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whirligigs and mountains
                     The EduNxt story From Manipal Global Education


Tuesday 6 March 12
•         High Performance, Transaction Systems

             •        If you have throughput needs of millions of transactions per
                     hour, we are the people to talk to :)

 •         Content Management, Semantic Computing &
           Cultural Informatics

             •       agropedia.net

             •       EduNxt a large scale virtual learning environment which won
                     Golden Peacock Award for best innovation.

     • Platform Oriented Architectures, SaaS and
             Cloud Computing Solutions
                                                                                     2


Tuesday 6 March 12
“Eliminate the need for
     physical contact between teachers
                and learners”
                          March 2007


      Vision required                               Uncertainity and
          funding                                       change
      => need for a
         roadmap,                                   Cannot articulate
      resource plan,                                   vision into
      business value,                                    project
        budgets etc             However...
                        Never used technology to     deliverables or
          upfront                                        own its
                        deliver core business value
                            Had no technology         development
                          development function
Tuesday 6 March 12
April 2009: EduNxt
           launched for DE
         SLM content, quizzes,
       course plans, assignments
                                                                                           e   s
      20,000 learners, 20 trained                                                  re leas
                                                                         on thly
                                                                     M             ...


                                                    s es                                           Dec 2011 EduNxt is Multi-
                                                a
                                              le                                                        institute & SAAS
                                         r re
                                a l le                                                               Multi-media content,
                           sm              ek
                   l   e          w
                                         e                                                            various assessments
                ip                                             April 2008: TEL
         ul
              t             1a                                                                      200,000 learners, 4000
     M             o st                                      launched on Moodle
          al
               m                                                                                              faculty
                                                            PDF content, quizzes
                                                           1000 learners, 4 trained
                                                                   faculty


                  EduNxt was built, over multiple iterations, with a small team,
                  improved with constant user participation and delivered
                  business value. We have bought in agility that has transformed
                  the enterprise
                                                                                                                               4


Tuesday 6 March 12
In this session we present
             • Using Open Sources based architecture
                     principles to circumvent the rigidity of an
                     end-user enterprise

             • Architecture & design techniques to
                     establish a platform for agile development

             • Engineering processes required and team
                     challenges we overcame before Agile
                     worked in our enterprise

                                                                   5
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Initial Days: March -December 2007

             • The technology team - me,
               • we later brought on 2 PHP developers
             • We were working for - Academics Central a
                     core group of academicians tasked with driving
                     TEL
             • Our references - a paper on virtual universities
                     written by Nag, a vision paper by Dr Bhushan and
                     the work done on online learning at University of
                     Athabasca

                                                                         6
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
The domain of education
             •       Unlike domains like Banking, Retail, Insurance which have
                     business process centric, operationally heavy, lend themselves
                     to data and information processing, Education is an
                     elusive human activity.

             •       The measure is the development of a human being, not
                     consumption/production.

             •       Requires and is dependent of human contact.

             •       Technology Enabled Learning is "applied humanities" , not
                     applications of computers in humanities




                                                                                      7


Tuesday 6 March 12
The domain of education
             •       Unlike domains like Banking, Retail, Insurance which have
                     business process centric, operationally heavy, lend themselves
                     to data and information processing, Education is an
                     elusive human activity.

             •       The measure is the development of a human being, not
                     consumption/production.

             •       Requires and is dependent of human contact.

             •       Technology Enabled Learning is "applied humanities" , not
                     applications of computers in humanities

               We could only solve the problem in stages, with each
               stage our understanding would deepen and become
                     the basis for the next stage of evolution                        7


Tuesday 6 March 12
Users to stakeholders
             •       Our users were too inexperienced with technology to be
                     stakeholders of the CEO’s vision.

                 •    They needed to assimilate technology & use it in their
                      work

                 •    They needed small, positive reinforcements instead of a
                      big-bang release

                 •    They would need to become participants in creating the
                      technology




                                                                                8


Tuesday 6 March 12
Users to stakeholders
             •       Our users were too inexperienced with technology to be
                     stakeholders of the CEO’s vision.

