Open Source 
Basis for synergies
in the ICT education and research


M. Snaprud, A. Sawicka, A.B. Pillai*, N. Olsen,
M.G. Olsen, V. Laupsa, T. Gjψsζter
Agder University College, Norway
*SpikeSource, India


NVUConference2006-Grimstad
Anearlier versionwas presentedinTunis, at PPP/ WSIS2005



TheEIAOproject isco-fundedby theEuropeanCommission,
under theISTcontract 2003-004526-STREP




Main research and teaching


. Universal Design – Web assessments 
. Open Standards and Open Source 
. Reaseach -EIAO 
. European Internet Accessibility Observatory
10 partners, 3, years, 2.6 MEuro
. Teaching 
. Organisation and Collaboration 
. Webmining 
. Database theory 
. Software Policy for the future 
Board of technology, Ministry of Modernisation, GUADEC 



Agenda


. Research-based-education -Concepts 
. European Internet Accessibility 
Observatory 
– Webmining Course 
– Peer review method 
. Practical challenges and actions for 
introducing FOSS in ICT education 

Open Source 
community 
•Other universities 
•International researchers Sharing 
code base 
development skills 
results and efforts 
Webmining 
Org & Collab 
Software 
Defined 
Radio 
joint 
publications 
Synergies – Open Source in 
research-based-education 
Research organisation 
Goals and methods 
Current challenges --> 
<--surveys, experiments 
and test implementations 
Relevant training 
Platform for 
developing and 
sharing learning 
materials 

Open Source in
Research based education


. Tools 
Trackers, Office tools, Version server 
. Methods 
peer review, testing, release management 
. Collaboration 
Distributed collaboration, community 
. Open Source projects 
HarvestMan, Skolelinux 

European Internet
Accessibility Observatory


. Build the technical machinery for a possible 
Internet Accessibility Observatory 
. Participate in the development of a Unified Web 
Accessibility Methodology (WAB Cluster) 
. Facilitate use of measurements for Policy making 
. Develop new methods to assess web accessibility 
TheEIAOproject isco-fundedbytheEuropeanCommission,
under theISTcontract 2003-004526-STREP




Accessibility for whom?


=
Source: http://www.hi.se/ 
Open Standards encourage independent applications




Exampledata


EU Average HTML deviations, 2003 
All member states of the EU and Norway have 
agreed to use W3C/WAI for public content 



EIAO Design 

. Open Source 
– Transparent measurement methods 
– Inclusive development process 
– Simple distribution 
. Evaluation of 10.000 web sites 
– About 100 pages per site 
– Prototype for automatic monthly evaluation 
. Design for scalability in a distributed 
system 

Peer review:
for webassessment calibration


Internet 
Robot 
Web 
Acccessibility 
Metrics 
Data 
Warehouse 
The Web 
Software
improvement
cycle




Webmining and Data Analysis 

. Open Standards like HTML, XML, and HTTP 
. Algorithms for pattern classification, 
clustering, and statistical inference 
. Quality of Service (Accessibility) 
. Student projects 
– Regular meetings with mentor team 
– Implementing in Python 
– Extensions to HarvestMan 
. Collaboration with Open Source community 
http://www.eiao.net/webmining 



Peer review -method both for
developing and teaching




A course cycle


. Peer reviewing, continuously and in half 
semester, by students of: 
– Report templates 
– Course content, lectures, workload etc 
– Students projects topics 
. Peer reviewing continuously and 3 times in 
semester by professors of: 
– Student presentations 
– Student feedback on course 
– Projects and course 

Platform for sharing and
developing teaching materials


. Some existing platforms 
– Lektion.se, 'Ressursverkstedet' in
utdanning.no and laeremidler.dk.
– Lectures and exercises to download 
– Currently little support for collaborative 
development 
. Master project at AUC summer 2006 
– Explore ways to support collaboration 
– Open content and accessibility in mind 
– Focus on how to deploy platform in practice 

Practical challenges and
actions for introducing
FOSS in ICT education




Barriers for introducing
Open Source for teaching ICT


. Skills and support on proprietary solutions 
. Open Source and Open Standards confusion 
. Available curricula on proprietary software 
. Funding model may count software patents 
. Wide use of proprietary document formats 
. Web portal for teaching is posing barriers 
. University purchase agreements result in 
proprietary software with new hardware 

Benefits of Open Source for
research-based-teaching ICT


. Students and researchers can 
– Explore how software really works 
– Extend functionality and share results 
. Co-operation with Open source projects 
– Improve project continuity and software reuse 
– Learn to integrate heterogeneous systems
– Experience international co-operation 
. Code access allows others to verify 
experiments 

Open Source as basis for
co-operation


. Create a research group with 
– Policy for projects (techp.org) 
– Guidelines and templates for teaching 
– Project handbook 
. Organise FOSS workshops and conferences 
connect students and the FOSS community 
. Co-operate with Open Source leaders 
Bruce Perens, Anand B. Pillai 
. Co-operate with FOSS companies 
Nettkroken, Bitfrost, Plone solutions 

Actions proposed to increase
synergies


. Adjust courses to build on research projects 
. Establish an Open Source understanding 
. Define student projects as modules into 
existing Open Source code bases 
. Improve students documentation skills 
. Provide report template to 
– Structure student project work 
– Increase consistency of documentation and 
evaluation 

Ways to migrate to
Open Source


. Extend or migrate course materials 
. Raise external funding for FOSS research 
. Contribute to national Software policy 
. Build 'adventure factor' into projects 
– International forefront research 
– Projects with universities in developing 
. Create student projects for co-operation 
– Skolelinux in developing countries 
– Platform to develop and share 

Activities related to OSS in
research and education


. KS, IKT-Norge, HiB, ... 
– http://www.ikt-norge.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=745 
. SIDA report on OSS and development aid 
– http://www.sida.se/sida/jsp/sida.jsp?d=118&a=3055&language=en_US 
. JISC 
– http://norgesuniversitetet.no/artikler/2006/jisc-open-source 
. European Commission OSS Observatory 
– http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/chapter/452 
. Soros Foundation -Open Society 
– http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus_areas/opensource 
. UNESCO 
– http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12034&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html 

Conclusions


. Continuous development cycle 
– Continuous development cycle for
methods, tools and templates
– Include external Open Source projects 
. Research-based-education approach 
– Students learn the methods 
– Synergy with Open Source projects 
teaching and scientific research 
– Fully transparent methods and results

For more information


Mail: Mikael.snaprud@hia.no


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