Microsoft Integrated Portal Technologies in Education ...



Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions

“Improving learning by connecting people, information and services”

March, 2004

Table of Contents

Part 1: Connect a Learning Community 1

Education’s Three Critical Areas 1

Portal Scenarios that Enable Exceptional Learning 1

How to Use this Document 2

Part 2: Understanding the Possibilities 3

Fundamental Portal Capabilities 3

Defining a District’s Needs 5

Part 3: Portal Scenarios 6

Basic Teaching and Learning Portal 6

Group Collaboration Portal 7

Administrative Dashboard Portal 8

District Portal 9

Part 4: Enabling Technology 10

Microsoft Integrated Portal Technologies 10

Key Microsoft Products Defined 11

Part 5: Faster, More Flexible and Cost-effective Portals 12

Part 6: Enable the Connections that Improve Learning 14

Part 1: Connect a Learning Community

Improving education today requires removing barriers and building connections by giving parents, teachers, students and administrators access to the people, information and services that they need to fulfill their role within the learning community.

Portals can improve multiple aspects of education, including communication and collaboration, document management, information access and sharing, and assessment and reporting. They can also be personalized for any user, whether a student, parent, teacher, staff member, administrator or even government agency. Personalization can make available and even automatically deliver contextually relevant, pertinent information and services to users, enabling them to more efficiently and effectively accomplish their tasks to improve learning.

Microsoft® Connected Learning Portal Solutions enable an IT department to quickly design and deploy flexible and cost-effective portal solutions that connect a learning community, enabling everyone to improve their focus on the business of education.

Education’s Three Critical Areas

Education today is comprised of three critical areas: facilitation, management and assessment of learning. Within each of these areas, myriad activities take place across a district every day. For example, to facilitate learning teachers create learning content and adapt curriculums to meet both academic standards and student needs. Students have the tools and resources to create and express their learning achievements. Administrators facilitate learning by providing teachers with learning resources and opportunities to interact in curriculum development. To manage learning, teachers organize material for students and spend time on administrative tasks such as grading and reporting. Administrators manage the behind-the-scenes operations that make learning possible. To assess learning, teachers evaluate student progress. Administrators assess learning by measuring performance against standards and generating reports to meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements.

Multiple activities that support key areas of facilitating, managing and assessing learning are taking place today. Portals enable schools to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of several activities by connecting their people, information and services. Teachers can share learning resources and best practices when collaboration is made easier, and they can spend more time teaching when administrative tasks are streamlined and automated. Students can explore and discover information when it is easily found and practically presented. Administrators can more easily track progress and generate more accurate reports with comprehensive accountability and assessment tools, and students can keep track of assignments through easier access to due dates and automated notifications. With the right portal scenario, a school district can facilitate, manage, and assess learning more easily and more effectively.

Portal Scenarios that Enable Exceptional Learning

School districts have varying needs when addressing the daily tasks of education. For some, the assessment of learning might be too difficult or even lag behind state requirements, where other districts might require easier management of learning resources. Perhaps the administrative burden hinders teaching or drains IT resources. This paper will explore four portal scenarios that can greatly improve the activities needed to improve performance in facilitating, managing and assessing learning. The scenarios include: Basic Teaching and Learning; Group Collaboration; Administrative Dashboard and District; and a District Portal scenario, which is an overarching portal that integrates all the benefits of the other scenarios, district-wide. (Figure 1)

Regardless of the scenario that makes sense at a particular point in time, portals in general are a highly effective way to enable connected learning. When members of a learning community can easily interact, share information and access applications, results are driven in the three critical areas of facilitating, managing and assessing learning, and exceptional learning is the result.

Enable Exceptional Learning

[pic]

Figure 1

How to Use this Document

Once the potential of an effective portal has been recognized for a district, how does the portal transform from possibility to reality? Use this document as a guide. Start by considering the capabilities that are needed now, and those that might be needed in the future. This whitepaper describes the fundamental capabilities that portals offer, and uses the four portal scenarios to illustrate how a district can improve the critical areas of education with these capabilities. Next, the enabling technologies that deliver these capabilities are discussed. Finally, the aspects of Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions that enable a faster, more flexible and more cost-effective portal solution are explained.

With this information, this document can be used to evaluate the current environment in a school district, and compare it to the potential environment made possible with Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions. Then, with a flexible portal solution, a district can meet the immediate need to improve learning, and be prepared to easily adapt to the needs of tomorrow.

