Notes from InC-Student: August 8, 2008
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-Andrea Beesing, Cornell
-Joanne Berg, Wisconsin
-Tom Black, Stanford
-Ken Klingenstein, Internet2
-Nancy Krogh, Idaho
-Mark McConahay, Indiana
-Karen Schultz, Penn State
-Renee Shuey, Penn State
-Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
Action Items
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Joanne and Ann will place this topic on the agenda for the next call: whether the February CAMP should also include admissions representatives.
Joanne will contact Karen Partlow and Galen Rafferty at the CIC office to pursue a course-share session at the upcoming CIC meeting.
Joanne Ann will contact AACRAO regarding the scope of the Tempe CAMP and the potential involvement of PESC.
New Vendors/Vendor Updates
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Tom Black reported on contacts with vendors.
Hobsons, which has acquired AY Recruiting Solutions, is interested in a Shibboleth deployment for their admissions and enrollment management database tools. Stanford uses AY's services for both undergraduate and graduate admissions; Shibboleth would enable faculty and staff access to the AY database.
CollegeNet provides an online course evaluation system and Stanford may be interested in enabling access by students and faculty through Shibboleth. CollegeNet seems willing to talk about federating, but there has been no follow-up.
iTunesU is generating interest. Penn State participated in a pilot for the service, which is used by faculty and students to record and upload course information and podcasts. Eric Bailey of iTunesU will present at the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting. The pilot has been successful, but the Shibbolized services isn't ready for wide scale production. The pilot is documented in the InC-Apple wiki:
Registrar involvement in an iTunesU implementation is crucial. At Penn State, apple originally requested a list of all students, as well as the associated course information. The prospect of transferring such a large amount of data, managing enrollment changes and FERPA concerns all led to the use of Shibboleth.
Penn State has sponsored Digital Measures for InCommon participation. The company provides a faculty portfolio system.
Cornell has an inquiry to work with University Tickets. The company is working with some institutions on implementing Shibboleth.
Ken mentioned a recent stream of requests on the InC-Participants email list about various vendors and trying to move them toward federating. InCommon follows up on those.
The Microsoft offer of Dreamspark has proven to be very popular. This project involves a different twist on federating. A student validates enrollment once a year. This information is used to provision a Windows Live account, through which the student accesses DreamSpark. This leads to some interesting privacy questions. While the IdP uses Shibboleth to validate enrollment without providing personally identifiable information, the student ends up revealing such information when establishing a Windows Live account.
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CAMP/AACRAO - Feb. 2009
It is confirmed that the February 2009 CAMP topic is student services and identity management. The CAMP is scheduled for February 4-6, 2009, in Tempe, Arizona. AACRAO will be involved with program development and institutions will be encouraged to send both the registrar and an IT person.
There was discussion about whether admissions offices should also be included, given the increased interest in federating by related vendors. This could have a wide-ranging impact, such as on the growing number of institutions that share courses. The question about whether to involve admissions in the CAMP will be discussed on the next call.
A suggestion for the CAMP registrar track is a basic session on the identity management process - down to adding an identity to your database and identifying that individual. Overall, this concerns the role of the registrar office in the provisioning and management of data.
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Course Sharing
There was a discussion about an increased interest in state-based, system-based and consortium-based federations. This led to a conversation about course sharing among CIC (Committee for Institutional Cooperation) schools (which includes the Big Ten and the University of Chicago). Current practices in this space are not scalable. Wisconsin, for example, has course sharing arrangements with University of Wisconsin system schools as well as CIC schools. This has led to an interest in federating these services. (AI) (Joanne Berg) will contact Karen Partlow and Galen Rafferty at the CIC office to pursue a course-share session at the upcoming CIC meeting.
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PESC (Post-secondary Electronic Standards Council)
Nancy met with PESC on a July 16 conference. Most of the call was spent on the AACRAO Tech conference. Another meeting is scheduled for the PESC Member Summit, October 6-7, in Arlington, Virginia. The PESC EA2 (e-authentication/e-authorization) task force charge is to improve service, lower unit costs, and ensure security through the implementation of e-Authentication and e-Authorization technology and practices.
EA2 has spurred a discussion, within the PESC framework, on e-authentication standards and the potential to extend those standards to federal government e-authentication efforts, particularly within the Department of Education.
Renee Shuey reported that Penn State conducted a federating pilot with the Department of Education, working with Neil Sattler. Nothing further has happened.
Ken reported that Peter Alterman, who was a champion for e-authentication at the National Institutions of Health, now works directly for the GSA and will probably become the lead champion for the federal e-Auth effort. He is encouraging federal departments and agencies to join InCommon and begin federating their applications. One of the first agencies targeted is the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).
This could be useful for registrars. Joanne reported that Wisconsin works, on a daily basis, with the federal VA office, the state veterans office and the university system office, on questions of benefits and financial aid. Federated identity could simplify and smooth this process.
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Next Call: August 22, 2008, 3 p.m. (EDT)