A colleague at Eduserv asked me the other day why there isn't as much noise as there used to be about OpenID and whether it was indicative of a loss of interest or something else.

It's inevitable I guess. New developments, particularly those that look as transformative as OpenID looked at the time, tend to generate a lot of noise and activity, often at a level that isn't sustainable for very long. Something else of interest comes along, there are various contenders in this case, and the world shifts its interest - or, at least, the audible noise that results from such interest.

In the discussion that followed the initial question it turned out that we both thought that some combination of OpenID and OAuth was somehow being used behind the scenes of things like Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect but we weren't quite sure how much and how often.

I decided to look around and find out.

Unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed with what I could find - at least without spending more time on it than I could afford. The OpenID.net website carries an impressive list of adopters across the bottom of the page but doesn't indicate whether they are Identity Providers or Replying Parties (or both), nor what the status of their adoption is. So I asked on the openid-board@lists.openid.net mailing list:

Also, when I chose to login via Google, Facebook, whatever... from a typical pull-down list (e.g. that offered by something like Janrain Engage)... is it ever using OpenID behind the scenes? If so, what proportion of the time?

and got the following helpful response from Brian Kissel at Janrain:

So... OpenID is alive and well (I'm sure you knew that) but looks like it is probably disappearing into the infrastructure to a certain extent - which is exactly where it belongs.

In case you were worried...

We’ve often claimed that opening up development of a project can help in its long term sustainability. By allowing new funders and participants to take an active role, even leadership, in a project it is possible to survive the natural coming and going of project participants.

Today I added the following update to the OSS Watch sustainability case study on Apache Cocoon:

Steve Lee, our accessibility expert, has been working with a team at the University of Southampton to open up a cross browser ToolBar designed to help make the web more accessible. It’s a great project that allows users to control the way a page is displayed, invoke a text to speech reader, spell check editable content, look up dictionary definitions and extract reference information (amongst other things). Although the tool is an accessibility tool many of its features are of much more general use, Lifehacker said the work brought “something long overdue for web users.”

Steve helped the team open source the project and tried to work with TechDis to explain the benefits of collaborative development, in particular the ability to spread the cost (and risk) of development across multuple partners. Steve spoke about this with the H Online at our TransferSummit back in June:

Lee told The H that the tool, developed as an open collaboration between JISC TechDis and University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science, was created to replace a previous toolbar … Lee said the open development process … has allowed the project to be more sustainable.

With the support of both TechDis and Southampton the ToolBar has been getting plenty of attention and use. Nobody can call it perfect but it is certainly useful. Furthermore, since it is open source others can help improve it.

Despite the success of the ToolBar in terms of raw use figures Sal Cooke, Director of Techdis, recently announced the demise of the ToolBar. She said that TechDis were “delighted by the response and the positive feedback we’ve had from users” and that the “number of downloads has surpassed all expectations.” So why kill the project?

Sal goes on to say “many of you will be aware that we [TechDis] have undertaken a major overhaul of our own website, with a commitment to embedding within it, a set of new accessibility tools.” Here Sal appears to be saying that TechDis no longer has a need for the ToolBar in addressing the accessibility needs of their own site users. Sal goes on to say, “in view of the above and the current economic climate, we have taken the decision to discontinue further development of the JISC TechDis Toolbar in favour of channelling resources into areas where we can make the most impact.”

On the surface this looks just fine, Techdis have not invested beyond the initial pilot funding and if TechDis have an alternative solution available to them then why should they pay again to support the ToolBar?

However, for me this misses one of the most important advantages of this work. As an open source project it is not just useful for TechDis, it is useful for every web user and every website developer.

So what about the rest of us? How can we address the accessibility needs that the toolbar tackled?

Fortunately, for us, the ToolBar has never been an in-house TechDis development, despite what TechDis may think. It is an open source development managed by the University of Southampton, Dr. Mike Wald followed Sals mail saying:

Although the toolbar was initially funded by Techdis and we provided a ‘Techdis badged version’ for them, the toolbar is an Open Source Project and my team at Southampton University are continuing to develop it …

The point here is that whilst TechDis (rightly) considered the TechDis branded version of the software as their own, the project is an open source one and can therefore be modified and distributed by anyone. To date all of the “quarter of a million uses of the toolbar” have carried the TechDis logo in recognition of their support of the project, but the future of the project is not dependent on TechDis.

