OSP 2.1 Glossary

Associate - The act of creating a relationship between two items that exhibit a dependency that is relevant in the portfolio application.

Association A semantically-valuable relationship between two items. Items in OSP may be associated with cells in a Matrix, Forms, and other constructs.

Audience - An individual or group of individuals that have been identified as the target of a published Portfolio.

Cell - The intersection of two dimensions within a matrix.

CIG - Common Interest Group. Most commonly, a Worksite where members interact and collaborate. The CIG serves as the container and provides context for their interaction. A CIG may also exist solely for reporting purposes or where members do not interact and are unaware of one another

CIG Coordinator - A CIG coordinator is responsible for managing the storage of items provided for use by a CIG workgroup. The CIG coordinator is also responsible for managing template items, such as Forms and Wizards intended to gather information from CIG participants. The CIG coordinator may need to assist in managing participant's items that have been locked due to activities completed within the CIG.

Collect - The act of storing an Item within the Portfolio Owner's Resources.

Collection - See Resources.

Completed Form - A completed form is an instance in which one or more fields have been populated. This is generally referred to as an Item.

Component - Items users may add to OSP that shape how a portfolio is composed, including styles, layouts, forms, wizards, glossary, portfolio templates, language resource bundles. Components are portable between instances of OSP.
Coordinator - See CIG Coordinator

Element - An element is a future-looking term that describes the smallest re-usable collection of data in the OSP. In the future, OSP Forms will consist of re-usable Elements, which consist of one or more Fields. In OSP 1.5, an Element was equivalent to what OSP 2.x defines as a Form.

Evaluator - See Portfolio Evaluator

Feedback - Rich text written about something in a portfolio, usually by someone other than the Portfolio Owner.

Field - A field is an area within a Form in which a user is prompted to enter information. A Form consists of one or more Fields.

Form - An OSP Form is a group of one or more Fields which are presented to the Portfolio Owner to be filled in with data. Once completed, a Form is stored in the Portfolio Owner's Resources and refered to as an Item.
Form Builder - A tool within the portfolio application that supports the creation of Forms.

Guest - See Portfolio Guest

Guidance - Assistance for a portfolio owner through descriptive instructions, examples of expected results and rationale for inclusion of an item or completion of a task.

Hierarchy Wizard - A Hierarchy Wizard is an organizational structure for Wizard Pages which is presented to the Portfolio Owner like an outline.

IMS ePortfolio Specification - A technical specification that defines a data structure for portfolios, enabling portability. This term refers to the most recent version of the IMS ePortfolio Specification available here: http://www.imsglobal.org/ep.

Item - A file, completed Form, or URL stored in Resources.

Layout - A layout defines the position of content presented within an individual page of a Portfolio. It may include one or more item "placeholders" into which certain types of Items may be placed or rich text may be entered directly. A layout is similar to a slide design in PowerPoint.

Matrix - A type of Wizard consisting of a two-dimensional grid. Matrices are typically used to facilitate Association, Reflection, Feedback, and Evaluation of Items with Criteria along a longitudinal progression.

OSP - Open Source Portfolio.

Owner - See Portfolio Owner

Personal workspace - The Sakai CLE is primarily organized into sites. Sites are a collection of users, roles, tools, and generally a space for interaction. Sites can be of different types such as course sites, project sites, and portfolio sites which OSP calls Common Interest Groups (CIGs). Each user of Sakai and the OSP has a Personal Workspace called "My Workspace" which provides access to Portfolios, Reports, Resources, etc. which span individual sites or CIGs. When a user first logs in, they are presented with their "My Workspace" home.

Portability - The ability to import and export data between systems.

Portfolio - An organized collection of one or more Portfolio Pages which are intended to be published and shared with others.

Portfolio Evaluator - An evaluator is responsible for evaluation of items which have been submitted by the Portfolio Owner for evaluation. In OSP 2.1, Wizard Pages can be submitted for evaluation. The Portfolio Evaluator is explicitly assigned for evaluation responsibilities, and he/she uses a customizable Evaluation Form to conduct the Evaluation.

Portfolio Guest - A portfolio guest is a person who does not have a normal user account in the system, but has been granted access to a Portfolio which the owner has published. The Portfolio Owner may publish a Portfolio for any person using an email address. If the person does not already have an account in the system, the OSP will create a guest account and provide instructions on how to access the published Portfolio. Guests will often provide the Portfolio Owner with rich text comments on the Portfolio.

Portfolio Owner - The Portfolio Owner is the center of the OSP universe. Each user of OSP may be a Portfolio Owner who creates and maintains a collection of Items; uses Wizards to create new information, reflect, submit work for evaluation, and receive feedback; and designs and publishes Portfolios to showcase and share their work.

Portfolio Reviewer - A portfolio reviewer is a person who provides commentary and guidance to a Portfolio Owner. The guidance provided by the portfolio reviewer is generally considered informal or formative in nature.

Program Administrator - A program is a person who provides guidance and resources to CIG coordinators and evaluators. The program administrator creates and maintains Forms, Reports, A Global Glossary, and Wizards.

Publish - The process of sharing a Portfolio available with one or more audiences.

Rationale - An explanation of why a given task is to be performed, the logical basis of a procedure.

Reflection - An Item created by a Portfolio Owner by completing a Reflection Form. A Reflection Form is used to capture the Portfolio Owner's reflective thinking about a particular Item, or the relationships between Items.

Report - A set of results from a query arranged with a particular layout and style.

Repository - See Resources.

Resources - A tool for storage of any Item authored by a portfolio owner, as well as a means of organizing the items into a hierarchical system of folders and sub-folders. Items stored in Resources may be associated with any number of other constructs such as Forms, Wizards, and Portfolios.

Reviewer - See Portfolio Reviewer.

Sakai - "A community source software development effort to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education." From http://www.sakaiproject.org/.

Style - Specifies colors, typography, and other characteristics for use in visually rendering items in Forms, Wizards, and Portfolios.

System Administrator - A system administrator is responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the OSP implementation at the institution. This includes assisting each of the portfolio roles when determining appropriate application settings for general use of the portfolio application, performing required backup and maintenance of the portfolio components.

Tool - A unit of functionality that can be added to a worksite by its owner.

View - See Portfolio.

Wizard - An abstract organizational construct that gives a Program Administrator or CIG Coordinator the ability to design a framework for the creation and organization of information.

Wizard Page - A Wizard Page is a single screen presented to a user, generally the Portfolio Owner, which may contain Guidance, Forms, Feedback, Evaluation, Reflection, and Items which the Portfolio Owner has associated (Files and completed Forms).