Project Kickoff Meeting
Matt Bernstein, Paul Capelli, Jared Segal
CourseSource.org
November 6, 2008
Definition of the Problem


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“The World Bank has concluded that access to
education is vital to all nations for developing
productivity and the ability to compete globally.”
(3)
Only 17% of the world's population can
advance beyond secondary education levels.
(3)
Emerging markets represent a significant new
area in which educational resources provided at
a discount could be successful.
Existing Solutions Fall Short


Two solutions exist to address the problem

MIT OpenCourseWare

Wikiversity.org
Neither succeed entirely in providing quality
educational services

OpenCourseWare provides only MIT courses, does
not foster competition, incentive for best work

Wikiversity uses Wikimedia community editing,
open to quality flaws present in Wikipedia
Optimal Solution




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Allows only specific users to create/maintain a
course (perhaps experts in their fields)
Allows course rating system which fosters a
sense of competition to achieve best courses
Accepts material from a variety of academic
disciplines and institutions
Provides an easily read and understood
representation of that material to users around
the globe
Self-scaling to build its own community
Our Solution





Create a system where identified educators can
contribute coursework
Users can access coursework and identify
which courses best suit their needs
We will implement a Content Management
System (CMS)
Use open-source tools to effectively contain
costs
Provide for easy scalability in the future
Content Management Systems (1)
Graphic Coming Tomorrow Morning :)
Our CMS Approach


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Provide separate interface for users / educators
Educator can create a course and provide
description
Course then becomes “content”
Educator can always edit previous content,
create new content in the form of a new course
User can search courses, receives results
based on rank and relevance
User can view content
Technical Approach

Hardware – not yet selected

Linux Operating System

Geronimo v. Apache v. JBoss Webserver

Java J2EE development environment

MySQL v. Oracle

Possibility of integrating an open-source Java
CMS or developing a CMS system entirely from
scratch
Project Roles



Matt Bernstein – Project Manager, Technical
Analyst
Jared Segal – Technical Analysis Lead
Paul Capelli – Project Sponsor, Business
Analysis Lead
Next Steps

Develop High Level Project Schedule

Begin Requirements Definition Phase



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Perform Cost-Benefit Analysis of utilizing Oracle
Database, research possibility of free Oracle
implementation
Analyze technical benefits of web server choice
and select web server
Determine and procure appropriate hardware
Analyze possibility of using open source CMS
(1)
Works Cited
1. ContentManager.eu.com
<http://www.contentmanager.eu.com/history>
2. Java-Source.net
<http://java-source.net/open-source/contentmanagment-systems>
3. Van Hook, Stephen. “Access to Global
Learning: A Matter of Will.” UCSB: 2006.