Learning Gateway—The “Borg” Goes Open Source for Schools

Microsoft is often—unfairly—depicted as being against open source, but in fact they’ve sponsored a thriving community for open source development on their platforms at CodePlex (www.codeplex.com).    One of the most useful and exciting open source solutions for SharePoint on CodePlex is the Microsoft Learning Gateway (MLG). The MLG is actually a framework for designing and provisioning a school or district-wide learning portal with personalized sites for students, teachers and parents. Microsoft Learning Gateway includes a lot of prescriptive guidance for integrating SharePoint, Exchange and Office Communications Server in a school environment. It also includes several ingenious custom solutions (built on SharePoint) to make the school portal incredibly useful. This includes a tool called “My Planner”, a calendaring application that integrates Exchange and SharePoint calendars, so that a student or parent can have a single, consolidated view of classes, assignments, the school calendar and extracurricular events such as athletics and performing arts.

Another powerful solution integrated with the MLG is the SharePoint Learning Kit, a free e-learning delivery and tracking application designed for use in primary, secondary and higher education. The SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK) allows teachers to author e-learning content and upload it to a SharePoint library. Students can easily see which assignments are due, and how they’re doing against personal and district-wide performance goals. This same data also gives teachers and administrators a real-time performance view, allowing them to quickly learn which approaches are working and which are not. Amazingly, the free SLK is being given away as a replacement for the (for pay) Microsoft Class Server.

Like every good open source solution, the value of MLG and SLK is constantly being enhanced by add-on solutions. Some great examples include:

•    SharePoint Web Parts for Moodle—These web parts allow the SLK to integrate with the well-known open source learning management system (LMS).
•    Learning Content Development System (LCDS)—An authoring tool that enables teachers to easily create high quality, interactive online courses, using multimedia and SilverLight animation.

Of course, like all open source solutions, MLG and SLK do not come with support. There are active blogs and forums with a wealth of information, and additional tools for deployment and customization are being developed. Remember, the Microsoft Learning Gateway is a framework, not a complete solution. Most schools will want to devote a significant amount of time and effort customizing, most likely with assistance of an experienced consulting firm.