JISC

Start date: 17 May 2004

End date: 16 May 2006

Funding programme: Core Middleware: Technology Development programme

Project website: http://iamsect.ncl.ac.uk

JISC theme(s): Access management

IAMSECT: Inter-institutional Authorisation Management to Support eLearning with reference to Clinical Teaching   

This project will develop, test and disseminate a practical approach for implementing inter-institutional authentication and authorisation management services for e-learning which can be replicated elsewhere in the education sector. The project is shared between three universities and other stakeholders in the northeast region. It represents partnerships between central services and a subject area which has particular authorisation needs and difficulties (clinical teaching). A problem shared by both e-learning and virtual communities is that the host system is located at a fixed point but its users can be geographically diverse. Research communities may have commercial partners and users of e-learning systems may come from organisations such as schools, FE and the NHS. Further, UK educational institutions may have foreign affiliates and hence may need to give access to their systems to students who may never visit the parent institution; indeed they may not even be registered at the parent institution. These issues lead to problems of non-centralised authentication and authorisation which Shibboleth, with its concept of local authentication allowing controlled access to remote resources, seems to be an ideal solution. However, in order for Shibboleth to fulfil its potential, it needs to be widely adopted by the post-16 education community.

Aims and Objectives

The partners wish to learn and contribute to knowledge by testing practical approaches, identifying and documenting the issues and outcomes through exemplars, documentation and training to guide institutions in their uptake of these technologies.

The specific objectives are to:

• Install Shibboleth, including identification of prerequisites.
• Use Shibboleth to authorise access to content across participating institutions .
• Scope policy, management and legal issues.
• Evaluate the impact on the end user in comparison with ATHENS access management services.
• Document and disseminate all appropriate processes and findings.

Project Methodology

The focus of the project is to use Shibboleth to access the Newcastle eGuides medical VLE incorporating ePortfolios (based on the open source Zope web applications platform) using a rich set of authorisation attributes. This will be done via a staged approach encompassing investigation of authorisation attribute storage, retrieval and aggregation; use of Shibboleth for access to electronic journals; deployment of Blackboard Learning System as a Shibboleth target in multiple institutions; technicalities of writing attribute release policies. Concomitant policy, management and legal issues will be identified as this work proceeds.

Implications / Deliverables / Stakeholders

The provision of services, methodologies, evaluated exemplars and documentation will result in the establishment of virtual learning organisations utilising shared teaching resources operating across institutional boundaries, sectors and the region. Extensive dissemination (including training) is planned to enable others to understand the lessons learned, and how to make use of the exemplars in their own context.