Open Knowledge Initiative - Open Service Interface Definitions (OKI-OSID)

The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) was funded by the Mellon Foundation to ecourage the development of technology based learning by creating a set of interfaces to standardized services likely to be needed by an educational application. These interfaces were specified by an Open Service Interface Definition (OSID).

Mark Norton was a contributing participant of the OKI project since it's start in 2001. He implemented many of the 2.0 OSIDs and contributed to the design and improvement of these interfaces leading to version 3.0.

Visual Understanding Evironment (VUE)

In 2003, Tufts University applied for and received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop a Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) concept mapping application in part based on the OKI OSIDs (see above). VUE is a client application written in Java using Sun's Swing user interface technology.

Mark Norton implemented the Autentication OSID against Tuft's LDAP system and the Filing OSID to access resources on local and remote systems. In the Phase 2 effort, Mr. Norton integrated VUE with Sakai via a set of content web services.

Sakai Collaboration Learning Environment (CLE)

The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) was another Mellon funded project intended to design and build a next generation, open source course management system. The design of Sakai was influenced by the OKI OSIDs, but never actually adopted them. Instead, Sakai evolved a service oriented architecture out of the CHEF course management system developed by the University of Michigan.

Mark Norton served as a liaison between the original Sakai development team and a partnership program. As part of that effort, he contributed to the early design of both the kernal architecture and the user interface. Mr. Norton has since developed many Sakai tools and integrated several commercial tools either as a Sakai tool or via web services.

Digital Marketplace

The Digital Marketplace Project was organzied and funded by the California State University, Office of the Chancellor. It is a collection of services, technology, business models, and work flow improvements designed to offer faculty and students more choice in educational resources, make those resources more affordable and accessible to those with disabilities.

As of the start of 2010, Mark Norton is the Digital Marketplace lead architect. He has re-designed the entire set of Digital Marketplace services and implemented them to create a technology platform capable of solving CSU problems such as material discovery and adoption, student resource purchasing, license code management and others. Over time, this will become a complete e-Commerce support system.

Kuali

The Kuali Project (also initially Mellon funded) was formed to develop open source finanical applications for universities. These applications include a general ledger, research grant management, student information system, and library management system.

Mark Norton was retained by the Kuali Foundation to guide the creation of program and steering committees for the new Kual Rice project (the Kuali technology kernel), which was broken out of Kuali Financial Services.

IMS GLC Specifications

The IMS Global Learning Consortium was formed to develop specifications and standards that would facilitate the development of interoperable services and applications in higher education. These standards have seen wide adoption in learning and course management systems, digital repositories, etc.

Mark Norton served as chairman of the Accessibility, Learning Design, Digital Repository, Sequencing, and Vocabular Definition and Exchange specifications. He is a contributor to the Content Packaging, Learning Object Metadata, and Common Cartridge specifications.