Technology leaders and CIOs in higher education realize
that the educational software environment is a core component of the IT
infrastructure. In order to integrate both traditional and innovative applications
while leveraging existing enterprise systems, they require technology that
does the following:
- Scales to support an increasing workload
- Adapts to new technologies over time
- Integrates with the existing campus infrastructure
- Satisfies a wide range of instructional requirements and styles
- Enables faculty and students to concentrate on teaching and learning
instead of technology
The Open Knowledge Initiative supports this vision by
defining a set of fundamental services that components of the educational
environment use to work together, as well as with other enterprise applications.
By focusing on modularity of services and particular
dimensions of interoperability, O.K.I. Service Interface Definitions allow
independent development and updating of components in a complex educational
environment, and the integration of that educational environment with the
enterprise infrastructure.
This leads to a number of benefits. »