OSS Watch are working with the Southampton team on a number of initiatives and we are pleased to report that we have been asked to help ensure the ToolBar continues to survive. I’m certain that it will and can only repeat Steve’s words from June:

they [Southampton ECS] are undoubtedly a group to watch as they steadily increase their portfolio of widely applicable open accessibility projects

Take a look at this great accessibility project and help the Southampton team by reporting any bugs you find, suggesting new features or even contributing code. The ToolBar will live on under a different name (to be decided ).

The Modeller.

OK... not a real Batman villain (I didn't realise there were so many to choose from) but one made up by Chris Gutteridge in a recent blog post of the same name. It's very funny:

I’ve invented a new Batman villain. His name is “The Modeller” and his scheme is to model Gotham city entirely accurately in a way that is of no practical value to anybody. He has an OWL which sits on his shoulder which has the power to absorb huge amounts of time and energy.

...

Over the 3 issues there’s a running subplot about The Modeller's master weapon, the FRBR, which everyone knows is very very powerful but when the citizens of Gotham talk about it none of them can quite agree on exactly what it does.

...

While unpopular with the fans, issue two, “Batman vs the Protégé“, will later be hailed as a Kafkaesque masterpiece. Batman descends further into madness as he realises that every moment he’s the Batman of that second in time, and each requires a URI, and every time he considers a plan of action, the theoretical Batmen in his imagination also require unique distinct identifiers which he must assign before continuing.

I suspect there's a little bit of The Modeller in most of us - certainly those of us who have a predisposition towards Linked Data/the Semantic Web/RDF - and as I said before, I tend to be a bit of a purest, which probably makes me worse than most. I've certainly done my time with the FRBR. The trick is to keep The Modeller's influence under control as far as possible.

I write this post with some trepidation, since I know that it will raise issues that are close to the hearts of many in the community but discussion on the jisc-repositories list following Steve Hitchcock's post a few days ago (which I posted in full here recently) has turned to the lessons that the withdrawl of JISC funding for the Intute service might teach us in terms of transitioning JISC- (or other centrally-) funded activities into self-sustaining services.

I'm reminded of a recent episode of the Dragon's Den on BBC TV where it emerged that the business idea being proposed for investment had survived thus far on European project funding. The dragons took a dim view of this, on the basis, I think, that such funding would only rarely result in a viable business because of a lack of exposure to 'real' market forces and the proposer was dispatched forthwith (the dragons clearly never having heard of Google! :-) ).

On the mailing list, views have been expressed that projects find it hard to turn into services because they attract the wrong kind of staff, or that the IPR situation is wrong, or that they don't get good external business advice. All valid points I'm sure. But I wonder if one could make the argument that it is the whole model of centralised project funding for activities that are intended to transition into viable, long-term, self-sustaining businesses that is part of the problem. (Note: I don't think this applies to projects that are funded purely in the pursuit of knowledge). By that I mean that such funding tends to skew the market in rather unhelpful ways, not just for the projects in question but for everyone else - ultimately in ways that make it hard for viable business models to emerge at all.

There are a number of reasons for this - reasons that really did not become apparent to me until I started working for an organisation that can only survive by spending all its time worrying about whether its business models are viable.

Firstly, centralised funding tends to mean that ideas are not subject to market forces early enough - not just not subjected, but market forces are not even considered by those proposing/evaluating the projects. Often we can barely get people to use the results of project funding when we give them away for free - imagine if we actually tried to charge people for them!? The primary question is not, 'can I get user X or institution Y to pay for this?' but 'can I get the JISC to pay for this?' which is a very different proposition.

Secondly, centralised funding tends to support people (often very clever people) who can then cherry-pick good ideas and develop them without any concern for sustainable business-models, and who subsequently may or may not be in a position to support them long term, but who thus prevent others, who might develop something more sustainable, from even getting started.

Thirdly, the centrally-funded model contributes to a wider 'free-at-the-point-of-use' mindset where people simply are not used to thinking in terms of 'how much is it really costing to do this?' and 'what would somebody actually be prepared to pay for this?' and where there is little incentive to undertake a cost/benefit analysis or prepare a proper business case. As I've mentioned here before, I've been on the receiving end of many proposals under the UCISA Award for Excellence programme that were explicitly asked to assess their costs and benefits but who chose to treat staff time at zero cost simply because those staff were in the employ of the institutions anyway.

