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Harvard Open Source Courseware
mpawlo writes "Gnuheter reports that the Berkman Center for Internet and Society releases the H20 courseware software as open source. Two years and 1 million USD are invested in the software so far... The software has been tested at Harvard Law School, but should be suitable for other disciplines than law."
As far as I can tell, all that exists is an advanced discussion tool, with a content sharing tool coming soon. Universities need a much richer courseware system, one that handles a variety of tools (discussion, quizes, content management, tools that promote good pedigogical practices, etc.), and performs a variety of administrative functions (like authentication / authorization, grouping, reports & statistics, unified UI across tools, grading, etc.). MIT's Open Knowledge Initiative is another project in the courseware space, and there are other institutions which have developed their own homegrown courseware system. What we need in this space are standards for courseware - metadata standards, tool interoperability standards, etc. The internet2 middleware initiative addresses some of this in terms of authorization (see Shibboleth), but more collaboration around standards needs to take place.
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
MIT's OKI Project, Open Knowledge Initiative
Stanford's CourseWork
University of Michigan's CHEF Project