Part 2: Understanding the Possibilities

With the right capabilities, a portal can improve the activities required to facilitate, manage, and assess learning. For example, a portal can enable better interactions between students, and gain more accurate assessments of student progress. A portal can also facilitate the creation of aggregated views of information from multiple systems, and make that information easier to find. Teachers and students can discover new learning content and express ideas in more innovative ways. A portal can even streamline workflow and automate mundane tasks. Portal capabilities exist to better enable these activities. It’s simply a matter of determining which portal capabilities are most advantageous to a district’s current situation, and laying the foundation for building these capabilities—now and over time.

Fundamental Portal Capabilities

Portal capabilities fall into the following broad categories; however a portal may not require all these capabilities. In addition, these capabilities can also be brought together in various combinations to meet evolving learning needs. Finally, portals enable a diverse user base to access and interact within the portal via whatever method best meets their needs. This access includes broad accessibility considerations for disabled users, including full Section 508 compliance, as well as the ability to access from devices other the PC, such as web-enabled phones and Pocket PCs.

Fundamental Portal Capabilities

Figure 2

Content Aggregation

Content aggregation means creating content once and reusing it in multiple locations. It involves gathering data from disparate sources, and then making it available within a single Web-based interface or directly through a user’s application. Using content aggregation capabilities, a portal can present a unified view of information from different owners, sources or systems.

Application Integration

Application integration connects separate systems through data sharing and automated transactions. Though these systems may not need to integrate directly with each other in a portal implementation, they will likely need to communicate (expose data and functionality) to the portal because it provides the single interface to multiple applications and content sources.

User Authentication

Portals provide content and functionality tailored to individual users. To do this, users accessing the portal must be identified. An effective portal solution enables users to authenticate themselves just once—when signing on to the portal or system—and then have access to all appropriate content and functionality. This capability is known as single sign-on (SSO).

Personalization

Personalization is a blanket term used to describe how information is presented to users based on who they are or even how they have interacted with the portal in the past. There are two ways a portal can be personalized:

1. The presentation of information. Users can customize specific parts of the user interface such as where information appears, display styles, and which services and back-end systems are included.

2. Content and functionality. Content is also determined by rules-based logic such as user profile or how a user interacted with a portal in the past. For example, a teacher will see different information than a parent.

Search

An essential element of all portals, search helps users find the right content, regardless of whether the resource is intuitively categorized within the navigational structure.

Collaboration

Collaboration enables educators and students to work together both synchronously and asynchronously. Key collaboration features include meeting spaces, team sites, document posting and versioning, check in/check out, discussion groups, real-time communication (chat), polls, subscriptions and customizable alerts.

Web Content Management

Web content management (WCM) is the capability to create, store, manage and publish content to the Web. Content can include HTML pages, images, sound clips, XML files, plain text, rich media and other ancillary content such as style sheets and metadata. An increasingly essential capability for any portal, WCM enables users to take control over their own content, freeing Web administrators for more important tasks.

Workflow

Workflow enables users to control their own information, because it limits approval and publishing rights based on criteria preset by the IT department. Sophisticated workflow includes alert functions to notify the next person that content is ready to review. Customizable approval paths enable parallel processing and variable review levels for different categories of content. Workflow is an essential part of a collaboration portal in which, for example, multiple parties sign off on group work before it is submitted.

Analytics and Reporting

Portals can generate data about user profiles, click-through streams, student and parent browsing or participation patterns, and site performance. With on-line analytical processing (OLAP) techniques, data warehousing and predictive capabilities, this wealth of data can be easily transformed into insightful browsing trends, valuable user segmentation, and ultimately an intelligent feedback loop. The multi-dimensional aspects of OLAP provide administrators and teachers reporting flexibility to view data from almost any perspective.

Defining a District’s Needs

When considering a portal solution, it is essential to understand the breadth of capabilities that can be used to meet present and potential requirements. This helps define what the needs are today, and what they might be in the future. Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions deliver all the capabilities needed for a portal solution, whether only a few apply, or even if every capability described above makes sense. In addition, tight integration between these capabilities reduces cost, time and risk. Four portal scenarios illustrate how these capabilities can come together to improve interactions and learning for any school district.