                 •    They needed to assimilate technology & use it in their
                      work

                 •    They needed small, positive reinforcements instead of a
                      big-bang release

                 •    They would need to become participants in creating the
                      technology


                  We would have to work with our users and enable
                 them to outgrow a set of requirements and then ask
                                  for the next set                              8


Tuesday 6 March 12
The Whirligig
    Approach
    • Build a version with our
          current understanding

    • Use this to help our users
          assimilate technology and
          progress towards being
          stakeholders

    • Build the next version with
          enhanced understanding

    • ...in essence allow our
          users to outgrow their
          requirements
Tuesday 6 March 12
The enterprise IT project way
             • Creating a complete requirement and outsourcing
                     or buying a commercial product would fail

               • The requirement would only be what we
                     understand today

               • The product, because of its domain centricity and
                     cost would lock us in

               • Our users would be dictated to by the
                     functionality that is assumed in the tool and
                     would never become stakeholders

                                                                     10
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
On the other hand
             • Open sources platforms seem to be ideally
                     suited for our whirligig approach

               • They are designed to allow a large community
                     of independent contributors to
                     programmatically extend them

               • Would help us to start with the simplest model
                     and add modules in conjunction with our users
                     - thus the positive reinforcement and sense of
                     contribution

                                                                      11
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Open Sources - An Architecture
             perspective

             •       An Open Sources platform such as MediaWiki, Moodle or
                     Drupal attempts to solve horizontal problems rather than
                     specific vertical problems.
                 •    Generalizations rather than very specific solutions

             •       Therefore makes very little assumption on how someone will
                     use it - alternatively, we are free to use it as we see fit

                 •    Moodle - works with 3 basic entities Courses, Activities and
                      Resources that apply across different types of learning
                      methods

                 •    It does not attempt to enforce a method such as a mastery
                      based approach or one specific for distance education


                                                                                     12
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Open Sources - An Architecture
             perspective

             •       They are basically platforms designed to be
                     extended by programmers

                 •   They have simple data models

                 •   Provide mechanisms like hooks to allow
                     INDEPENDENTLY developed modules to be
                     plugged in and used independently or together

                 •   This is what enables Moodle to have 100’s of
                     contributed modules

                                                                     13
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
The Moodle Alternative

                                                        Moodle&

                                       BlackBoard&
                                       Moodle&
                     Content&
                     Management&       Dokeos&          300 + contributed modules
                     or&Domain&        Sakai&
                     Specific&Tool&                        Installed and created a
                                                           course in a few hours
                                   Cost and lock-in     Had been around for over 6
                                 Ease of customizing      years, was in version 1.7
      Create course plan,           and setting up         Used in University of
     deliver PDF content,         What kind of dev        Athabasca, our favorite
    author & deliver a quiz       skills are required            reference
    => Where can we get
     this out of the box?
                                                                                  14


Tuesday 6 March 12
Convincing the mountain

             • Larger the budgets more the formality associated with IT projects
                     in the enterprise - business plans, exact requirements, expected
                     value

             • We decided we would start with a small budget till such time as
                     the organization would reach the point of readiness to fund the
                     vision

               • 2 programmers on contract
               • No upfront licensing costs
             • Released TEL v1, its success led to EduNxt and its success in turn
                     to EduNxt V2


                                                                                        15
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
12-May-2009: EduNxt                                                  TEL development gets a 3
             launched for DE                                                   year roadmap and budget
          SLM content, quizzes,                                                   Decision to develop
        course plans, assignments                                                technology in-house
       20,000 learners, 20 trained
                                                                                     ...
                                                                                                     Aug’09


                                                     s es                   May’09           Aug 2009, we are looking at
                                                 a
                                               le
                                        r re                     April’08                  enabling a very different type of
                             a   l le                                                                  program
                        sm              e ek
                l   e            w
           t ip          1a                                 TEL 0.1 launched
      ul          st                                                                  There is also an increasing focus on
  M
            m
                o                                           on Moodle with
       al                                                                              developing communities and on
                                                              MSC CRRA
                                                                                        tools for collaborative learning



                        TEL evolves
                                                                                                                              16


Tuesday 6 March 12
Users to Stakeholders
             •       A requirement such as tracking scores of quiz attempts
                     led to the inclusion of the advanced grade book module

