface is going the opposite direction in the path of mobile optimised webpages that run in any mobile browser without an installation needed.
Moodle and Sakai’s biggest advantage over Blackboard is the benefit of not needing to pay licence fees to utilise the software. One would certainly prefer open source over the Blackboard premiums that can reach up to $60,000 per annum
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5.
Conclusion
In this paper we have learnt of the different approaches a developer can adopt to write a mobile application and covered three major learning management systems and the mobile interface solutions supported by each LMS. We discussed the solutions for mobile interfaces offered by each LMS and compared the pros and cons of these interfaces.
If an institute was pondering which LMS to select, I would advise Moodle or Sakai firstly because they are open source and an institute doesn’t have to pay a premium to implement the system. When left with the decision between the mobile interface of Moodle or Sakai, they both have their advantages but depends on whether the institute believes in a native applications ability to fully utilise all mobile features or the interoperability of a mobile optimised web framework.
I feel a mobile optimised web approach is substantial because even though native apps offer more functionality, one doesn’t need to develop separate applications for different mobile platforms and there is not installation of the app needed. Sakai Mobile is an adequate solution for a commercial or educational institute requiring a mobile interface extension their learning management system.
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