Part 3: Portal Scenarios

The following scenarios illustrate how combining the fundamental portal capabilities can help a district improve the facilitating, management and assessment of learning. The school house graphic represents how Facilitate, Manage and Assess are foundational concepts on which the four main portal solutions are built. The Basic Learning and Teaching, Group Collaboration and Administrative Dashboard Portals are all subsets of the District Portal, which includes all of the tools and functionality from the Portal options below it.

Basic Teaching and Learning Portal

This scenario helps educators meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements by combining student assessment, analysis and the means to adapt curriculum when necessary. With this scenario, teachers can measure student performance, and use familiar tools to easily create learning content that improves that performance. Teachers can also use the portal to collaborate and share best practices with their peers in the learning community. Students can use this scenario to discover rich learning resources and express ideas in new ways. Parents can track their child’s progress and review the latest standards set by administrators. The Instructional Management Portal Scenario allows parents, teachers and students to easily interact and collaborate to ensure that every child is receiving a high-quality education and meeting academic standards.

Capabilities

Implementing a Basic Teaching and Learning Portal utilizing Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions requires the following capabilities (in darkened boxes):

Figure 4

With these capabilities in place, portal users are:

|Enabled to do the following… |

|Access content from multiple sources |

|Archive documents in a common place |

|Search all documents and pages across the district when looking for particular content |

|Create new portals and integrate with existing |

|Route and approve documents with peers and district teams using alerts to notify when action is required |

|Tailor views to particular needs including limiting access to confidential information |

|Using the following Microsoft products: |

|Class Server 3.0 |

|Windows Server 2003 with Windows SharePoint Services |

|SQL Server 2000 |

Group Collaboration Portal

With this scenario, districts, schools, classrooms and even students can easily collaborate, significantly improving the way teams manage information and activities. Administrative staff can coordinate on a new initiative. Teachers can work together to develop a new curriculum. Students can interact on a class paper. This scenario also opens up the lines of communication between parents, teachers and students. All parties have the ability to use their preferred means of communication for different purposes, including threaded discussions, video conferencing, instant messaging and discussion forums. Group Collaboration portals can be created by students, teachers and staff—not just IT professionals. Because these sites are fully integrated with familiar desktop productivity tools, they are easy for all parties to use.

Capabilities

Implementing a Group Collaboration portal utilizing Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions requires the following capabilities (in darkened boxes):

[pic]

Figure 5

With these capabilities in place, portal users are:

|Enabled to do the following… |

|Search documents and Web page content |

|Store documents in a common place, check documents in and out and manage multiple versions of those documents |

|Customize views to groups or individuals |

|Interact through integrated venues such as chat or e-mail |

|Use audio, video and text conferencing while viewing common views of information |

|Take polls and host public discussions |

|Route and approve documents |

|Using the following Microsoft products: |

|Windows Server 2003 including Windows SharePoint Services |

|SQL Server 2000 |

|SharePoint Portal Server 2003 |

|BizTalk Server 2004 |

Administrative Dashboard Portal

This scenario ties curriculum to achievement for both the assessment of and assessment for learning. With this scenario, principals and other administrators can more easily assess school performance against standards. Curriculums can be adjusted as necessary using accurate and actionable information. Using this scenario to assess for learning, teachers can automatically grade assignments and get contextually relevant, real-time feedback on student performance. Discovering learning needs during a school cycle, not just at the end, enables teachers to take timely, corrective action to improve learning before it’s too late.

Capabilities

Implementing an Administrative dashboard portal utilizing Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions requires the following capabilities (in darkened boxes):

[pic]

Figure 6

With these capabilities in place, portal users are:

|Enabled to do the following… |

|Deliver benchmark assessments over the Web |

|Correlate results to local curriculum standards |

|Limit information access by role, group or individual |

|Track inquiries on information by group or individual |

|Aggregate data for trend analysis for a specific sub-team or district-wide group |

|Search topical data for school or district |

|Using the following Microsoft products: |

|SQL Server 2000 |

|SharePoint Portal Server 2003 |

|BizTalk Server 2004 |

District Portal

This scenario enables a district-wide implementation of portals for various groups, including oversight bodies, administrators, students, teachers and parents. The District portal scenario is an amalgamation of all of the other scenarios, magnifying the benefits and fostering collaboration and alignment between schools and the community. Although made up of multiple portals, users can access these portals with convenient single sign-on. Users can easily pull together information from disparate sources to meet their learning, teaching and administrative reporting requirements. Applications are integrated for streamlined, automated processes.