             •       Via a small interaction between a teacher and one of our
                     programmers - find the module, install it, go through
                     the options, customize it and set it up

             •       The teacher adopts grade book and becomes its
                     evangelist to the others

             •       By April 09, our teachers referred to the technology as
                     “namma edunxt”


                                                                                17
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Where did Version 1 take us?
             • A success story within the enterprise - for the dev team
                     and our users at academic central

             • With a cost of around 55L, 4 PHP programmers and a
                     year or so of effort - EduNxt had gone live and was
                     actively used

             • Our users had understood “LMS” and its role in
                     technology enabled learning and were now ready to
                     outgrow it

             • Manipal was now ready to take more ownership of
                     developing its own education platform

                                                                           18
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Tuesday 6 March 12
Tuesday 6 March 12
• Moving from content in a course to
                     course in content
                                                    20


Tuesday 6 March 12
Evolution
             •       We needed a new set of                   •   We knew the request rate
                     features like activity                       for similar features would
                     books, content feeds, and                    increase & that the
                     the ability to build                         features would evolve and
                     different types of                           interact
                     communities with their
                                                              •   Supportability => features
                     own tools
                                                                  to improve productivity of
                                                                  other stakeholders such as
                                                                  operations, program execs
                                                                  & our own dev team


                                                                                               21
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
The Architecture Approach
             •       The typical “Mountain” approach: strengthen the
                     domain model, build a domain specific platform

             •       Successful software however favors a move towards
                     more generic data structures - less assumptions on
                     how it can be used

             •       We favored building assets & not programming
                     requirements




                                                                          22


Tuesday 6 March 12
The Architecture Approach
             •       The typical “Mountain” approach: strengthen the
                     domain model, build a domain specific platform

             •       Successful software however favors a move towards
                     more generic data structures - less assumptions on
                     how it can be used

             •       We favored building assets & not programming
                     requirements


                     Every version of our Architecture is an evolution
                      towards making it more horizontal rather than
                            specific to a domain requirement               22


Tuesday 6 March 12
More Generic
                                                          Drupal&

                                     Generic&Content&
                                     Management&
                     Moodle&         Tool&:&MediaWiki,&
                                     Wordpress,&Drupal&
                                     &
                                                             Versatile CMS used for
                                                                multiple purposes
                               How close is it to our       Simple Node based data
                               problem of content +                   model
      Outgrowing the           LMS + Communities            Existing set of modules
      domain model of            What is extent of           like Quiz, Grade Book,
     “Course”, “Activity”,        customization             Organic Groups that we
        “Resource”                What would be                    could use
                                  migration effort
                                                                                      23


Tuesday 6 March 12
Design techniques for services
             •       The Supportability Framework gave us a
                     way to identify the generic structures

             •       We also introduced some basic principles
                     that are required for the design of such
                     services

               •     make characteristics such as performance,
                     modifiability and extensibility predictable
                     and independent of functionality

                                                                   24
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
7 habits of successful components
             •       The Awareness Principle: The estimations of the self have to be tempered
                     by the knowledge of the self

             •       The Service Principle: Design based on contract law. Our clients chose us
                     based on the SLA we offer

             •       Communication of State Principle: Dignity is not sweeping under the rug
             •       The Time Principle: Center design on variables that change less often

             •       The Patience Principle: Be comfortable with some amount of discomfort

             •       The Responsibility Principle: Environment is dynamic and the world is cruel
                     - so have your self defenses

             •       The Collaboration Principle: Bridges are solely for others to cross, don’t hold
                     on to them



                                                                                                       25
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Awareness Principle
             • The estimations of the self have to be tempered by the
                     knowledge of the self

               • Each service should compute an indicator of its state of
                       health at all times

                     • statistics: number of requests, drain rates, resource waits,
                        number of errors

                     • global state: maintenance, bulk uploads, delivering an exam
               • Tune what can be delivered based on the state of the service
                     • Do not allow expensive operations like bulk course edit if
                        an exam is being served

                                                                                      26
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Time Principle
             • Center design on variables that change less often
               • Almost all our functionality are modeled on basic data
                     entities such as content, community, unit of learning, activity,
                     person and tools and services such as scheduling, rule
                     execution, RBAC, events, notification and bulk operation
                     processing

