University of the West Coast Task Group

A model for enterprise systems for the next

5 years – the role of a service oriented approach

A presentation from the Department of Information Services

• Why we think a service oriented approach is a good idea for us

• Probs:

• Insufficient requirements

• Missed opportunities

• Need an extreme programming team

• Vendor buy in needed

• Lots of academics not interested in e-learning: often some reluctance about new things

• Sometimes feel it’s education dragging technology not the other way around

• Teachers can’t always express what they’re after• Institutions must recognise teachers & techies

need to work together• Student satisfaction with IT is crucial, not just

teacher satisfaction

• Competing demands from different groups – and often conflicting demands

• Academics want flexibility and lots of responsibility for students, but administrators want more control!

• Flexibility costs more, as need to train more people

• SOA benefits:• Vendors more likely to implement an API which

conforms to industry standards• More skills development• Need a good development environment in the

institution• Need in house development team to develop

SOA at the moment, but maybe not so much in future

• With SOA, e-learning is not trailing behind current developments

• Can create services which are then offered to other institutions

• Another business model is going into partnership with vendors: can be problematic!

• SOA can be cheaper

• Give us lots of money to build SOA’s coz they’re flexible and support a diverse community

• Need to have an integration team• Learning technologists ought to be bridging gap

between techies & academics• Are learning technologists to support techies

implement stuff, or academics realise ideas, or both?

Prompts -

• Why an soa approach is a good idea for us,

• What we want to be able to do– advantages, – cost benefits, – how we get there, – what the issues are– What’s good about ws? – Sell idea to your teaching colleagues and committees