This document is a case study about the Mobile Oxford project from the University of Oxford. It describes how Mobile Oxford was created as an open source and accessible mobile website to provide services to students, staff and visitors of the university. It aggregates data from various university systems and provides features like transport information, contacts, library search, and tools from their learning management system. Mobile Oxford is now developed as part of the open source Molly Project to ensure long term sustainability and benefit other universities.

1. Mobile Oxford Case Study
Open Source Junction
5th July 2011
Tim Fernando
Tech. Project Manager
Oxford University Computing Services
Mobile Oxford Molly Project
University of Oxford
http://m.ox.ac.uk http://mollyproject.org
http://www.ox.ac.uk
@mobileox @mollyproject

2. Suddenly....

3. ELEPHANTS!
Photo CC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elbewerk/398887222/

4. Real world problem:
Stampeding elephants

5. Can we use context-aware mobile computing to
solve this problem?

6. Village
*
*Elephants unlikely to be wearing top hats in reality
Elephant drawing CC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaymus22/4500020621/

7. Elephants communicate using Infrasound

8. CONCEPT
Use open-source Arduinos
Photo CC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/todbot/3567630129

9. Warning
System
Village
Sensor
Sensor
Sensor
Sensor
Mesh network warning system Sensor
Elephant drawing CC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaymus22/4500020621/

10. Arduino processor design, standard PCBs are all open source

12. Spying on people volunteers

13. Time use research project for the Department of Sociology
GPS-A GSM Device
£120
Max 44s to lock
Every 2 minutes, sends GPS location back to pre-
configured server.

14. Clustered points of significant dwell time

18. Mobile Oxford

20. “Institutional Innovation” funding strand
18 months, approximately 2FTE
From October 2008

21. Erewhon’s Aims
Geo-spatial database Demo Mobile Apps Mobilisation of Sakai VLE
(with temporal sensitivity)
Disseminate knowledge learned

22. The available options (Q1 2009)
+ Was made freely available under MIT + Promised fast deployment times (perhaps
License Q1 2009. unrealistic)
+ Works on many devices. + Fully managed with contractual obligations
- Code was ‘dumped’ as open source - iPhone Only (at time)
- No community input - Service had not been deployed anywhere
- We were not a PHP shop - Vendor lock-in
- Yearly fees
- Development fees
- Long term sustainability/relevance unknown

23. The available options (Q1 2009)
Both required a lot of work on our side

24. Mobile Oxford work started in Q3 2009

25. It needed to be:
Accessible and Inclusive

26. For prospective students, current
students, staff and the general public

27. An Open Source Community Project
The “community” being pivotal in its long term sustainability

28. Extensible and have significant longevity

29. Work on any web-capable device

30. *Not* reactionary.

31. Accessible
Consistent UI and tested with iOS screen reader

32. Perform a number of key functions server-side
Not proxying, not iframing etc.

33. m.ox.ac.uk

34. Winner - UCISA Award for Excellence 2010
Finalist - Learning Without Frontiers Innovation Award 2011
UK Nomination - UN World Summit Award in Mobile
(Education) 2010

35. Device Detection
Smartphones, Featurephones, Desktops (Tablets coming)

36. talen
ieithoedd
语
‫ﻟﻐﺎﺕ‬ Multilingual
langues Sprachen
Thanks to Bangor University’s efforts

37. PLACES
Multiple geo-data sources
including Open Street Map
(community sourced),
OxPoints, Department for
Transport etc.

38. Transport information
- a compelling reason
to revisit

39. TRANSPORT
Integrated view of Oxford’s
transport incorporating Park and
Ride spaces, real time bus and
railway information

40. CONTACTS
Via LDAP

41. LIBRARY SEARCH
Z39.50 (library protocol),
OpenStreetMap, 3rd Party GIS

42. Universal Search
Pattern matching for ISBNs, Bus Stops and interfaces with
our Google Search Appliance.

43. WEBLEARN
Based on the Sakai VLE

44. Weblearn Tools
Polls (simple survey)
Evaluations (extended survey)
Sign Ups (book events)

45. Polls Tool Example
1.Lecturer sets up a ‘poll’ in Weblearn
2.Lecturer pastes short URL and 2D Barcode in slides
3.Students answer on whatever device they have
http://m.ox.ac.uk/3523

46. URL Shortener
Only shortens valid links on m.ox.ac.uk and provides an easy
to type numeric short code
e.g. http://m.ox.ac.uk/3
or QR code:
*If the page contains secure content, the number is randomised

47. Other ideas/work in progress
More Sakai tools
Walking/Cycle Routing
Short Course Bookings
College Meal Bookings
Location based study group organiser
Augmented reality layer
Further social networking integration
Local city event listings
Fully AJAX interface
Official Traffic cameras
Many more!

48. Mobile Oxford
The ‘one stop shop’ for Mobile devices
Side effect: has become a central aggregation point
Op
en
Str
e w s
et
Map Ne
Service status Library search
s Mu
top
ch
mo
ss re!
Bu

49. Black Box Data Flow Diagram (Simplified)
etc. phones under
100USD
Molly as ‘Mobile Oxford’
Feature phone UI
OSS Data Aggregation
and Manipulation
Oracle Student System
Lots of Data Sources
Layer Web User
Oak
Directory Service Interface
OxPoints RESTfull API
Geo-Spatial Database
Smartphone UI
Oxford iTunes U Integration
Oxford Library Information Service
Other Native
Open Street
Map Applications Applications
And More...

50. Mobile Oxford is now developed entirely in the open as part of the Molly Project
mollyproject.org
Licensed under AFL v3
1.2 now available
Deployment time depends on existing skills set. Those with existing Python/
Django can often customise and test deploy within a day.

51. Mobile Oxford is now developed entirely in the open as part of the Molly Project
FREE! mollyproject.org
Licensed under AFL v3
1.2 now available
Deployment time depends on existing skills set. Those with existing Python/
Django can often customise and test deploy within a day.

52. check us out on
ohloh.net

53. Me:
tim.fernando@oucs.ox.ac.uk
@timfernando
http://m.ox.ac.uk
Mobile Oxford
@mobileox
http://mollyproject.org
Molly Project
@mollyproject