               • While individual functionality like a course plan changes
                     rapidly, underlying structure of a content collection data-
                     type does not

               • Core services are refined at a slower rate and bring
                     consistency across iterations

                                                                                        27
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Patience Principle
               • Be comfortable with some amount of discomfort
                     • Key to enabling scalability especially in content
                       centric environments

                     • Unlike transactional environments, EduNxt can
                       afford to be eventually consistent

                     • A list of all content for a learner in a class
                        need not be updated in a transaction when
                        new content is added to the class

                                                                           28
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Patience Principle
                     • Therefore, reads and writes can be largely
                        separated from each other and changes can be
                        propagated asynchronously

                     • This enables us to pre-generate views of data for
                        individuals, reducing query complexity at read
                        time

                      • Course material views
                      • Latest forum updates
                      • Activity streams
                                                                           29
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Responsibility Principle
             •       Environment is dynamic and               •   Add checksums to sensitive
                     the world is cruel - so have your            data
                     self defenses
                                                              •   Automatically log every
                 •    Especially in a PHP                         exception - irrespective of the
                      environment defensive                       developer’s code
                      programming is a must
                                                              •   The PHP Mess detector to sniff
                 •    Restrict all our business                   out too many if-then-else
                      services calls only to the                  loops
                      controller
                                                              •   Invert the logic of if-then-else
                 •    Validate input data ruthlessly              loops to do work only if a
                                                                  specific condition is explicitly
                                                                  met


                                                                                                     30
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
REST&interface&&                  CAS&–&
                      Drupal&based&views,&modules&
                                                                       (Ipomo/SAP)&                      SSO&

                                                              Controller&
                                                                                                                 Evalua5on&
                     Content&                         Subscrip5ons&                             Search&
                     import&                                                                Release&engine&      Assessment&
                     SCORM,&         Learning&        Classrooms&            Progress&       Gradebook&
                     packages&      objec5ves&          Groups&                               Progress&           Prac5ce&
                                                                             tracking&
                                                      Organiza5on&                             report&
                 Blogs,&wikis,&       Course&
                                                         units&             Rich&Profiles&    Quiz&engine&        Assimilate&
                   SLM&,&…&         templates&

                     Content&&         UOL&            Community&              Person&         Learning&&         Ac5vity&
                     services&       services&          services&             services&          tools&           services&

                                                              Content&
                                                              Community&
             BI&store&                                        Users&
                                                              Workflows&&
                                                              Transac5ons&


             •        Our own custom developed modules

             •        Drupal core modules & infrastructure

             •        Community contributed modules
                                                                                                                               31
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
EduNxt v2
                                                              •       In use since March 2010

                                                                  •    Large scale distance, pure
                                                                       online and campus based
                                                                       implementations

                                                              •       200,000 + learners, 4000+
                                                                      faculty

                                                              •       Multiple active
                                                                      communities

                                                              •       Content across courses


                                                                                                    32
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Users to Stakeholders
             • Users have now assimilated managing
                     large courses and online communities
                     with EduNxt

             • The problem now under discussion is
                     using technology to address the cost of
                     creating learning content



                                                               33
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
The next generalization
             • Strengthening the domain model -
                     adding pedagogy management to
                     content/community management

             • Integrating EduNxt with specialized tools
               • Mendeley, Fedora, MediaWiki for
                     editing ...

               • Using RDF as the integration glue
                                                              34
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Today,
                                        • EduNxt is now entering version 3.0 and
                                              delivers a sizable part of the core business
                                        • EduNxt has a roadmap and a plan that is
                                              funded till 2015.
                                        • A technology development function
                                              operates within Manipal, makes frequent
                                              releases
                                        • Manipal launches frequent new programs
                                              on EduNxt
                                                                                             35
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Agility & Expertise
             • Agile development requires the
                     development team to commit to
                     providing a quality deliverable in a fixed
                     time

               • A collective commitment



                                                                  36
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Agile Progression
             • 2007-2008: mostly customization of
                     Moodle, no fixed iteration window but
                     instead constant releases

