The document discusses the rise of learning management systems (LMS) in educational institutions and their potential limitations regarding flexibility and innovation. It presents service-oriented architectures and interoperability specifications like the Open Knowledge Initiative and IMS Learning Tools Interoperability as potential solutions to address these limitations by enabling communication between different systems. TSUGI is introduced as a framework that facilitates the development of tools that can integrate with LMS through these interoperability standards, creating a more flexible learning ecosystem. Future work mentioned includes developing a Java version of TSUGI and supporting installation on cloud infrastructures.

1. TSUGI: A Framework for Building PHP-Based
Learning Tools
Nikolas Galanis, Marc Alier, Maria José Casañ,
Enric Mayol, Charles Severance

2. The Rise of the LMS
§ Most learning institutions have adopted one
§ LMSs meet the structural and operational needs
of institutions
§ Educators and learners are generally satisfied
with what is offered

3. § Too much offer
The potential fall of the LMS
§ Most LMSs seem to be clones of one another
§ Less flexibility, less innovation

4. § Innovation on mobile devices
§ Social web
Looming changes
§ Learning content and its producers (commercial
vs. open-access)

5. § Flexibility
• Adapt to and embrace new technologies
• Mobile themes
• Mobile apps
§ Interoperability
• Provide support for external tools
• Implement web services
• Implement interoperability protocols
• Implement secure communication mechanisms
A solution?

6. Service Oriented Architectures
§ Provide an approach to interoperability
§ Decouple various blocks of the architecture
§ Update blocks individually
§ Students have access to a variety of tools
§ Teachers can incorporate teaching tools form
within the LMS
§ No interface changes

7. Interoperability Specifications
§ Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)
• Standard architecture of common services across systems
• Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs)
• OSIDs are software contracts of interoperability
• Compatible with most specifications (SOAP, WSDL, etc.)
• Authentication, authorization, logging, internationalization,
configuration
• Advantages:
o Ease of development
o Common service factory
o Reduced integration cost
o Reusable software

8. Interoperability Specifications
§ IMS Global Learning Consortium
• Learning Tools for Interoperability (LTI)
• LTI defines the way to reach an external application from the LMS
• A protocol for communication between a “tool consumer” and the
“tool producer”
• LTI focuses on the launch phase of the interaction, establishing the
necessary parameters
o Log in
o User information
o Course information
o Placement information
o Size information

9. LTI Example

10. TSUGI
§ Geared towards tool producers
§ A framework to facilitate the writing of LTI tools.
§ Supports LTI 1.x and 2.x
§ Create a learning ecosystem that is LMS
agnostic

11. § Tool hosting environment
§ PHP, Java in the works
§ Installed and hosted locally
§ Data exists locally
§ API inspired from Moodle
TSUGI
Hosting
Container
Tool

12. Tool Tool Tool Tool
TSUGI
Hosting
Container
Install
App Store Tool Tool Tool Tool

13. § Develop the Java implementation
§ Support for installing TSUGI on a cloud
infrastructure
§ Promote and showcase TSUGI
Future work

14. QUESTIONS