Open Source and E-Learning in ME - Term Paper Example

08 February Open source and e-learning in ME Introduction The use of open source software is becoming increasingly important, particularly in public spheres, including education. Universities seek to adopt open source software solutions to improve the quality of their administrative functioning and to promote better achievement among students. Unfortunately, public sphere organizations and governments are still reluctant to adopt open source software, and emphasize the relevance of commercial closed software despite its expensiveness and licensing issues. The current paper justifies the use of OSS in public sphere organizations, including education and universities, in particular. The aim of the article is to show open source software as the beneficial choice to universities and related public organizations and facilities. Background Umm Al-Qura University is a continuously evolving academic institution with the growing list of challenges and requirements that arise from its faculty, staff, and students. Umm Al-Qura is included into the list of the oldest and the biggest Universities in Saudi Arabia. Universities in Saudi Arabia traditionally rely on the use of COTS in computer operations, and use a variety of solutions from personal desktop applications to database systems. However, the growing scope of the user database, as well as the ever growing sophistication of IT requirements have created a challenge, which the IT department cannot meet, unless the IT specialists are able to evaluate the overall feasibility of the IT applications that are currently in use. UQU annually spends hundreds of dollars to cover COTS licensing expenses and support contracts. As a result, the principal task the University currently faces is reconciling its sophisticated IT needs with the limited budget. To meet the existing budgetary constraints, the University has a unique opportunity to develop and adopt software solutions, the cost model of which will either decay with time or will make these solutions free. It is equally essential that these solutions are usable enough to meet the sophisticated user requirements: they should be customizable at the lowest rate possible and should preferably use available internal and local market resources. The cost of solutions has remained a controversial issue. According to Daffara (1999), “most current Open Source projects are also available free of royalties and fees, leading to the confusion around the commonly used term `free software. Regrettably the English language does not have separate concepts for free-of-charge and free as in unconstrained; other languages are better equipped to describe the difference between `freedom and `free of charge (libre vs. gratis)” (Daffara (1999).  Having a readily customizable technology software solution can “minimize the risks associated with technology obsolescence, being locked into proprietary technology, and reliance on a single source of supply over the life of the system” (Moran, 2003). In this context, according to Daffara, “OSS can be defined as a collection of interacting software, hardware, and human components designed to satisfy stated needs with interface specifications of its components, that are (a) fully defined; (b) available to the public; and (c) maintained according to group consensus in which the implementations of the components conform to the interface specifications” (Daffara 1999). From the UQU’s perspective, OSS systems provide an opportunity to meet the needs for the fast and more economic development of e-learning environments and make it possible for the university and related public organizations to advance “the causes of acquisition efficiency and system interoperability” (Daffara (1999). The main issue with the use of OSS in public education institutions is the lack of awareness about the existence and popularity of these and similar systems. IT professionals generally assume the immaturity and imperfection of the existing OSS. However, the current state of IT environment possesses and makes it possible to utilize OSS systems that can support the critical e-learning functions and that are fully supported by the leading IT companies, including IBM, HP, NOVELL, and ORACLE. Why use OSS The benefits of using various forms of OSS in university environments are readily visible when compared to the use and the problems encountered in the process of developing and adopting traditional COTS solutions. The overall benefits of applying OSS for the purpose of e-learning can be evaluated and praised through the prism of several essential indicators: workloads, scalability, security, auditability, and accountability, total price of ownership, credibility, desktop friendliness, and commercial support. OSS work to reduce workloads among the IT personnel, based on the premise that they do not require licensing and may be changed and adjusted to specific university requirements. The reliability of OSS in public sector organizations is further confirmed by the fact that developers operate in accordance with extremely high standards for the software; although this does not itself guarantee the quality of the OSS products, the OSS community has a much larger payload in terms of peer review than its COTS brethren. More often than not, OSS in e-learning leave traditional licensed software far behind, whilst OSS software is well-known for its scalability: it can be readily found on supercomputers as well as the IBM Linux wristwatch which was showcased at the BangLinux conference in 2001. Professionals in IT often hold various concerns about the potential security of OSS software, but it would be fair to say that there is no totally secure software. 75% of the current software cycle is maintenance, debugging, and extensions COTS organizations rarely charge for support, while OSS currently use the peer-review model of support and is increasingly moving to after-sales consulting fees model. Auditability in COTS systems is rather problematic: users are expected to blindly trust the vendor. Moreover, the accountability of traditional COTS systems is also the object of peer concern, because most COTS issue End User License Agreements explicitly exclude accountability for anything other than imperfections in the distribution medium. OSS users, however, can retain any competent individual or company to provide support, since the source of the code is always obtainable. OSS is increasingly beneficial in terms of the Total Cost of Ownership – it is not very expensive to purchase; upgrading and upholding expenses are much lower than for traditional COTS systems; there are no license management expenses; OSS can frequently apply older hardware more effectively; and if applied as an application server based system, the overall expenses for hardware decrease by orders of scale. OSS systems are credible, friendly, and can be effectively supported by professional experienced vendors. According to Daffara (1999), “reliability is a loose term. Broadly, we can take it to mean the absence of defects which cause incorrect operation, data loss or sudden failures, perhaps what many people would mean when they use the term `bug. Strictly, a bug would also mean failure to meet the specification, but since most Open Source projects dispense with the concept of anything easily recognizable as a formal specification, its hard to point to that as good way of defining what