             • 2009-2010: Development around Drupal,
                     struggled to use SCRUM effectively

             • 2011-12: SCRUM is now used as a
                     discipline


                                                              37
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
2009-10
             • Delayed in every iteration - constant carry-forward to the
                     next iteration

               • On an average 60% of features would be developed
             • Completion of deliverable was ambiguous
               • Unit test cases seldom written
               • Performance considerations ignored
             • Problems
               • Inability to estimate
               • Engineering discipline

                                                                            38
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Estimation
               •         Normally functional decomposition

               •         Often done by the lead or project manager and given to the
                         developer

               •         Instead needs to be based on:

                     •       Identify the programming objects required to solve the
                             problem

                     •       Estimate the time/effort to deliver these objects with a
                             given degree of quality

                         •    Complexity of the environment, individual capability, etc


                                                                                          39
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Programming Objects


             • Initially meant whatever to whoever                                            !

             • Introduction of our finder-decorator and core services addressed this -
                     now all programming tasks relate to the creation or extension of these

             • In addition all test cases and required documentation
             • Require this detail in our iteration planning meeting to pick up a
                     feature


                                                                                                  40
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
Discipline through automation

             • Build processes
             • Sniffers
             • The environment mandates some
                     activities to be part of the programming
                     objects - become default part of
                     estimation and not add-ons

                 For an agile discipline to succeed, expertise must be
                       developed within and around the team              41


Tuesday 6 March 12
EduNxt Evolution
                                    2007 - Starting           2009 - inflection          Today

    As seen by the                  Small localized           Important business         Monetizable IP. SAAS
    Enterprise                      project.                  differentiator across      based offering.
                                                              programs
                                    Minimal funding                                      Enables Business Agility
                                                              3-year funding
                                                                                         Committed funding


                                    Skeptical, how to use
    Stakeholder                                               Increased enthusiasm,      Users are part of product
                                    technology in
    involvement                                               emergence of champions     definition & development
                                    learning



                                                              Quarterly major releases   Separate core and instance
    Development                     Quick win focused         with multiple interim      development. Adoption of
    approach                                                  releases.                  SCRUM


                                                                                         14 person dev team, 4
    Team sizes                      4 PHP developers          12 person dev team         person testing team

                                                                                                                      42
Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com
Tuesday 6 March 12
and the story
                       goes on
                      satish@canopusconsulting.com

                      pnr@canopusconsulting.com
                                                     43


