| 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.
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