Date: 2004-2005

Brief: This project was to demonstrate how service-oriented architecture (SOA) could link personal learning spaces and institutional systems.

Roles: Principle Investigator (JISC-funded project, staff member of the Learning Technologies Group, Oxford University Computing Service), systems analyst and systems administrator. This was concurrent to my main role of running WebLearn, Oxford University’s centrally-hosted virtual learning environment.

Solution: I established a small team of about six, including colleagues in Chemistry and Medical Sciences. We devised a workflow that encompassed student blogging on a handheld device and WebLearn. Technically, the post content was shared through RSS and Atom feeds, restricted by server and application configurations; I oversaw the development of a new blogging component in the VLE. Whilst establishing blogging as a reflective learning activity, I also uncovered insights into the conditions that foster deeper learning, as intimated in an article for Ariadne. Furthermore, the project had a more general impact on mobile developments at the University.

URL: http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ramble/

Here are a few highlights. For details, pleased browse the portfolio.

March 2000

Open Source Wisdom

I delivered a paper, Open Sources: A Higher Consciousness in Software Development, at To Catch the Bird of Heaven: A conference on ‘wisdom’, which took place 27-29 March 2000, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.   I’ve kept a brief programme summary.

4 November 2001

Public Release of NetWedit

I released NetWedit with GPL license, possibly the world’s first cross-platform JavaScript-powered rich text editor, deployed in a teaching-based CMS, where Oxford’s Theology Faculty could maintain their own profiles.  Read more in Adventures in the Read/Write Web.

2002

Editing XML with XSLT

The Interactive Audio Comprehension Materials (IACM) project at Oxford University’s Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages enabled academics to generate learning paths, including audio segments, with all data stored in XML.
I devised a means of editing XML using XSLT, based on correctness preserving transformations; changes to specific nodes were targeted with XPATH. Beyond the technical achievement there are significant reflections on structure and flow.

2002-2003

CD2Go – A static web production system

I conceived and implemented an extension of a CGI/Perl website to a static web production system, preserving all the interactive multimedia content. Inherently secure, the content remains online, though browsers no long support most interactive functions. The same system was used for a Japanese site.

09/2004 – 04/2005

RAMBLE project

As Principle Investigator of this ostensibly technical project at Oxford, showcasing service-oriented architecture (SOA) between personal learning spaces and institutional LMS, I uncovered insights into the conditions that foster deeper learning, as intimated in an article for Ariadne.

December 2010

New Architecture for Social Networking Online

I gave my first paper on a multi-dimensional relationship model based on the Buddha’s teachings, the foundations for the Sigala project. This was in the social sciences track at the 3rd World Conference on Buddhism and Science at Mahidol University, Thailand.

2019-2021

A Vision for the History of Science Museum

On a different note, I have applied a holistic approach to envisioning how a museum can be a hub for a scientific ecosystem with proper accountability across the University. The blog post illustrates the ongoing process of refinement to my ideas.

2021

Offline Search for WordPress

Twenty years after starting work on CD2Go, I returned to the problem of searching static snapshots of CMS, now updated to WordPress. After some radical changes to an existing plugin, I now have a solution (which you can try out by downloading the Sigala research site.)

Personalised Learning

My interest in personalised learning developed whilst carrying out research into mobile and ubiquitous computing. A great deal of attention, with substantial Government funding, was provided for a few years from the mid-2000s. It generated considerable optimism that the quality of learner support would be transformed, that learning would become a more relevant and meaningful experience. It was a period of notable innovation; in 2004-5, the RAMBLE project established a viable linkage between personal reflective spaces and institutional learning environments.

Reference: PLE Position Paper: PLEs as Environments for Personal and Personalised Learning

A few years later, elements of personalisation were being considered in making e-maths portable. By that time, priorities changed and these hopes of transformation faded in the subsequent decade. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the limitations of existing educational structures centred on the national curriculum and a classroom-based didactic model. Many reports indicate that it has proven inflexible and many learners have not fared well. It has opened up renewed attention in personalised learning and so this is an area to which I returned to in 2021, when for a few months I was a core team member in a collaboration to produce a novel recommender system.

KEPLAIR Project

KEPLAIR (Knowledge-based Environment for Personalised Learning using an Artificial Intelligence Recommender) is a project that squarely places the responsibility of learning on the individual, providing them with a far-reaching companion for lifelong learning.

In the early stages of a start-up, my role was varied from some research of e-learning systems to day-to-day project support, including the establishment of Zotero as the shared reference management system (from which, incidentally, the items in the publications page is generated).