Tuesday 6 March 12

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Whirligigs and mountains 1

  • 1. whirligigs and mountains The EduNxt story From Manipal Global Education Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 2. High Performance, Transaction Systems • If you have throughput needs of millions of transactions per hour, we are the people to talk to :) • Content Management, Semantic Computing & Cultural Informatics • agropedia.net • EduNxt a large scale virtual learning environment which won Golden Peacock Award for best innovation. • Platform Oriented Architectures, SaaS and Cloud Computing Solutions 2 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 3. “Eliminate the need for physical contact between teachers and learners” March 2007 Vision required Uncertainity and funding change => need for a roadmap, Cannot articulate resource plan, vision into business value, project budgets etc However... Never used technology to deliverables or upfront own its deliver core business value Had no technology development development function Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 4. April 2009: EduNxt launched for DE SLM content, quizzes, course plans, assignments e s 20,000 learners, 20 trained re leas on thly M ... s es Dec 2011 EduNxt is Multi- a le institute & SAAS r re a l le Multi-media content, sm ek l e w e various assessments ip April 2008: TEL ul t 1a 200,000 learners, 4000 M o st launched on Moodle al m faculty PDF content, quizzes 1000 learners, 4 trained faculty EduNxt was built, over multiple iterations, with a small team, improved with constant user participation and delivered business value. We have bought in agility that has transformed the enterprise 4 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 5. In this session we present • Using Open Sources based architecture principles to circumvent the rigidity of an end-user enterprise • Architecture & design techniques to establish a platform for agile development • Engineering processes required and team challenges we overcame before Agile worked in our enterprise 5 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 6. Initial Days: March -December 2007 • The technology team - me, • we later brought on 2 PHP developers • We were working for - Academics Central a core group of academicians tasked with driving TEL • Our references - a paper on virtual universities written by Nag, a vision paper by Dr Bhushan and the work done on online learning at University of Athabasca 6 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 7. The domain of education • Unlike domains like Banking, Retail, Insurance which have business process centric, operationally heavy, lend themselves to data and information processing, Education is an elusive human activity. • The measure is the development of a human being, not consumption/production. • Requires and is dependent of human contact. • Technology Enabled Learning is "applied humanities" , not applications of computers in humanities 7 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 8. The domain of education • Unlike domains like Banking, Retail, Insurance which have business process centric, operationally heavy, lend themselves to data and information processing, Education is an elusive human activity. • The measure is the development of a human being, not consumption/production. • Requires and is dependent of human contact. • Technology Enabled Learning is "applied humanities" , not applications of computers in humanities We could only solve the problem in stages, with each stage our understanding would deepen and become the basis for the next stage of evolution 7 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 9. Users to stakeholders • Our users were too inexperienced with technology to be stakeholders of the CEO’s vision. • They needed to assimilate technology & use it in their work • They needed small, positive reinforcements instead of a big-bang release • They would need to become participants in creating the technology 8 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 10. Users to stakeholders • Our users were too inexperienced with technology to be stakeholders of the CEO’s vision. • They needed to assimilate technology & use it in their work • They needed small, positive reinforcements instead of a big-bang release • They would need to become participants in creating the technology We would have to work with our users and enable them to outgrow a set of requirements and then ask for the next set 8 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 11. The Whirligig Approach • Build a version with our current understanding • Use this to help our users assimilate technology and progress towards being stakeholders • Build the next version with enhanced understanding • ...in essence allow our users to outgrow their requirements Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 12. The enterprise IT project way • Creating a complete requirement and outsourcing or buying a commercial product would fail • The requirement would only be what we understand today • The product, because of its domain centricity and cost would lock us in • Our users would be dictated to by the functionality that is assumed in the tool and would never become stakeholders 10 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 13. On the other hand • Open sources platforms seem to be ideally suited for our whirligig approach • They are designed to allow a large community of independent contributors to programmatically extend them • Would help us to start with the simplest model and add modules in conjunction with our users - thus the positive reinforcement and sense of contribution 11 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 14. Open Sources - An Architecture perspective • An Open Sources platform such as MediaWiki, Moodle or Drupal attempts to solve horizontal problems rather than specific vertical problems. • Generalizations rather than very specific solutions • Therefore makes very little assumption on how someone will use it - alternatively, we are free to use it as we see fit • Moodle - works with 3 basic entities Courses, Activities and Resources that apply across different types of learning methods • It does not attempt to enforce a method such as a mastery based approach or one specific for distance education 12 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 15. Open Sources - An Architecture perspective • They are basically platforms designed to be extended by programmers • They have simple data models • Provide