is a bug and what is a feature” Daffara (1999). All these factors confirm OSS as a beneficial tool of managing e-learning environments at Universities and other public sector organizations. In brief, 11 essential reasons make OSS a relevant choice for UQU: (1) the low cost, (2) independence, (3) security, transparency, and privacy, (4) adaptability, (5) quality, (6) respect to standards, (7) redistribution, (8) no legal restriction of use, (9) perenniality, (10) freedom, and (11) the ability of OSS to facilitate new developments. When combined with Linux technologies, enterprises and public sector organizations can easily cut the costs they annually spend on supporting and maintaining traditional COTS systems, while OSS turn into a unique source of alternative business value. Literature review The current state of literature provides scarce qualitative data with regard to Total Ownership Cost and ROI. The major difficulty is in that a standard benchmark for evaluation is virtually absent. Commercial companies like Linux use criteria that are applicable to only few companies and thus, their results lack generalizability. Recent literature findings also confirm the narrowing gap between ROI and TCO for the major traditional software systems – the trend which does not work in favor of OSS but which, nevertheless, does not diminish the benefits of OSS in e-learning environments. Objectively, the narrowing gap between TCO and ROI for traditional systems is explained by lower-priced offerings and reduced costs of management tools and support systems, which consumers use for their platforms. This also proves the relevance of cheap support for OSS systems on the side of Linux or other related facilities. Daffara states : “Open Source Software developers are evidently motivated by many factors but favoring features over quality is not noticeable amongst them. For many developers, peer review and acclaim is important, so its likely that they will prefer to build software that is admired by their peers. Highly prized factors are clean design, reliability and maintainability, with adherence to standards and shared community values preeminent” (Daffara, 1999). Professional literature confirms that the nearest future will be marked with the growing role of OSS in different IT environments: OSS will much more accountability for operation and change administration; will be involved in the knowledge result and folders of service providers; According to Wiggins (2005), it “will be applied by early technology adopters for mission-critical tasks; will be included in broader non-OSS software bundles; will be available as a supported alternative enterprise suite, and will touch more than 50 percent of IT services” (Wiggins, 2005). Literature confirms OSS as an effective means to reduce public expenditure, create a balanced technology market, enhance working chances, secure the local job market, and maximize people technical productivity (Moran, 2003). Generally, and according to Daffara (1999), “we can easily see that open source software has a distinct advantage over proprietary systems, since it is possible to easily and quickly identify potential security problems and correct them” (Daffara, 1999). That means that OSS promote flexibility necessary for businesses and public sector organizations to choose solutions that suit the needs of users. Methodology The current paper uses feasibility analysis based on the UQU environment to assess the relevance of OSS as applied to the UQU e-learning contexts. The feasibility study is based on several factors: operational (functionality and politics), technical (technology and expertise), schedule, economic (software cost, hardware cost, development cost, and maintenance cost). The current research uses the example of Dspace system development and modifications to overview the real and potential benefits of using open software in e-learning. It is anticipated that the feasibility analysis will lay the foundation for an effective comparative analysis between different software systems, to confirm or deny the hypothesis that open solutions are beneficial for UQU compared to traditional COTS software environments. Results and discussion The results of the comparative feasibility study between Greenstone, Fedora, and DSpace confirm an open source system DSpace to be the first in operational, schedule, and economic analysis. DSpace is shown as comparatively exclusive in that “there are no other institutionally based repositories that invite the breadth of file formats, have digital preservation as an explicit objective, and provide a flexible, decentralized community-based submissions process” (Moran, 2003). The results of the study have revealed the critical features necessary for the discussed solution to serve the basic needs of UQU users: a secure and reliable basis to provide protection and availability of services; a secure and reliable basis to provide data sharing services; a long-term plan for protection and distribution of content; an established and reliable basis to maintain different application of content as well as the creation of alternative digital library. In its current state, UQU possesses all resources, networks, and IT deployment sites necessary to use OSS as the basis for the development of effective e-learning frameworks. Given the results of the study, OSS should be used as the central strategic element of e-learning at the university. Conclusion The use of open source software is growing important in public areas such as education. Higher level institutions want to get open source software solutions to improve their administrative functioning and to encourage students to have better results. However, public organizations and authorities are still unwilling to adopt open source software, and highlight the significance of commercial closed software regardless of its high cost and problems with licensing. In order to meet the budgetary limitations, the Umm Al-Qura University has a real chance to accept e-learning, the cost model of which will either decay with time or will make these solutions free of charge. It is important to note that these solutions are applicable enough to meet the sophisticated user requirements: they should be customizable at the lowest rate possible and should preferably apply available internal and local market resources. The current work rationalizes the application of OSS in public sphere organizations, such as education. The main goal is to show open source software as the beneficial choice to universities and related public organizations and facilities. Software solution can “minimize the risks connected with technology obsolescence, being locked into proprietary technology, and reliance on a single source of supply over the life of the system” (Moran, 2003). OSS has already turned into a unique source of benefits for both IT specialists and IT users. The current analysis shows OSS as a beneficial choice compared to traditional COTS systems. OSS looks like a solution more advanced, sophisticated, flexible, and adaptable compared to the use of COTS e-learning environments, which are associated with higher costs, the lack of accountability and scalability, as well as the difficulties with adjusting these systems to specific user requirements. OSS represents a unique advantage to universities and public sector organizations, which seek to balance their IT requirements with restrained budgets. Read More