Project site: http://keplair.info/
EDULEARN21 paper: Introducing KEPLAIR: A Platform for Independent Learners

E-Learning and Virtual Learning Environments

For almost a decade, I specialised in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), also known as Learning Management Systems (LMS). Most of my experiences was gained at Oxford University Computing Services (see below), after which I was able to have a good overview of both the technology, including the integration of corporates systems such as student records, and more general organisational issues. I have expressed some of these experiences in a co-authored paper, An Introduction to Virtual Learning Environments (PDF) by P.Trafford and Y. Shirota, Gakushuin Economic Papers, October 2011.

I have also been engaged more specifically in mathematics e-learning systems, particularly for undergraduates in business and management who haven’t studied much advanced maths in secondary school. Some notes below. My current interest in the architecture of social networking sites would also merit study with some particular facets in the context of learning that could be developed as its own branch.

Mathematics e-Learning

I have undertaken some joint research with Professor Yukari Shirota at the Faculty of Economics, Gakushuin University, in Tokyo. Prof. Shirota has been deploying computer algebra systems aided by Web-based visualization tools to help students’ problem-solving ability. My input concerns the presentation of mathematical materials for the Web, especially with a view to targeting mobile devices, which students can use to review multimedia feedback. This led to a research visit in July 2011. Whilst in Gakushuin University, I gave a class on Game Theory.

• Trafford P. and Shirota Y. 2011. Requirements for Business Mathematics e-Learning System “How2SolveIt”, presented at Japan Society of Business Mathematics annual conference, June 2011.
• Trafford P. and Shirota Y. 2011. Ubiquitous e-Learning: Designing Web Systems for Economics and Business Mathematics, Gakushuin Economic papers, Vol.48, No.2, pp. 111-128. It is available in HTML and PDF formats.
• A class in Game Theory for Management students — a blog post sharing what was for me a rare teaching experience!

VLE work at OUCS

I worked at Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) between 2000 and 2008; the VLE was a recurrent theme from the interview until I left. When I arrived (at the then Humanities Computing Unit) I was asked to research and review various options for a departmental system, thereby introducing myself to some educational background, characteristics of tools and some of the intricacies of Oxford’s educational structures!

At OUCS I was based in the Learning Technologies Group — generally found in the North end of the building. The main themes concern e-learning, virtual learning environments, Web development, handheld and mobile computing. The photo above is from a large Education/IT conference called Educause (it dwarfs any other HEI conference I’ve attended!)

Between December 2002 and August 2008, I acted as ‘VLE Administrator’, looking after the day-to-day running of WebLearn, a centrally hosted service available to staff and students here, myself included. At that time it was using as its underlying framework the Bodington open source software. Since then a new system has been adopted called Sakai, which has been augmented with some of the key architectural features of Bodington, and the VLE have since been engaged in the migration process.

The range of responsibilities covered Linux system administration, VLE administration (mainly data mining of the database through Perl/SQL), Web-based admin of the VLE, support for more than 100 other Admins of the VLE, help desk, marketing, training, presentations. My Educause Connect blog (plus earlier entries) [archive] contains some brief reports on aspects of my work, which could cover anything from routine tasks to brief investigations of particular technologies and services.

In parallel to the VLE work, I investigated other complementary tools and services such as blogs and wikis, driven in large part by experiences from the RAMBLE project. This led on to consideration of ‘PLEs’ – which can be taken to stand for ‘Personal Learning Environments.’ It’s a contentious area! Generally, I’ve been quite active in promoting open ways of working, a natural part of which is open source software. I’m hoping that this can pervade more my interest in mobile learning.

Open Courseware and Open Educational Resources

The Bodington software provides considerable flexibility, with a particular strength being its devolved hierarchy and access rights system. These have since been incorporated into Sakai, so I expect that many of WebLearn’s resources continue to remain freely available and indexed by Google – no login required. At the same time, WebLearn provides for each user a personal space in which almost all the tools can be used. This prompted me to consider Open courseware, the original conception of which was MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW). Since my initial forways, there has been considerable interest at large in the general subject of open educational resources, which have focused in particular on multimedia.

However, OCW is known to be expensive. After some reflection, it occurred to me that many aspects of Bodington show an organic way towards solving the problem. The following order is deliberate (not chronological)

• From Personalized Learning to Open Courseware: VLEs and Access Rights. This authorisation infrastructure, which has been recognised by others (see e.g. Michael Feldstein’s posts reviewing Bodington – Part 1, Part 2). This granularity in design is, I think, key to the technical facilitation, with wider implications in Web2.0.
• Open Courseware in a few clicks — illustrating the mechanism that Bodington offers to very quickly release something to the open. However, it doesn’t address the licensing issue!.
• Post poster reflections: openness and open courseware — in which I identify some barriers to broad adoption of open courseware
• The quest for sustainability in open courseware — seeks a bottom-up organic approach, but still operating within the institutional domain.

