RSCs – Stimulating and Supporting Innovation in Learning
RSCs – Stimulating and Supporting Innovation in Learning
27th January 2009
Webinar
"Many of the colleagues are veterans and knowlegeable"
"very useful information"
This webinar looked at the progress that learning providers in the region are making with their federated access management (FAM) solutions. We also looked at developments at the UK Federation and the support options available to help learning providers with their implementations.
The webinar was hosted by:
Bernard Aghedo, Senior e-Learning Adviser, JISC RSC London and
Max Norton, e-Learning Adviser, JISC RSC London
with presentations from
Mark Williams, JISC Executive and
Simon Cooper, UK Federation Service Manager, JANET (UK).
Even more service providers have joined the federation and are making their services available through federated access. Follow the JISC Access Management Team Blog for the latest updates.
Subscription to the following JISCMAIL lists is also advised in order to keep up to date:
JISC-SHIBBOLETH@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
JISC-SHIBBOLETH-LIBRARIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
JISC-SHIBBOLETH-ANNOUNCE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
UKFEDERATION-ANNOUNCE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
UKFEDERATION-DISCUSS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
(click on a link and send the generated email to subscribe to that list)
Nationally, 90% of HE Institutions and 66% of FE institutions are now members of the federation. Our calculations for the London region show that 78% of FE colleges and sixth form colleges are now members.
The UK federation now has approximately 130 service providers as members. Some of these providers are still working to make their services available. The UK Federation publishes information on available services and JISC offers details of the status of publishers with whom they are in negotiation with.
Simon emphasized that the federation has no preference as to the access model used by learning providers to access federated services, be it an in house Shibboleth identity provider (IdP) or an outsourced solution such as the Eduserv OpenAthens model. He noted that many institutions were using OpenAthens in the short term while they worked on implementing their own IdP. This is also the impression we have from discussions with providers in the London region.
Support options available for federation members:
Further support is also available in the form of:
Simon highlighted that the federation recommends that identity providers should use Shibboleth 1.3 (rather that 2.0 as recommended on the internet2 site).
Simon also mentioned that the federation is looking to develop second line support for the community, where institutions that have successfully implemented federated access will help others in the community. This is likely to be phone support with an emphasis on lsolutions for linking to the institution's user directory.
There will also be a progamme of training events delivered by JANET(UK) and Netskills.
Future Developments:
In November 08 RSC London undertook a quick survey of learning providers which asked not only which federated access solution (if any) that they were using but also how much progress they had made with implementation.
What was most revealing was that roughly a third of those committed to federated access still hadn’t got it up and running. This applied to both outsourced and own IdP solutions.
When asked, half of the delegates present indicated that a common issue with implementing federated access was getting the institutional user directory ready to supply the correct attributes.. It was also recognised that there were other pressures on getting user directories right including SharePoint developments and controlling wifi access.
It was a useful and informative session for all concerned. RSC London are in particular interested in seeing what advice and support we can give in helping learning providers overcome issues with their user directories that may be hindering them. Simon Cooper had already indicated that the proposed second line support would be the ideal method of doing this.
Archive of the full session, simply enter any username - no password required
Max Norton
e-Learning Adviser, JISC RSC London