Capabilities

Implementing a District portal utilizing Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions can be enabled with all of the following capabilities (in darkened boxes):

Figure 7

With these capabilities in place, portal users are enabled to do the following:

|Enabled to do the following… |

|Manage content on external website and manage administrative workflow |

|Access systems and data across all departments and schools of the district through a single interface |

|Offer users single sign-on (SSO) |

|Create and archive performance data |

|Find all information sources for a particular topic across district |

|Maintain a single source of district information customized to individual needs |

|Gather data to prioritize improvement efforts in portal evolution |

|Using the following Microsoft products: |

|Class Server 3.0 |

|Windows Server 2003 with Windows SharePoint Services |

|SharePoint Portal Server 2003 |

|Content Management Server |

|SQL Server 2000 |

|BizTalk Server 2004 |

Each of these scenarios offers a district a variety of portal capabilities leading to new possibilities, from more effective creation of rich learning content to more timely assessments of learning. In addition, a district can implement any one of these scenarios, or multiple scenarios as desired. Making all these scenarios possible requires an integrated, flexible platform enabled by the robust technologies and platforms offered by Microsoft.

Part 4: Enabling Technology

Microsoft Integrated Portal Technologies

Microsoft provides a range of integrated platforms and technologies that together deliver the fundamental portal capabilities. Using Microsoft products, a user can quickly develop flexible and cost-effective portal solutions. An IT Department can address immediate needs, and build upon the foundation over time when needs change.

Microsoft Connected Learning Portals can be represented in three layers: Presentation and Productivity, Application and Infrastructure. The following diagram illustrates these three layers and how key Microsoft products combine to address portal requirements.

[pic]

Figure 8

Presentation and Productivity Layer:

This is the layer user’s access to get their work done. It includes the portal technologies that enable personalization and targeting of content, and tools for content creation, teamwork and collaboration, data collection, analysis and reporting. It also enables expressing ideas and information capture using digital and streaming media. This layer allows access from multiple devices, including mobile and wireless. Microsoft products that enable this layer are:

|Windows SharePoint Services |Microsoft Producer 2003 |

|Microsoft Visual Studio .NET |Windows Media Services |

|Microsoft Office 2003 |Microsoft Enterprise Learning Library |

Application Layer:

This layer includes the Web application platform, developer tool, a rendering framework, and platform capability for Enterprise Application Integration. These pieces, combined with the Infrastructure layer provide a platform on which any Web-based application can be built. Microsoft products that enable this layer are:

|Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 |Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 |

|Microsoft Class Server 3.0 |Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 |

Infrastructure Layer:

This layer is the foundation for seamless application integration and drives optimal system performance within the district. It is comprised of operating system, database, security and user account management. These capabilities are common to all enterprise applications. Enabling Microsoft products are:

|Microsoft Windows XP |Microsoft Windows Server 2003 |

|Microsoft SQL Server 2000 |.NET Framework |

Key Microsoft Products Defined

The following table illustrates how Microsoft products enable the various portal capabilities with Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions.

Portal Capabilities of Core Products ↓ |Class Server |SharePoint

Portal Server |BizTalk

Server |

Windows

Server

|

SQL

Server |Content Management Server | |Content Aggregation |( |( |( | | |( | |Application Integration | |( |( | | |( | |User Authentication (SSO) | |( | | | | | |Personalization |( |( | | | | | |Search | |( | | | |( | |Collaboration | |( | |( | | | |Web Content Management |( |( | |( | |( | |Workflow |( |( |( | | | | |Analytics and Reporting |( | | | |( | | |

Part 5: Faster, More Flexible and Cost-effective Portals

Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions accelerate time to deployment, lower total cost of ownership and enable a district to prepare for the future. With the fully integrated portal capabilities of Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions, a district can:

Deliver new services with existing resources

Every district’s IT department is trying to do more with less. Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions are specifically designed to help get more value out of existing technology. Comprehensive search technology, hundreds of pre-built enterprise application integration (EAI) adapters and Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities are used to create rapid connections with existing systems. These capabilities allow IT departments to easily design, develop and deploy portal solutions leveraging existing technology investments.