Now... before you all shout at me, I don't think market forces are the be-all and end-all of this and I think there are plenty of situations where services, particularly infrastructural services, are better procured centrally than by going out to the market. This post is absolutely not a rant that everything funded by the JISC is necessarily pants - far from it.

That said, my personal view is that Intute did not fall into that class of infrastructural service and that it was rightly subjected to an analysis of whether its costs outweighed its benefits. I wasn't involved in that analysis, so I can't really comment on it - I'm sure there is a debate to be had about how the 'benefits' were assessed and measured. But my suspicion is that if one had asked every UK HE institution to pay a subscription to Intute not many would have been willing to do so - were that the case, I presume that Intute would be exploring that model right now? That, it seems to me, is the ultimate test of viability - or at least one of them. As I mentioned before, one of the lessons here is the speed with which we, as a community, can react to the environmental changes around us and how we deal with the fall-out - which is as much about how the viability of business models changes over time as it is about technology.

I certainly don't think there are any easy answers.

Comparing Yahoo Directory and the eLib Subject Gateways (the fore-runners of Intute), which emerged at around the same time and which attempted to meet a similar need (see Lorcan Dempsey's recent post, Curating the web ...), it's interesting that the Yahoo offering has proved to be longer lasting than the subject gateways, albeit in a form that is largely hidden from view, supported (I guess) by an advertising- and paid-for-listings- based model, a route that presumably wasn't/isn't considered appropriate or sufficient for an academic service?

The Register reports that the UK government is calling for ideas on future 'identity' directions, UK.gov fishes for ID ideas:

Directgov has asked IT suppliers to come up with new thinking on identity verification.

The team, which is now within the Cabinet Office, has issued a pre-tender notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union, saying that it wants feedback on potential requirements for the public sector on all aspects of identity verification and authentication. This is particularly relevant to online and telephone channels, and the notice says the services include the provision of related software and computer services.

The notice itself is somewhat hard to find online - I have no idea why that should be! - but a copy is available from the Sell2Wales website.

Oddly, to me at least - perhaps I'm just naive? - the notice doesn't use the word 'open' once, a little strange since one might assume that this would be treated as part of the wider 'open government' agenda as it is in the US where a similar call resulted in the OpenID Foundation putting together a nice set of resources on OpenID and Open Government. In particular, their Open Trust Frameworks for Open Government whitepaper is worth a look:

Open government is more than just publishing government proceedings and holding public meetings. The real goal is increased citizen participation, involvement, and direction of the governing process itself. This mirrors the evolution of “Web 2.0” on the Internet—the dramatic increase in user-generated content and interaction on websites. These same social networking, blogging, and messaging technologies have the potential to increase the flow of information between governments and citizenry—in both directions. However, this cannot come at the sacrifice of either security or privacy. Ensuring that citizen/government interactions are both easy and safe is the goal of a new branch of Internet technology that has grown very rapidly over the past few years.

I dag lanseres rapporten "Inspired by Technology - Driven by Pedagogy" i Florianopolis, delstatshovedstad i Santa Catarina i Brasil.

Jeg presenterer rapporten. Her er innlegget i pdf-format.

Så snart rapporten ligger på nett kommer jeg tilbake med lenke til den.

Nedenfor er panelet fra avslutningsseansen som markerte avslutningen på de to dagene med presentasjon av gjennomgang av utdannings- og forskningssystemet i Santa Catarina samt presentasjon av "vår" rapport.

Fra v Antonio Pazeto (Secretariat for Education), Darcey Laske (State Council for Education), V Lummertz (State Secretary for Planning), Silvestre Heerdt (State Secretary for Education), Barbara Ischinger (OECDs utdanningsdirektør), Ian Whitman (OECD, ansvarlig for samarbeid med ikke-medlemsland) og Dirk van Damme (OECD, leder av Centre for Educational Research and Innovation)

Many years ago now, back when I worked for UKOLN, I spent part of my time working on the JISC-funded Intute service (and the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) that went before it), a manually created catalogue of high-quality Internet resources. It was therefore with some interest that I read a retrospective about the service in the July issue of Ariadne. My involvement was largely with the technology used to bring together a pre-existing and disparate set of eLib 'subject gateways' into a coherent whole. I was, I suppose, Intute's original technical architect, though I doubt if I was ever formally given that title. Almost inevitably, it was a role that led to my involvement in discussions both within the service and with our funders (and reviewers) at the time about the value (i.e. the benefits vs the costs) of such a service - conversations that were, from my point of view, always quite difficult because they involved challenging ourselves about the impact of our 'home grown' resource discovery services against those being built outside the education sector - notably, but not exclusively, by Google :-). 

