The members of the AMSeT team are interested in the design of VLEs using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). See the links at the foot of the page for some background material.

Alfresco was chosen as the management system for resources in the implementation of our Service Oriented VLE (SOVLE) (Why Alfresco?). One of the principal reasons for this choice was the existence of multiple interfaces to the Alfresco content, in particular SOAP and RESTian Web services. This means that Web Service Description Language (WSDL) SOAP and HTTP bindings allow Alfresco to participate in teaching and learning workflows using the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) technology.

A major part of the SOVLE would then consist of a set of workflows configured and managed using an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). The hope is that Web service workflow will be able to offer a third approach to learning design that can complement the two major exisitng approaches, GLC IMS Learning Design and the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS). Benefits for learning design offered by this approach arise from the technology agnosticism and interoperability of Web services. There are also mature, Open Source (OS) design tools available for Web service workflows and we believe that existing development tools can be adapted for use by non-specialists using a combination of standard interfaces, templates and intelligent defaults.

There are not many information sources on the use of Alfresco in BPEL processes and so AMSeT aims to produce and document a series of basic workflows involving folders, users and content that will facilitate the creation of learning designs.

AMSeT will also provide a Shibboleth security interface for Alfresco, and a SWORD document deposit interface with a BlackBoard Building Block wrapper.

Booth, A.G. and Clark, B.P. (2008) A Service-Oriented Virtual Learning Environment.
http://mfeldstein.com/a-service-oriented-virtual-learning-environment/#more-677

Clark, B.P. and Booth, A.G. (2006), SOAs and SOLAs.
http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/sola