mechanisms like hooks to allow INDEPENDENTLY developed modules to be plugged in and used independently or together • This is what enables Moodle to have 100’s of contributed modules 13 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 16. The Moodle Alternative Moodle& BlackBoard& Moodle& Content& Management& Dokeos& 300 + contributed modules or&Domain& Sakai& Specific&Tool& Installed and created a course in a few hours Cost and lock-in Had been around for over 6 Ease of customizing years, was in version 1.7 Create course plan, and setting up Used in University of deliver PDF content, What kind of dev Athabasca, our favorite author & deliver a quiz skills are required reference => Where can we get this out of the box? 14 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 17. Convincing the mountain • Larger the budgets more the formality associated with IT projects in the enterprise - business plans, exact requirements, expected value • We decided we would start with a small budget till such time as the organization would reach the point of readiness to fund the vision • 2 programmers on contract • No upfront licensing costs • Released TEL v1, its success led to EduNxt and its success in turn to EduNxt V2 15 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 18. 12-May-2009: EduNxt TEL development gets a 3 launched for DE year roadmap and budget SLM content, quizzes, Decision to develop course plans, assignments technology in-house 20,000 learners, 20 trained ... Aug’09 s es May’09 Aug 2009, we are looking at a le r re April’08 enabling a very different type of a l le program sm e ek l e w t ip 1a TEL 0.1 launched ul st There is also an increasing focus on M m o on Moodle with al developing communities and on MSC CRRA tools for collaborative learning TEL evolves 16 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 19. Users to Stakeholders • A requirement such as tracking scores of quiz attempts led to the inclusion of the advanced grade book module • Via a small interaction between a teacher and one of our programmers - find the module, install it, go through the options, customize it and set it up • The teacher adopts grade book and becomes its evangelist to the others • By April 09, our teachers referred to the technology as “namma edunxt” 17 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 20. Where did Version 1 take us? • A success story within the enterprise - for the dev team and our users at academic central • With a cost of around 55L, 4 PHP programmers and a year or so of effort - EduNxt had gone live and was actively used • Our users had understood “LMS” and its role in technology enabled learning and were now ready to outgrow it • Manipal was now ready to take more ownership of developing its own education platform 18 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 23. • Moving from content in a course to course in content 20 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 24. Evolution • We needed a new set of • We knew the request rate features like activity for similar features would books, content feeds, and increase & that the the ability to build features would evolve and different types of interact communities with their • Supportability => features own tools to improve productivity of other stakeholders such as operations, program execs & our own dev team 21 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 25. The Architecture Approach • The typical “Mountain” approach: strengthen the domain model, build a domain specific platform • Successful software however favors a move towards more generic data structures - less assumptions on how it can be used • We favored building assets & not programming requirements 22 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 26. The Architecture Approach • The typical “Mountain” approach: strengthen the domain model, build a domain specific platform • Successful software however favors a move towards more generic data structures - less assumptions on how it can be used • We favored building assets & not programming requirements Every version of our Architecture is an evolution towards making it more horizontal rather than specific to a domain requirement 22 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 27. More Generic Drupal& Generic&Content& Management& Moodle& Tool&:&MediaWiki,& Wordpress,&Drupal& & Versatile CMS used for multiple purposes How close is it to our Simple Node based data problem of content + model Outgrowing the LMS + Communities Existing set of modules domain model of What is extent of like Quiz, Grade Book, “Course”, “Activity”, customization Organic Groups that we “Resource” What would be could use migration effort 23 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 28. Design techniques for services • The Supportability Framework gave us a way to identify the generic structures • We also introduced some basic principles that are required for the design of such services • make characteristics such as performance, modifiability and extensibility predictable and independent of functionality 24 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 29. 7 habits of successful components • The Awareness Principle: The estimations of the self have to be tempered by the knowledge of the self • The Service Principle: Design based on contract law. Our clients chose us based on the SLA we offer • Communication of State Principle: Dignity is not sweeping under the rug • The Time Principle: Center design on variables that change less often • The Patience Principle: Be comfortable with some amount of discomfort • The Responsibility Principle: Environment is dynamic and the world is cruel - so have your self defenses • The Collaboration Principle: Bridges are solely for others to cross, don’t hold on to them 25 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 30. Awareness Principle • The estimations of the self have to be tempered by the knowledge of the self • Each service should compute an indicator of its state of health at all times • statistics: number of requests, drain rates, resource waits, number of errors • global state: maintenance, bulk uploads, delivering an exam • Tune what can be delivered based on the state of the service • Do not allow expensive operations like bulk course edit if an exam is being served 26 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 31. Time Principle • Center design on variables that change less often • Almost all our functionality are modeled on basic data entities such as content, community, unit of learning, activity, person