Today, Steve Hitchcock of Southampton posted his thoughts on the lessons we should draw from the history of Intute. They were posted originally to the jisc-repositories mailing list. I repeat the message, with permission and in its entirety, here:

I just read the obituary of Intute, and its predecessor JISC services, in Ariadne with interest and some sadness, as will others who have been involved with JISC projects over this extended period. It rightly celebrates the achievements of the service, but it is also balanced in seeking to learn the lessons for where it is now.

We must be careful to avoid partial lessons, however. The USP of Intute was 'quality' in its selection of online content across the academic disciplines, but ultimately the quest for quality was also its downfall:

"Our unique selling point of human selection and generation of descriptions of Web sites was a costly model, and seemed somewhat at odds with the current trend for Web 2.0 technologies and free contribution on the Internet. The way forward was not clear, but developing a community-generated model seemed like the only way to go."

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue64/joyce-et-al/

Unfortunately it can be hard for those responsible for defining and implementing quality to trust others to adhere to the same standards: "But where does the librarian and the expert fit in all of this? Are we grappling with new perceptions of trust and quality?" It seems that Intute could not unravel this issue of quality and trust of the wider contributor community. "The market research findings did, however, suggest that a quality-assurance process would be essential in order to maintain trust in the service". It is not alone, but it is not hard to spot examples of massively popular Web services that found ways to trust and exploit community.

The key to digital information services is volume and speed. If you have these then you have limitless opportunities to filter 'quality'. This is not to undermine quality, but to recognise that first we have to reengineer the information chain. Paul Ginsparg reengineered this chain in physics, but he saw early on that it would be necessary to rebuild the ivory towers:

"It is clear, however, that the architecture of the information data highways of the future will somehow have to reimplement the protective physical and social isolation currently enjoyed by ivory towers and research laboratories."

http://arxiv.org/macros/blurb.tex

It was common at that time in 1994 to think that the content on the emerging Web was mostly rubbish and should be swept away to make space for quality assured content. A senior computer science professor said as much in IEEE Computer magazine, and as a naive new researcher I replied to say he was wrong and that speed changes everything.

Clearly we have volume of content across the Web; only now are we beginning to see the effect of speed with realtime information services.

If we are to salvage something from Intute, as seems to be the aim of the article, it must be to recognise the relations on the digital information axis between volume, speed and quality, not just the latter, even in the context of academic information services.

Steve Hitchcock

Steve's comments were made in the context of repositories but his final paragraph struck a chord with me more generally, in ways that I'm struggling to put into words.

My involvement with Intute ended some years ago and I can't comment on its recent history but, for me, there are also lessons in how we recognise, acknowledge and respond to changes in the digital environment beyond academia - changes that often have a much larger impact on our scholarly practices than those we initiate ourselves. And this is not a problem just for those of us working on developing the component services within our environment but for the funders of such activities.

Fremlagt av John Coolahan

Noen funn fra vurderingen av utdanningssystemet i Santa Catarina:

• komplekse admin strukturer
• press på infrastruktur
• lange arbeids-/skoledager
• lærernes arbeidssituasjon er vanskelig
• demografisk skille mellom ulike deler av delstaten

Kvaliteten når ikke den ønskede standard. Kvaliteten i skolen påvirkes av tid i skolen, læreplanen, pedagogiske stiler, fravær av lærere, repetisjon av karakterer.

Finansiering: Santa Catarina bruker mer penger på utdanning enn andre delstater i Brasil. Funnene tyder på at utdanningssystemet er ineffektivt sett i forhold til investeringene - ikke underfinansiert.

Anbefalinger:

- Delstatsregjeringen bør styrke incentiver for bedre effektivitet

- Policy bør ta sikte på å fjerne øremerking av midler

- Finansiering er for fragmentert og bør prioritere skoleutvikling og læringsutbytte

- Endringsledelse bør iverksettes, lære av andre delstater

- Velykkede innovasjonsstrategier bør spres med tanke på implementering i hele delstaten   

Styring og kvalitetsstyring: De viktigste utfordringene stammer fra fragmentering i eksisterende institusjoner mht regulatoriske og ledelsesfunksjoner.

