The Jorum Development Plan (Oct 2011 – Jan 2012)
Posted by Laura Shaw on 6th October 2011
As part of its on-going socio-technical development Jorum is undertaking the following community and technical activities during the period Oct 2011 to Jan 2012, as well as developing a longer-term strategy that informs Jorum’s future Business Plan. This blog post summarises the work over the next four months; a more detailed project plan will soon be available for those who want to know more.
Activities, separated into Community and Technical activities, are summarised graphically in the following diagram, and discussed further in the remainder of this document.
1. Community Activities
1.1 Establishment of Jorum's User Group
User feedback on the current version of Jorum and its future plans is vital to the development and operation of a successful service. Consequently, in November Jorum will invite several of its users (existing and potential users) to become members of a user group that engages with Jorum in constructive dialogues about the shape and future of the service. We see it as important that at least two of Jorum’s user populations are well represented in the group: • Occasional users, who do precisely that, use Jorum on an occasional basis, perhaps even using Jorum for the first time. • Power users, who use Jorum on a regular basis, both as depositors and downloaders. This group may have special needs, e.g. bulk upload.
We will be inviting members of the OER community, academics, JISC’s Learning and Teaching Practice Experts Group and others to join the user group in the coming weeks. If being a member of this user group is of interest, please contact support@jorum.ac.uk.
1.2 Subject and Institutional Pilots
How can Jorum support existing subject communities that have OERs that they wish to share? How can Jorum support an Institution looking to engage with the OER movement? Jorum will start to work with known Institutions and Subject Communities who wish to share their learning and teaching materials. We will go beyond hosting and look at the potential benefits and opportunities the pilots offer to the Institutions, Subject Communities as well as the wider community and JISC. By the end of these pilots, which will span the year, we’ll have examples of Jorum ‘communities’ that could be extended for use by the wider community, so for example www.jorum.ac.uk/UniveristyofX or www.jorum.ac.uk/politics. We will draw on lessons learned in the JISC/HEA OER1 and OER2 Programmes, and elsewhere. We already have a number of Institutions and subject groups we are talking to but please get in touch if you’d like to be involved.
1.3 Support for JISC OER Programmes
Jorum will continue its support of JISC OER Programmes as JISC moves from support of the OER 2 to the OER 3 Programme. Particularly Jorum is actively looking at improving and extending our bulk upload facilities in response to OER2 projects’ needs (see 2.3 below).
2. Technical Activities
Jorum is undertaking the following technical activities, assisted by development partners Hedtek Ltd.
2.1 Technical Strategy
Motivated by the need for a new improved user interface for Jorum, accompanied by the need to open Jorum up to third party end-user services (e.g. for particular groups of institutions, or for those interested in special purpose content), Jorum is moving to an architecture where the Jorum core becomes a pure data service, accessed only via a Web API. Services for end users will be supplied by front-end services, as per the diagram. Development will be phased as follows: First addition of a RESTful API to the current Jorum codebase, then development of a front end that enables users to search and download from Jorum, and finally extension of this front end service to allow integrated deposit facilities. Moving to this architecture will help ensure that we can keep Jorum up to date with successive releases of the core software that is used to provide Jorum, namely, the DSpace repository.
2.2 RESTful API
We will add a RESTful API to Jorum to enable the first phase of front-end service development. This involves taking the RESTful API that is available as an add-on package to DSpace, building it with the Jorum-modified DSpace, and then creating a suite of automated tests that ensure that the API works correctly with Jorum. Once we know the API is working correctly we will move to building the new Jorum front-end. During the three month period here, we will test enough of the API to enable us to move forward on development of a front end that enables users to search and download from Jorum.
2.3 Deposit and Bulk Upload
Currently Jorum has a custom RSS-like bulk upload mechanism, with the particular limitation that bulk uploads are limited in what can be uploaded, e.g. multi-file packages can not be bulk uploaded via this mechanism. Liaising with JISC CETIS, Jorum is investigating alternatives for bulk upload, including RSS 2.0 and front-ending the SWORD deposit mechanism to enable more sophisticated bulk upload. We expect to implement alternative bulk upload solutions in the three month period that this roadmap covers.
2.4 DSpace Upgrades
We will be investigating upgrades from DSpace 1.5.2 as our core software, particularly to maintain compatibility with the Republic of Ireland’s National Digital Learning Resources (NDLR) service, with whom Jorum has a reciprocal code sharing agreement. Please contact support@jorum.ac.uk if you’d like to get involved or know more.