Remote Collaboration and the WeTN Portal
While portal construction was taking place at SURF, the Wales e-Training Network was piloting and evaluating a number of on-line modules designed as components of an all-Wales on-line Foundation Degree programme. The full roll-out of that qualification was to happen in 2006/2007 and WeTN was engaged in a validation process that would allow multi-institutional collaborative delivery. For that to be successful, new collaborative systems of delivery and support were needed, together with software to facilitate such systems. SUNIWE was seen as an important test bed to see if uPortal and Shibboleth could provide the services required. The intention was to provide single-sign-on access to distributed resources across the Wales e-Training Network.
The plan was to set up access from uPortal to the Coleg Sir Gar virtualcollege VLE to test access to learning resources. Discussions were held with the MIS staff responsible for the student record system at Coleg Sir Gar and a separate mirror server was set up for testing data transfer to uPortal.
After a repeat of the SURF code bashes at Coleg Sir Gar, training sessions were held to get WETN staff familiar with the codebase and to install the Web services and channel that implemented the first use case. After two face to face sessions, the project team used a combination of VNC and Skype or telephone communication to hold remote training sessions.
VNC software allows the user to see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with mouse and keyboard, just like the user would do sitting in the front of that computer. SUNIWE developers used the free TightVNC software (http://www.tightvnc.com/). Skype (http://www.skype.com/) is a peer-to-peer Internet telephony network allowing free voice communication between computers.
With a tweak or two to network settings the combination of applications allowed developers at SURF to talk to developers at WETN and control the laptops at WETN as though they were present at Coleg Sir Gar. With Tight VNC and Skype remote sessions could be held without any cost for travel or communication. The network connection did not always stand up to the amount of data being transferred so a speaker phone was sometimes substituted for Skype. Even with the cost of the call it was a much cheaper exercise in time and money than a physical visit by one of the developers.