OSP 2.4 Community Proposal

The Open-Source Portfolio (OSP) community is currently in a period of transition. Previously, the project was supported by the development efforts of Indiana University, rSmart, and a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Now, the success of OSP requires substantial investment and support from the larger Sakai/OSP communities. Those institutions who are hoping to use these tools must find ways to assume greater responsibility for the development of the OSP code, as well as the documentation, communication and collaboration needs of the diverse community of current and potential OSP users.

Developing the OSP tools
OSP is a collection of Sakai tools organized to accomplish the diverse goals of institutions wishing to provide students with a personal learning environment, integrate reflective and outcomes-based learning practices into teaching, and capture evidence of learning at multiple levels within institutions. Previous work leading up to the current 2.3 release provides the Sakai/OSP community with a solid base set of tools to use toward these objectives. However, there is still much work to do. Representatives of the community recently met in Phoenix to address the development needs of OSP. This meeting led to the following desired scope for OSP 2.4 (code freeze March 15, 2007, release May 2007):

• Making the user experience more integrated & cohesive
• Integrating reports
• Integrating the Goal Management Tool
• Improving authoring flexibility
• Creating a form builder
• Improving Integration of the tools within the Sakai environment
• Generating documentation to support campus implementation efforts (e.g. for authors, end users, faculty, and implementation teams)

Accomplishing the above scope requires a coordinated team effort beyond what might be needed for an individual tool (like Melete, etc.). The table below shows the project team needed for the next release (OSP 2.4), current commitments, and gaps that need to be addressed.

Contributing to OSP
We are looking to the larger Sakai community to address those gaps identified above. There is a tremendous need for individuals to dedicate their time and expertise to specific roles (e.g. QA leadership) and institutions need to contribute funds (which can then be pooled together) that will go toward fulfilling important roles that are not likely to be covered through community volunteerism (e.g. JAVA developers, UI designer, & data structure librarian). All funds contributed to the development of OSP will be managed by the Sakai Foundation.

Important Dates:
Due to the fact that the 2.4 code freeze is March 15th, 2006, we need to move quickly. Our goal is to have a full understanding of confirmed roles and resources no later than December 18, 2006. We hope to make significant progress during this conference.

Who to contact:

• Melissa Peet, ijb@umich.edu
• Chris Coppola chris.copolla@rsmart.com
• Wende Morgaine, wendemm@gmail.com