Improve the security and reliability of portal infrastructure

Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions can enhance the very qualities that keep operations running: security and availability. Rich security features help protect critical student, school and district information right out of the box. These features include easy configuration to existing security levels and security policies. Districts can count on the availability of portals with build-in system failover support, real-time monitoring and alerts with preset and customized parameters that assist in administrator awareness—even if primary systems go down.

Quickly design, develop and deploy at lower cost

Utilizing an integrated suite of capabilities increases the ability to be responsive to almost every need, from informal colleague sites that take pressure off the e-mail system to publishing collaboration among departments, schools, or even entire districts. Lower the costs of implementing portal solutions with integrated components and a high level of out-of-the-box functionality. Decrease the time and money spent building code to connect, and leverage existing Microsoft skills and tools for a shorter time to return on investment (ROI). The integrated suite of capabilities also means an IT department can be more responsive to the changing requirements of a district. The combination of out-of-the-box functionality, integrated developer tools and familiar end-user applications helps get portals up and running rapidly while lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO). When new needs arise and directions change, an IT group will have the tools that enable the flexibility to adapt and respond quickly.

Lower user support and training requirements

Reduce training and support costs with well-known Microsoft tools and applications. Microsoft technology is familiar, reducing the need for time-consuming and costly training. A large installed-base means that Microsoft technology is also used in the homes and offices of the people who are connecting to the portal, from students to parents to staff.

Rely on a scalable and flexible platform

Schools and districts grapple with limited budgets and changing priorities on an on-going basis. Therefore it’s critical that a portal solution be scalable and portable so that it can be lifted and quickly implemented. Build and scale portal solutions with a flexible platform using Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions. This allows an IT department to react reliably and responsively, converting department or school deployments into district-wide rollouts. In addition, as new services are developed by Microsoft, or one of Microsoft’s many partners, a portal can move quickly on the same platform. Being able to adapt quickly to change and benefit from new services—such as digital media—is a core capability.

Spend time and resources where they count

Take advantage of rich integration, fully supported prescriptive architecture guidance, efficient administration features, and the leading Web services development environment to build advanced solutions. Once those solutions are in place, rich self-service tools and a familiar platform reduce help desk and training support. This means an IT team has more time to begin developing the next solution for a school, or district. It also means the portal solutions have a shorter time-to-value for all users. These factors all contribute to a significant impact on the TCO of portal systems and capabilities, and demonstrate an IT department’s true value to a district.

A portal is the solution to a connected learning community that enables exceptional learning. Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions enable a school district to implement a flexible portal solution quickly and cost-effectively.

Part 6: Enable the Connections that Improve Learning

Break down the barriers that hinder the business of education by building connections between people, information and services. With the appropriate capabilities portals can improve the facilitation, management and assessment of learning. Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions offer the fundamental portal capabilities that meet the educational needs of a school district, from collaborative workspaces to online assessments. Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions help design and deploy a flexible, cost-effective portal solution that meets a district’s needs today, and prepares them to adapt to the needs of tomorrow.

Start building a connected learning community. For more information about implementing a portal solution that will enable exceptional learning in your district, contact your local Microsoft representative and visit the Microsoft Web site at education.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

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© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft, BizTalk, SharePoint, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Windows and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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connect

What is a Portal?

A portal is a unified place that connects people, information and services. Through portals, users can collaborate with others, access and share contextually relevant information, and utilize a variety of applications. Portals are foundational to building a Connected Learning Community.

Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions at a Glance

Microsoft Connected Learning Portal Solutions provide schools with a comprehensive suite of interoperable and integrated technologies, including:

1. Microsoft Class Server 3.0: A powerful learning management platform for delivering assessments and lessons over the Web. Class Server 3.0 enables school districts and teachers to track and improve student achievement against local curriculum standards.

2. Microsoft Windows® Server"! 2003: ™ 2003: A multipurpose operating system capable of handling a diverse set of server roles, depending on your needs, in centralized or distributed environments.

3. Microsoft Office SharePoint™ Portal Server 2003: A scalable enterprise-class portal server built upon Windows SharePoint Services.

4. Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000: A relational database management and analysis system

5. Microsoft Office 2003: The world’s leading productivity suite.

6. Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET: A complete set of tools for developing portal solutions.

7. Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004: An EAI and process automation solution that enables organizations to easily integrate applications and processes.

8. Microsoft Content Management Server 2002: An enterprise Web content management system that makes content authoring and delivery easy.

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