Anbefalinger:

- delstatsbaserte mekanismer for koordinering og tilsyn

- regelmessige tilsyn og evalueringer for forbedring på system nivå

- Utvide mandatet av delstatens utd.departement

- Delstatens utd.dep bør formalisering innsamling av data og rapportering på alle nivå. Uavhengig organ for forskning og analyse av utdanningspolitikk bør etableres

- Ytelsesbasert belønningssystem bør etableres. Resultater må være transparente.

Tilgang/Equity:

- SC har et godt track record mht til å arbeide for god kvalitet, og det er ingen ubalanse mht gutters og jenters deltakelse

- Det sentrale, rettighetsbaserte konseptet som forener lover og forskrifter fokuserer på inkludering. Retten til utdanning ses som en universell rettighet. Utfordringen ligger i implementeringen.

- Inkludering av barn med spesielle behov (special ed) byr på noen problemer

- Andre problemer: statistikkgrunnlag, lærerkompetanse, aspekter ved skoleorganisering og tilgang utover grunnleggende utdanning

Da er jeg på plass i Florianopolis etter en grei tur via Londom og Sao Paolo. Som sist er vi ikke forlagt i selve Florianopolis by, konferansen foregår på en resort ute ved Atlanterhavet.

Jeg kommer tilbake med mer fra morgendagens lansering av rapporten om utdanningssystemet i delstaten Santa Catarina og torsdagens lansering av vår rapport.

Et stille øyeblikk - A Moment of Zen - i loungen på aerodromen på Gardermoen. Det har vært stille på bloggfronten i det siste. Dels skyldes det en lang sommerpause, dels skyldes det jeg som en del andre bloggere opplever når vi "go multi-channel" - bruken av andre kanaler som f eks Twitter reduserer trangen til å blogge. 

For min egen del blir denne høsten en kombinasjon av IKT og andre oppgaver. Hva dette er i deltalj får jeg komme tilbake til - sakene i er prosess, og arbeidsgivers regler for bruk av sosiale medier setter greie grenser for hva jeg kan blogge om og ikke.

I skrivende stund er jeg på vei til et møte i Florianopolis, hovedstaden i den brasilianske delstaten Santa Catarina. Der skal jeg om et par dager presentere rapporten "Driven by Technology - Inspired by Pedagogy". Rapporten er resultatet av et ekspertmøte i Floripa i november i fjor som hadde tittelen "The School of Tomorrow - Today".   Jeg kommer tilbake til rapporten så snart den er offentlig tilgjengelig. 

A very interesting blog post was published on the 100% Open website about 7 tactics and incentives for open innovation. It struck me how well these all apply to open source software projects. So I’ll discuss all 7 of them from the perspective of open source, but make sure you’ll also read the original post for the original, more generally applicable view on these tactics and incentives.

1. Share both Risks and Rewards

When participating in an open source project you are largely in the same boat as all the other contributors to the project, therefore sharing the risks among each other. If a release is delayed or major bugs are introduced in the software, everybody suffers. However, some open source licences allow you to add your own private rewards by building your own customization of the software without contributing it back to the project. It is a bad idea to do so because when you let your code deviate from the project’s code you always end up with more complex migration paths which makes it harder to keep profiting from the efforts of the community.

2. Tap into Intrinsic Incentives

Intrinsic incentives are extremely important for open source software projects. There is still a widespread misconception that open source software is being developed by hobbyists where there is no money involved. This is not the case, because a large majority of the code in open source software projects is being developed by people who are paid by their employers to do so. This is also true in the educational sector in the UK, where software projects are being fund by the likes of JISC and the research councils. Nevertheless, for any sustainable open source community intrinsic incentives are very important. For example in the Apache Software Foundation, when a contributor becomes a committer to an ASF project they personally become one and never as an employee of some company X. Being part of a community that builds cool software is just great and having a culture within the project that feeds into that is therefore extremely important. A nice illustration of this Dan Plink’s TED talk on motivation. He shows in a very powerful way that highly skilled people are not mainly motivated by money, but by being challenged and by the opportunity to develop a mastery.

3. Don’t Expect Something for Nothing

For an open source software project to be truely sustainable, external contributions and engagement from new participants are extremely important. Usually, a public mailing list or forum is the first entry point for potential contributors. Although it is likely that people first ask questions on these lists rather than answering them, in a healthy project all participants help out each other. This makes the project scalable and is one of the reasons why it does not necessarily takes a lot of time to open up a software projects to the outside: if you manage to engage new people they will help out others and that way a truly sustainable community can develop.

