OpenEDU

Last updated on
29 May 2017

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OpenEDU presents a foundational collection of shared data and operational services in support of the needs of today’s edu marketplace.  These services are exposed to a wide variety of deployment and presentation options.  In this way, OpenEDU is both presentation and architecturally agnostic, allowing each organization to construct a set of unique end-state web sites each sharing critical functional and data “DNA”. 

OpenEDU is delivered as a Drupal installation profile and delivers a collection of shared data and operational services.  These services may be further classified as “core” component and  “optional components”.

  • OpenEDU: Core
    • OpenEDU Schools. A central repository describing the organizational structure of an institution.  OpenEDU Schools forms the basis for a full-featured, multi-site presentation of content across many domains and urls and may serve as a data source delivering real-time structured organizational data and content to subscribed requesters.  OpenEDU Schools defines, administers and presents the following:
      • School – A distinct school / college within a University
      • Department – A department within a school.
      • Program – A program within a school or within a department.  Allows for programs to exist either within a department or within a school or both.
      • Course – A single course within a Degree and taught by a Faculty Member.
      • Faculty Member – A faculty member offering courses and associated with departments.
      • Taxonomies and support data are available to further classify these components.
    • OpenEDU Syndicate – A publish and subscribe service that provides each web service within the ecosystem the ability to publish content syndication end-points and discover, subscribe to and present content published from other syndication participants. 
    • OpenEDU Identity – OpenEDU Identity is an identify provider infrastructure that bundles identity provisioning and single signon services with content governance services across the university ecosystem.  OpenEDU Identity can be configured as either a primary (the central identity authority) or intermediate identity provider (acting as a proxy for the institution’s central identity authority).
    • OpenEDU API – A service implementing an API infrastructure for all other services and features.  These APIs are primarily used to support various architectural models (as described below) but will encourage the creation of native mobile apps, integration with external systems, creation of entire University ecosystems of content and distribution.  One such use of OpenEDU API is the OpenEDU Notification subsystem; a mechanism by which notifications may be produced in a distributed deployment while centralizing access and distribution.
  • OpenEDU: Features
    • OpenEDU Social – A service that catalogs, manages and distributes content to and from an institution’s web of social network associations.  OpenEDU Social provides services in 4 areas:
      • Social Identity provisioning
      • Social share
      • Social publishing
      • Social media curation and presentation
    • OpenEDU Analytics – OpenEDU Analytics leverages google and on-site data collectors and instruments, manages and reports on web site usage, content value and user behaviors. 
    • OpenEDU SEO – A set of editorial tasks configured to implement cross-site SEO standards, enforce SEO compliance and provides support for SEO and SEM campaigns.
    • OpenEDU Workbench – A set of configurable editorial workflows capable of managing content publication processing in a centralized or distributed production environment; enforcing symmetrical or asymmetrical editorial rules; and supporting both hierarchical-peer and peer-review editorial control over any or all content and / or content authors.
    • OpenEDU Calendar – A service that provides calendar and event publication services which integrate with various components of the OpenEDU Schools structure including school, department, program, faculty and course.  Calendars may be displayed in any combination of aggregation and may be delivered via the API as raw data or formatted content “sprites”.
    • OpenEDU Themes – OpenEDU themes implements a set of services to manage content themes by domain and content type.  OpenEDU Themes defines and implements style guides and common theme componentry across all Drupal platforms.
    • OpenEDU Classroom – OpenEDU Classroom provides an extension to OpneEDU Schools while leveraging Social and Calendar services to provide course section services (a course, taught by a faculty at a location on a schedule) to the Drupal ecosystem.  When deployed in conjunction with OpenEDU API, this feature can extend classroom information and sharing services to mobile applications, 3rd party / external web services and University enterprise systems.

 

To support this goal, OpenEDU offers presentation and architecture models that support the the following deployment options:

  • Single Drupal install.  Using a single Drupal implementation, OpenEDU may be deployed as a single themed or multi-themed web infrastructure by using incoming domains and/or urls (depending on the institution’s preferred model) to select and render (multiple versions of) theme and content according to the institution’s desired structures (schools, departments, programs, faculty, services, etc.).  This approach supports an implementation with a single database of content, feature and user; centralized administration (but not necessarily control) of function and presentation while supporting various forms of both centralized and decentralized editorial and publication workflows.
  • Drupal multi-site install.  Enables the use of a multi-site implementation where distributed web site deployments may subscribe and publish to centrally syndicated services while maintaining even greater autonomy of platform, function and theme. 
  • Mixed platform environments.  Where an institution cannot or does not impose or support common standards (a mixed platform) OpenEDU offers a common set of services entirely through OpenEDU API.  Using this approach, an institution may (for example) integrate OpenEDU resources and content syndications into 3rd-party web site infrastructures.

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