Courseware criteria

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The University of Texas at Austin is creating a student portal that will integrate many existing Web-based services and provide new ones. As part of the portal, a Web site will be created automatically for every class offered at the institution. In addition to the Web site for each course, the infrastructure components for collaboration such as chat, Web-based threaded discussion, and calendaring, will be available to all students and faculty.

Students will see a personalized list of their current classes in their portal window. Each class will in turn be linked to the Web site for that class. The Web sites will be hosted on a dedicated course server that will be populated with course data from the Student Record System on the University's IBM OS 390 mainframe. The University of Texas is seeking enterprise-wide, integrated Web course software that must meet the following requirements:

It must run on either UNIX (Solaris, Linux, or Digital UNIX) or Windows NT platforms deployed locally at The University of Texas at Austin.
It must integrate with commercial, ODBC compliant databases like SQL Server or Oracle.
It must use the existing centralized authentication system called UT EID. The UT EID single sign-on places encrypted authentication information in a browser cookie. UT Austin has written Perl routines to decrypt the cookie information.
It must allow for batch loading/creation of up to 15,000 courses a semester. The URL for each course must be programmatically defined; we will be creating links dynamically to course URLs from another system, not the course system. We must be able to programmatically determine what the URL is for a course in order to dynamically link to it.
It must support real-time updates of student course information from the existing campus registration system.
It must be capable of delivering the following functionality to each unique course Web site:
- Link to class description in University catalog
- Meeting Times (official and unofficial)
- Locations (official and unofficial)
- Syllabus
- Instructors / TA's
- Office Hours
- List of enrolled students including e-mail addresses, plus ability to suppress listing on a course-specific basis if student chooses to do so
- Course Materials
- Textbooks
- Class Assignments
- File Upload / Download
- Chat
- Threaded Discussion (bulletin boards or forums)
- Library reserves & resources
- Links to Web sites relevant to class materials
- Grades
- Online Tests / quizzes
- Ability for students to form and communicate with study groups within a specific class
- Class announcements, plus the ability to have class-specific announcements appear in the student portal view outside of the class Web site.
- Final exam location/time info
- Calendar of events for class
It must be able to create a calendar of events for a particular course. This should comply with calendar standards so calendar information can be shared with enterprise calendar systems on campus (i.e. Microsoft Exchange).
Its collaboration functions (chat and threaded discussion) can be provided by the system's built-in tools, but it should also support the use of other commercial tools for this functionality.
It must support the upload of non-HTML file types (including MS Office documents, PDF, QuickTime, and RealMedia).
It should enable faculty to edit site content online without having to edit on local machine and upload content again.
It cannot include advertising on course pages or require fixed links to non-University Web sites other than the main Web site of the vendor.
It must be easy to use for both faculty and students.
UT must be able to customize the look and feel of the standard course template delivered to faculty.
It must scale to 10,000 courses and 50,000 students a semester.
It must support easy migration of course content from one semester to another (i.e. faculty should not have to recreate their Web site each semester).
It must be easy to administer, both for System Administrators and for faculty.
It should provide a global statistics mechanism for the entire course system and a per-course statistics mechanism so faculty can determine how the course site is being used.
It should encourage online pedagogy.

Chat Component

The system must run on either UNIX (Solaris, Linux, or Digital UNIX) or Windows NT platforms deployed locally at UT Austin.
The software must allow for batch creation of up to 10,000 different chat rooms a semester.
The software must be easy to set up and administer and easy for people to use
It must use the existing centralized authentication system called UT EID. The UT EID single sign-on places encrypted authentication information in a browser cookie. UT Austin has written Perl routines to decrypt the cookie information.
It must enable developers to customize the chat interface to particular needs.
It must support logged chat sessions.
It must support distributed ownership and management of chat rooms.
It must support programmatic creation of new chat rooms.

Threaded Discussion Component

The system must run on either UNIX (Solaris, Linux, or Digital UNIX) or Windows NT platforms deployed locally.
The software must allow for batch creation of up to 10,000 forums a semester.
The software must be easy to set up and administer and easy for people to use.
It must use the existing centralized authentication system called UT EID. The UT EID single sign-on places encrypted authentication information in a browser cookie. UT Austin has written Perl routines to decrypt the cookie information.
The system must enable developers to customize the interface to particular needs.
It must support searching individual forums.
It must support distributed ownership and management of forums.
It must support file upload of non-HTML file types, including MS Office documents, PDF, QuickTime, and RealMedia.
It must have administrative tools that allow the discussion owner or designate to delete messages and threads.

Calendar Component

The system must run on either UNIX (Solaris, Linux, or Digital UNIX) or Windows NT platforms deployed locally.
The software must scale to 70,000 users.
It must be easy to set up and administer and easy for people to use.
The software should comply with Internet calendar standards (iCal) and integrate with existing calendar systems on campus, like Microsoft Exchange.
The system must have an API so data can be read from a calendar and written to a calendar programmatically.
It should enable an individual to publish his or her calendar so other people can see it.