I’ve been noodling on the architecture of an open learning network for some time now. I’m making a presentation to my boss today on the subject and I think I have something worth sharing. (Nothing like a high-profile presentation to force some clarity of thought.)

I wrote a post last year exploring the spider-starfish tension between Personal Learning Environments and institutionally run CMSs. This is a fundamental challenge that institutions of higher learning need to resolve. On the one hand, we should promote open, flexible, learner-centric activities and tools that support them. On the other hand, legal, ethical and business constraints prevent us from opening up student information systems, online assessment tools, and online gradebooks. These tools have to be secure and, at least from a data management and integration perspective, proprietary.

So what would an open learning network look like if facilitated and orchestrated by an institution? Is it possible to create a hybrid spider-starfish learning environment for faculty and students?

The diagram below is my effort to conceptualize an “open (institutional) learning network.”

There are components of an open learning network that can and should live in the cloud:

• Personal publishing tools (blogs, personal websites, wikis)
• Social networking apps
• Open content
• Student generated content

Some tools might straddle the boundary between the institution and the cloud, e.g. portfolios, collaboration tools and websites with course & learning activity content.

Other tools and data belong squarely within the university network:

• Student Information Systems
• Secure assessment tools (e.g., online quiz & test applications)
• Institutional gradebook (for secure communication about scores, grades & feedback)
• Licensed and or proprietary institutional content

An additional piece I’ve added to the framework within the university network is a “student identity repository.” Virtually every institution has a database of students with contact information, class standing, major, grades, etc. To facilitate the relationships between students and teachers, students and students, and students and content, universities need to provide students the ability to input additional information about themselves into the institutional repository, such as:

• URLs & RSS feeds for anything and everything the student wants to share with the learning community
• Social networking usernames (probably on an opt-in basis)
• Portfolio URLs (particularly to simplify program assessment activities)
• Assignment & artifact links (provided and used most frequently via the gradebook interface)

Integrating these technologies assumes:

• Web services compatibility to exchange data between systems and easily redisplay content as is or mashed-up via alternate interfaces
• RSS everywhere to aggregate content in a variety of places

As noted in previous posts, we’re in the process of building a stand-alone gradebook app that is consistent with this framework. We’re in the process of deciding which tools come next and whether we build them or leverage cloud apps. After a related and thought-provoking conversation with Andy Gibbons today, I’m also contemplating the “learning conversation” layer of the OLN and how it should be achitected, orchestrated and presented to teachers and learners . . .

While there’s still a lot of work to do, this feels like we’re getting closer to something real and doable. Thoughts?