User-centric portals for managed learning environments

There is a growing concern throughout higher education that the gap between what university central services traditionally provide and what academics currently need is widening. Members of both the administrative staff and the academic community (staff and students) are finding that the performance of routine tasks is becoming increasingly difficult due to the nature of their institution's information systems. These systems have evolved in an ad hoc basis and are usually comprised of multiple unconnected data repositories. Users are often prevented from carrying out work by inappropriate access control mechanisms and the lack of appropriate client software. There are broadly two approaches to addressing this problem. One is the "big bang", where all existing systems are replaced simultaneously with a new single centralised system. Before such an approach can be taken it is necessary to fully understand the dynamics of an institutions information systems, in order to specify the new, all encompassing system. This is a major task in itself. An alternative, more attractive, approach is to integrate existing systems using user-centric portals. This is the objective of the INSIDE project, which is piloting value-added services based on distributed information bases, in order to further the development and delivery of a "joined up system" for an institution.