Brown University

Infrastructure Support for Teaching and Learning Applications at Brown

University

John SpadaroSept. 24, 2008

Instructional Applications

• WebCT

• Course Web Pages

• Course Bulk Email

• ITunes

• Wiki (Confluence)

Problem: Course Roles

• Faculty frustration with lack of access for edge cases.

• Registrar’s list doesn’t match faculty needs.– Vagabonds– TA’s – Departmental technical staff– Departmental administrative staff– Faculty colleagues

4

MACE Grouper: Course Group Schema

• Course : [ Subject ] : [ Number ] : [ Term ] : [ Section ]– All

• Administrator– Instructor (Provisioned)– TeachingAssistant– Manager

• Contributor– ContentDeveloper– Mentor

• Learner– Student (Provisioned)– Auditor– Vagabond

[ brackets ] indicate dynamic dataBold indicates eduCourse/IMS compatible role

• Schema is flattened to provision LDAP– 12 groups per course provision hasMember attribute in Groups ou– Person objects get isMemberOf pointers to groups

Application Role Mapping

• Documented how Grouper groups map to application roles• Application integration characteristics allow some flexibility• Mapping highly dependent on user feedback

MACE Grouper Course Groups iTunes Majordomo Confluence WebCT

All   Recipient list, Discussion Sender Can Use  

Administrator Instructor Broadcast Sender Space Admin  

Instructors (provisioned)       Instructor

Managers        

TAs       TA and Designer

Contributor Instructor   Space Admin  

Content Developers       Designer

Mentors        

Learner Student      

Auditors       Auditor

Students (provisioned, read only)       Student

Vagabonds       Auditor

Other, outside MACE Grouper Super Admin     Super Admin(s)

Problem: Enabling Faculty

• Faculty unaware of array of instructional applications available

• Faculty demands for last minute setup.

• Faculty shouldn’t need to understand underlying infrastructure

Faculty Gateway: Landing Page

Faculty Gateway: Course Page

Request Page - MyCourses