DART: Organizational Interface with Future VLE?
I am fortunate enough to currently be involved in the design and construction of a new Open Source project called DART, or Data Analysis and Reporting Toolkit. What we have built into this system is pretty unique in my experience in education, but will be a small step toward a learner-centered ePortfolio system that interacts with both real world and school based learning.
The Bering Strait School District (BSSD) Curriculum & Instruction Department began work on DART about a year ago after identifying through focus groups our biggest barriers to making student progress information easy to track and use for instruction. Many of the key people on the project are contributors here on this blog, such as Rick Holt, and Greg Johnson from BSSD.
We are now almost ready to release DART to the public under a Creative Commons License or Open Source software license in about ten days or so. The DART project will be hosted on Eduforge.
DART is not an ePortfolio or “PLE” system, but will work with whatever ePortfolio we choose to track student progress on our district’s standards, as well as with our current Moodle server and curriclum content. We are working on implmenting a four-pronged relationship between DART, our iCommunity LMS (Moodle), our wiki-based curiculum system (OpenContent), and a web-based “Personalized Learning Environment” or “PLE” (Elgg).
I am fortunate enough to currently be involved in the design and construction of a new Open Source project called DART, or Data Analysis and Reporting Toolkit. What we have built into this system is pretty unique in my experience in education, but will be a small step toward a learner-centered ePortfolio system that interacts with both real world and school based learning.
The Bering Strait School District (BSSD) Curriculum & Instruction Department began work on DART about a year ago after identifying through focus groups our biggest barriers to making student progress information easy to track and use for instruction. Many of the key people on the project are contributors here on this blog, such as Rick Holt, and Greg Johnson from BSSD.
We have now almost ready to release to the public under a Creative Commons License in about ten days or so. The DART project will be hosted on Eduforge. Here is an excerpt from the description there:
DART is an Open Source tool for tracking learner progress on standards and goals. Key features that make DART different include the ability of the system to “cloud tag” the standards of highest need in any grouping into “weighted lists” linked to resources, ability to interact with SIS and LMS systems, flexible reporting and the ability to add features in Open Source modules. There are five additional modules for special functions being planned or built now.
Standard & Goal Tracking: Free like a puppy!
Since it is Creative Commons licensed, the DART system is free, and is based on the LAMP platform (Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP). We are currently working on the first version 0.5, and it’s documentation. The code will be posted and accessible as soon as Eduforge finalizes our CVS account.
DART is web-based on a server running LAMP. Once installed on a web server, it only requires a web browser to use. We are developing as cross-platform as possible, but Firefox is our standard browser for reference.
We are not considering DART anything but a start. We got it to the point that it solves some problems our district had in easily tracking standards, and making that information able to directly impact instruction. Version 0.5 will do that for BSSD, but is not “done” by any stretch.
What DART is Not…
DART is not an ePortfolio or “PLE” system, but will work with whatever ePortfolio we choose to track student progress on our district’s standards, as well as with our current Moodle server and curriclum content. We are working on implmenting a four-pronged relationship between DART, our iCommunity LMS (Moodle), our wiki-based curiculum system (OpenContent), and a web-based “Personalized Learning Environment” or “PLE” (Elgg).
What is DART, then?
We consider DART to be a baby step toward what some have called a “Future VLE“, or a “virtual learning environment” that will allow small technologies to revolutionalize education. There is no current idealized model for a future learning environment, but many people discussing these issues have liked Scott Wilson’s image as a way to help think about the relationships involved.
The key to such a system is interaction using small technologies: RSS feeds, tags, FOAF connections and the like It is assumed in most discussions that a learner’s identity used in any model like this would “follow the learner”, rather than be entirely constsrained by the school or hosting organization.
Despite this independence, we believe that a “Future VLE” will require a way to allow organizations (schools, colleges, training organizations, standards-setting groups in industry) to set up goals, and monitor learner progress.
The need for teacher or instructor input won’t completely go away with a future VLE, but learner independence and “ownership” of the ePortoflio portion is central. During some periods of a learner’s life he or she may be in public school, at university, or in a trades-related certification program.
His or progress will require during those periods of assocation some way for those assisting with the learning at hand – instructor, teacher, mentor, and so on – to provide feedback that can be brought by feed into the larger picture of the VLE. Therefore, DART is like a web-based progress monitoring and instructional planning tool that teachers can use to inform both individual learners AND their “Future VLE” of progress on some learning goals.
This information will be useful for planning instruction, and useful for the learner to see where he or she is in terms of progress toward identified goals.
DART is currently set up to actually identify, and report out each group or individual’s highest needs to both the learner, and to the teachers and administrators working with this student. The identified “high value targets” that are the biggest impediments to forward progress are linked directly to the wiki-based database holding the curriculum and resources needed.