and tools and services such as scheduling, rule execution, RBAC, events, notification and bulk operation processing • While individual functionality like a course plan changes rapidly, underlying structure of a content collection data- type does not • Core services are refined at a slower rate and bring consistency across iterations 27 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 32. Patience Principle • Be comfortable with some amount of discomfort • Key to enabling scalability especially in content centric environments • Unlike transactional environments, EduNxt can afford to be eventually consistent • A list of all content for a learner in a class need not be updated in a transaction when new content is added to the class 28 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 33. Patience Principle • Therefore, reads and writes can be largely separated from each other and changes can be propagated asynchronously • This enables us to pre-generate views of data for individuals, reducing query complexity at read time • Course material views • Latest forum updates • Activity streams 29 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 34. Responsibility Principle • Environment is dynamic and • Add checksums to sensitive the world is cruel - so have your data self defenses • Automatically log every • Especially in a PHP exception - irrespective of the environment defensive developer’s code programming is a must • The PHP Mess detector to sniff • Restrict all our business out too many if-then-else services calls only to the loops controller • Invert the logic of if-then-else • Validate input data ruthlessly loops to do work only if a specific condition is explicitly met 30 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 35. REST&interface&& CAS&–& Drupal&based&views,&modules& (Ipomo/SAP)& SSO& Controller& Evalua5on& Content& Subscrip5ons& Search& import& Release&engine& Assessment& SCORM,& Learning& Classrooms& Progress& Gradebook& packages& objec5ves& Groups& Progress& Prac5ce& tracking& Organiza5on& report& Blogs,&wikis,& Course& units& Rich&Profiles& Quiz&engine& Assimilate& SLM&,&…& templates& Content&& UOL& Community& Person& Learning&& Ac5vity& services& services& services& services& tools& services& Content& Community& BI&store& Users& Workflows&& Transac5ons& • Our own custom developed modules • Drupal core modules & infrastructure • Community contributed modules 31 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 36. EduNxt v2 • In use since March 2010 • Large scale distance, pure online and campus based implementations • 200,000 + learners, 4000+ faculty • Multiple active communities • Content across courses 32 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 37. Users to Stakeholders • Users have now assimilated managing large courses and online communities with EduNxt • The problem now under discussion is using technology to address the cost of creating learning content 33 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 38. The next generalization • Strengthening the domain model - adding pedagogy management to content/community management • Integrating EduNxt with specialized tools • Mendeley, Fedora, MediaWiki for editing ... • Using RDF as the integration glue 34 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 39. Today, • EduNxt is now entering version 3.0 and delivers a sizable part of the core business • EduNxt has a roadmap and a plan that is funded till 2015. • A technology development function operates within Manipal, makes frequent releases • Manipal launches frequent new programs on EduNxt 35 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 40. Agility & Expertise • Agile development requires the development team to commit to providing a quality deliverable in a fixed time • A collective commitment 36 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 41. Agile Progression • 2007-2008: mostly customization of Moodle, no fixed iteration window but instead constant releases • 2009-2010: Development around Drupal, struggled to use SCRUM effectively • 2011-12: SCRUM is now used as a discipline 37 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 42. 2009-10 • Delayed in every iteration - constant carry-forward to the next iteration • On an average 60% of features would be developed • Completion of deliverable was ambiguous • Unit test cases seldom written • Performance considerations ignored • Problems • Inability to estimate • Engineering discipline 38 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 43. Estimation • Normally functional decomposition • Often done by the lead or project manager and given to the developer • Instead needs to be based on: • Identify the programming objects required to solve the problem • Estimate the time/effort to deliver these objects with a given degree of quality • Complexity of the environment, individual capability, etc 39 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 44. Programming Objects • Initially meant whatever to whoever ! • Introduction of our finder-decorator and core services addressed this - now all programming tasks relate to the creation or extension of these • In addition all test cases and required documentation • Require this detail in our iteration planning meeting to pick up a feature 40 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 45. Discipline through automation • Build processes • Sniffers • The environment mandates some activities to be part of the programming objects - become default part of estimation and not add-ons For an agile discipline to succeed, expertise must be developed within and around the team 41 Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 46. EduNxt Evolution 2007 - Starting 2009 - inflection Today As seen by the Small localized Important business Monetizable IP. SAAS Enterprise project. differentiator across based offering. programs Minimal funding Enables Business Agility 3-year funding Committed funding Skeptical, how to use Stakeholder Increased enthusiasm, Users are part of product technology in involvement emergence of champions definition & development learning Quarterly major releases Separate core and instance Development Quick win focused with multiple interim development. Adoption of approach releases. SCRUM 14 person dev team, 4 Team sizes 4 PHP developers 12 person dev team person testing team 42 Copyright 2012 Canopus Consulting www.canopusconsulting.com Tuesday 6 March 12
  • 47. and the story goes on satish@canopusconsulting.com pnr@canopusconsulting.com 43 Tuesday 6 March 12