What is the Open Knowledge Initiative?
a white paper prepared by Eduworks and the O.K.I. leadership

The Open Knowledge Initiative™ (O.K.I.) is defining an open and extensible architecture for learning technology specifically targeted to the needs of the higher education community. O.K.I. provides detailed specifications for interfaces among components of a learning management environment, and open source examples of how these interfaces work. The O.K.I. architecture is intended to be used both by commercial product vendors and by higher education product developers. It provides a stable, scalable base that supports the flexibility needed by higher education as learning technology is increasingly integrated into the education process.

Abstract

The Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.) is defining an architecture that precisely specifies how the components of a learning technology environment communicate with each other and with other campus systems. By clearly defining points of interoperability, the architecture allows the components of a complex learning environment to be developed and updated independently of each other. This leads to a number of important benefits:

• Learning technologies appropriate for a range of teaching and learning requirements can be integrated together into a common environment. The needs of the Math department are not those of the English department, and tools that work well for new users may not be adequate for seasoned users.
• Learning technology and content can be more easily shared among schools and departments. This provides a catalyst for cooperative and commercial development.
• There is a lower long term cost of software ownership because single components can be replaced or upgraded without requiring all other components to be modified.
• Modularity makes learning technology more stable, more reliable, and able to grow with increased usage, and allows components to be updated without destabilizing other parts of the environment. O.K.I. is based on technologies that have proven to be scalable and dependable in large scale enterprise computing environments
• The architecture offers a standardized basis for learning technology software development. This reduces development effort and encourages the development of specialized components that integrate into larger systems.

At the core of O.K.I. is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that realize the O.K.I. architecture. O.K.I. is providing Java versions of these APIs. These Java APIs are provided for use in Java-based systems and also as models for other object-oriented and service-based implementations. O.K.I.'s partners and developer community are providing open source examples and reference implementations of learning technologies that make use of the APIs.

Higher education leaders recognize that learning environments are a core component of their information technology infrastructure. These environments must successfully support faculty and students, and they must be flexible enough to adapt to a range of instructional requirements and styles. The technologies must be robust and must scale up to support an ever-increasing demand.

O.K.I. is being developed by and for higher education. O.K.I. was started with Mellon Foundation funding and has grown as partners have received additional funding for specific O.K.I.-related projects and activities. Institutions of higher education can take concrete steps to move O.K.I. forward. These include making O.K.I. part of procurement and product definition cycles and participating in the O.K.I. development community. This will help direct the efforts of the vendor community and will help campuses move more quickly to a stable and scalable learning technology infrastructure that effectively supports their educational processes.

For the complete text, download the PDF.

Top of Page