We want to collaborate with other like-minded districts to make DART the “glue” that links various ePortfolio / Personalized Learning Environment systems to the organization’s teacher-learner interface either in the classroom, or in a distance education context.
The current Version 0.5 build can already be used in much the same way with our curriculum wiki system as the “Plex” client application is use with “43Things.com“. DART monitors progress and identifies keep resources. The differences are that DART is web-based, and designed to provide the interconnection between organized learning, and the “personalized learning environment”.
Where Plex is individualized and tracks user identified sources of learning, DART is used by an organization for the learners currently working toward goals (courses, degrees?, vendor certifications?) – and by those learners themselves – to track progress and link to resources that are either recommended by the organization, or collaboratively developed in a wiki system like BSSD’s version. The instructor, teacher or organization administrator uses the system to monitor group and individual progress toward goals, and to plan for instruction.
 43 Things Interface (click for larger image) |
DART Accepts Any Standards or Goal Areas
Continuous Progress Tracked Easily
Teachers can enter status changes quick and easily as each standards and/or assessment that makes up the goal area changes for the learner. Report templates can be customized.
Grouping Very Flexible
Progress tracking is completely freed from the dominant schedule-driven model student information systems use. These depend on which student is with which teacher at which time. Such a system is too stiff to be useful in a truly responsive education model, so we alowed all groupings to be temporary.
Identifies Greatest Common & Individual Needs
We applied ideas about “tag clouding” to the greatest common needs in each flexible group so that teachers have instant information via “weighted lists” to identify “high value targets” for instruction. The same approach is used to identify for the learner what the highest individual needs are to move forward toward the goal.
Resources Intelligently Linked to Needs
The same “tag clouded” lists are automatically linked to wiki-based instructional resource areas that both teachers AND students can maintain. These are set up by the individual standard target for granular direction to the specific things the learner needs to be able to know and do in order to progress on the identified “high value targets”.
Each term in the “weighted list” goes directly to our OpenContent wiki system with resources about that standard, and collaboratively developed information about how to learn that learning goal.
What Else is Needed?
With the release of Elgg V 0.6 this week, the promise of being able to implement a “Future VLE” system in a school district is getting very close. We will be starting the 2006-07 school year with some of the components in place. However, not all features are fully operational, and other tools may well need to be developed to meet the needs of our organization’s teachers and learners.
There were numerous improvements in this release, including the ability of Moodle integration. Since we use Moodle for our iCommunity, and Elgg will interoperate with our wiki system through a code plug in, we are quite a bit closer.
What we need to do now if focus on getting DART to “talk” with Moodle and Elgg 
If your organization is interested in participating in testing a similar system, or working through some of the issues together, contact me, and we’ll set up a Skype discussion with some of the folks involved.
We are currently testing Elgg on Teachers4Schools.org, and you are welcome to create an account, and provide feedback through the community tools there.
Many miles to go before we sleep, but making progress!
John Concilus
June 6th, 2006 at 8:36 am
Very exciting news! I worked in a similar vein using an all-RDF system about three years ago, but then the grant I was working under ended, my job went away, and nobody else on the planet seemed to have the slightest idea of what I was talking about, so that project died. It did lead to me managing SchoolTool, which is an open source administrative framework for schools, funded by The Shuttleworth Foundation. We’re focusing on more traditional school structures, although I’m trying to keep the flexibility in there for more learner-centered approaches in the future. Some career/technical schools in Virginia have put together a competency-tracking application for SchoolTool called CanDo http://www.careercenter.arlington.k12.va.us/cando/index.htm which has worked well for them, although it is more simple and course-based than it seems your work is.
I agree that we’re getting to the point where interoperability of these tools is the next step. Matt Jezorek and I have started doing some coding on open source tools for SIF interoperability over at http://sifsoft.com SIF is an existing, widely implemented standard that works, and it will be a great way to integrate open source apps if we can get the tools together. Otherwise I’m afraid we’re going to end up with an n^2 where every app has its own API.
Also, you should consider using a free software license for the software rather than a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses aren’t designed for software, and there is no reason not to use a software license for software.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
I was happy to stumble upon this blog entry and I found it informative. I am a teacher in BSSD and I’ll have to say that we are extremely excited about this new DART application.
Cheers!
June 9th, 2006 at 6:17 am
[...] The Education Bazaar — What we need to do now if focus on getting DART to “talk†with Moodle and Elgg ” [...]
August 27th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
[...] The current buzz in my own little world is now revolving around the idea of “Personalized Learning Environments”, or PLE’s, which small technologies can now support. For examlpe, the online learning system Moodle is now working with a budding PLE called Elgg, and also with an ePortolio block. My school district is developing DART to help track individual and group progress toward standards, and to play nicely with these other systems. See my recent rant for more detail. [...]