4. Ask Engaging Questions

People or companies that are involved in open source projects never have completely overlapping problems and therefore it is not always clear which solution is the most appropriate for all of them. Moreover, if you encounter a project that provides a lot of the functionality you need but not all of it, there are very effective mechanisms to discuss the features of the project. Mailing lists and forums are used widely to engage in discussion and find ways of merging features different people need. Of course, if you require a specific piece of functionality, it is up to you to build it and contribute it to the project. But discussing the requirements and problems of different people can lead to interesting insights that can be valuable to the whole project. Due to the distributed nature of open source software projects people with very different backgrounds will bring their own viewpoints, which can lead to more creative solutions and spark new ideas.

5. Build Business Empathy

Open source projects can thrive or be damaged by reputation just like businesses. The plea in the original post for an honest and human approach is very well applicable to open source projects. But in many cases it comes more natural to open source projects to have that approach because, as mentioned earlier, there is already a focus on individual contributions incorporated in the dna of many projects. For new projects or projects that are working towards sustainability it is important to define processes that support this approach and to fix it in a governance model document, so it is clear to everybody what they can expect from the project, thereby providing a more level playing field.

6. Target Quantity before Quality

This tactic is well-known in software where it is more commonly known as the ‘Release early, release often’ mantra. If you are active in a young open source software project that is still in its infancy, getting a release out is a very effective way of engaging new contributors and is therefore a huge opportunity to let your project grow to become sustainable. Releasing early makes the barrier to entry lower for new users, albeit that the first few releases will be of lower quality and contain less features. As long as this is clearly communicated to the (prospective) this need not be a problem but can help the project as a whole move forward more quickly.

7. Find Your Top 1%

In the original post the 100% open team explains that out of 100 users, there are usually only 10 who are really engaged and just 1 who will provide a substantial contribution. Although the percentages may vary, also in open source software projects it is very important to identify the users of today that are most likely to become the contributors of tomorrow. It is essential for any open source project to engage those users and try to have them contribute to the project and perhaps even become a committer to help achieving sustainability in the long run.

OSS Watch community development manager Gabriel Hanganu published an excellent briefing note recently, in which he explains how the sustainability lessons can be appied to research infrastructure. Gabriel’s analyis shows that a lot of the tactics and incentives for open innovation are also important in that space.

Open education seems to be getting some traction here in Utah. In addition to our recently launched Utah Open Textbooks project targeting high school science, I was very pleased to see open education generally, and the Open High School of Utah model specifically, recommended prominently in the Utah Advisory Commission to Optimize State Government’s Report to Governor Herbert issued last week. The Utah Student Association Open Textbook Initiative gets a mention also, although I don’t believe it has a website yet.

Education recommendations are included in Section 3. Quoting from throughout the report (emphases below are mine):

3. Leverage technology and existing resources in education to expand the use of technology in teaching and learning, utilizing open?source learning materials, and coordinating efforts to generate economies of scale.

3d. Expand the use of online textbooks

Details: Encourage participation in open-source or online textbooks and related materials to reduce costs to school districts and post-secondary education students. Support the Utah Student Association Open Textbook Initiative, which seeks to provide a common open textbook for Math 1050, with materials for additional core courses expected. The initiative requires a one-time investment of approximately $75,000 for administration and development of materials.

Impact: Combined school district savings could eventually be $1 to $2 million annually. Collectively, Utah’s higher education students could save $1 to $3 million annually.

3e. Expand online high school courses

Details: The Governor, along with the State Board of Education, should set a future goal of the number of high school courses to be delivered online by 2015 (e.g. 20%). The Governor, working with the State Board of Education, should evaluate the available online courses and delivery methods.

The Commission evaluated one model with great potential to deliver high-quality, online education with teacher-targeted “just in time and just on topic” assistance to students. The model gathers information that allows educators to know the capabilities of each student and to individualize learning to individual students’ strengths. Through technology, teachers could handle a higher number of students while providing higher-quality instruction to those students on a statewide basis. Consideration should be given to providing some courses in an online format only to reduce the need for specialized teachers.

Impact: Further analysis required. Online instruction should result in savings related to a reduced need for buildings, buses, and administration and a higher student-to-teacher ratio. The value of delivering high-quality courses to underserved areas of the State should also be evaluated.

Slowly, but surely…