Web2.0-related articles

• PLEs meeting: Questions, many more questions, and a little more focus. Notes from a JISC CETIS meeting on PLEs
• PLEs as Environments for Personal and Personalised Learning (mini position paper) – I argue for letting ‘PLE’ retain a meaning independent of systems and technology.
• All aboard? Reflections on the 7th Sakai conference, Amsterdam — Sakai is gradually shedding its image as a developer-led alternative to Blackboard; I felt a sense of a growing and more widely participative community. I still have my doubts over its design w.r.t. Oxford’s needs, but strong progress is definitely being made.
• The End of the LMS? Web 2.0: Preparing for a New Focus in E-Learning. [Slides are available (probably too many!)]. Paul Davis and I delivered this preconference seminar at EDUCAUSE 2007. We’ve identified some recurrrent themes, key questions, and a flexible process to evaluate blogs, wikis etc. There’s no magic wand, though.

Mobility has become the key characteristic of our period. Social and physical mobility, the feeling of a certain sort of freedom, is one of the things that keeps our society together, and the symbol of this freedom is the individually-owned motor-car. Mobility is the key both socially and organizationally to town planning, for mobility is not only concerned with roads but with the whole concept of a mobile, fragmented, community.

[Alison and Peter Smithson, Team 10 Primer, 1962?]

Today we have virtual highways in which mobile phones are the vehicles, which for many symbolise freedom of expression. But do these material enablers lead to mental crutches? How can such freedom be used for our well-being, particularly in education?

I’ve been interested in mobile/handheld/portable computing on and off since the late 1970s, when as a child I used to play with pocket calculators (a Texet 880 and the ‘Little Professor’). Much later I came across general-purpose handheld computing with the Psion devices, but I didn’t own any until a trio of Hewlett Packard devices, namely: HP 320LX, HP Jornada 568, and HP Jornada 720.

Until about 2004, this was mainly a personal interest, where I wiled away many an hour in experimentation, until the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University gave some formal support, allowing me to bid for and subsequently manage an externally-funded project, RAMBLE (on top of my usual work, of course!). Seeing its growing importance, in subsequent years (mostly in my personal time) I promoted the strategic thinking around mobility and ubiquity, and gained sufficient impetus to set up at the beginning of 2008 a Mobile Special Interest Group at OUCS, that gained 20 members across the different sections.

This galvanised interest and led to some important university-wide developments; by April it had become incorporated in graduate skills training.

The links below provide an archive of developments from an earlier decade, which are still useful, especially for the rationale.

• Using X applications on an HP Jornada 720 (2003) — just an intimation of what is possible. The underlying issue concerns thick vs thin computing, especially relevant concerning the delivery of Web content to handheld devices (compare e.g. Opera 9.5 with server-side solutions from the likes of Skyfire).
• RAMBLE (2004-5) — Remote Authoring of Mobile Blogs for Learning Environments, JISC-funded project concerning mobile blogs and their integration in institutional learning environments.
• Mobile Blogs, Personal Reflections and Learning Environments (2005) A broad overview from Issue 44 of the Ariadne online journal
• Handheld Musings (2004-10) — a personal blog, with various thoughts, especially on OxPDA, an educational assistant to replace the Oxford University pocket diary.
• OxPDA: Pervasive e-Learning in your hands (2005) — Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3, Handheld Musings blog posts.
• From Portability to Ubiquity — What do we mean by ‘Mobile’? (2007)
• OxMobile: Towards a Mobile and Ubiquitous Strategy for the University of Oxford (2008) — a report detailing context, present status and various project proposals to really start embracing handheld and mobile technology at Oxford.
• Notes from an Emerging Mobile SIG at OUCS — A presentation I gave on my last day as SIG coordinator (I was shortly to leave the department to pursue full-time studies).
• Erewhon (2008-9) This strangely named project concerns the development of location-based services, building on a number of initiatives at OUCS, and led to the production service, Mobile Oxford (m.ox.ac.uk), as presented at the 2010 ITSS conference and documented in the WebLearn VLE. It can be seen as a step to fulfilling some of the vision in OxMobile (Tim Fernando remarked that he has used the posts as a kind of checklist).

(My list of mobile devices has since grown to include the HP iPAQ 1940, Asus Eee PC (first and later generations), Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini, Amazon Kindle, Palm Phone, and iPhone SE.

Pause for Thought

So, what of the quote above? It reminds me of the phrase “car-owning democracy,” much cherished in the 1980s. However, it can be argued that the motor car was a symbol of an acquisitive approach has not led to greater well being — Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence gives plenty of food for thought.

Will mobile devices with all their options for personalisation merely encourage a form of consumerism that fails to enrich us as human beings? What about personalisation as a general principle…? How many different ways of serving tea and coffee do we really need?