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ANGEL Project semi-annual report to DNER

Author: John Paschoud

Aims, Objectives and Methodology

• To develop and implement institutional Guided Environments for Learning
• To develop and implement a model for a national networked Authentication & Authorisation infrastructure

A significant change to our methodology will be the de-emphasis on creation of end-user interfaces by ANGEL directly, because these risk merely ‘competing’ with many institutional and commercial portal and MLE developments. Instead, ANGEL will deliver the same aims and objectives by focussing more clearly on the creation of middleware to provide services and standards-compliant interfaces for use by a wide range of user front-ends. This is elaborated in ANGEL Deliverable 4.1

Authentication & Authorisation development will follow the model of PAPI but will also attempt to be inter-operable with Shibboleth, and propose a transitional method of inter-operation with Athens.

Confirmation Statement

I confirm that the project development is being conducted under the terms agreed in the initial contract with JISC, subject to any amendments notified to and agreed with JISC and/or the DNER Programme Office.

Highlights , Outcomes and Important Findings from project

Workpackage 2 completed, with key recommendations published and fed into Workpackages 4 and 5. Workpackage 4 completed. Workpackages 5 and 6 in progress, but initial deliverables from these are delayed. Workpackage 3 in progress on schedule.

All project deliverables and related public documents are available via: http://www.angel.ac.uk/documents/documents.html

Changes to the Original Award

Project Staff

* = representative on Project Board; "(institutional job titles)" shown in brackets

Involvement with Programme

The second DNER Programme concertation workshop (London, June 2001) was attended by John Paschoud, Avril Conacher, John Eyre and Andrew Cox.

Following discussion with DNER staff and other projects, ANGEL has been re-allocated to the Access to Teaching & Learning Resources cluster. An initial meeting of the cluster Steering Committee has been scheduled for 05-Sep-2001, at Warwick University.

Publications and Publicity

All major publications and presentations by the project are listed and referenced at http://www.angel.ac.uk/dissemination/dissemination.html

Engagement with Potential Outcomes Users

Public website at http://www.angel.ac.uk is now fully designed and populated with all available public information, links and contact details.

Initial Formative Evaluation workpackage (WP2) has made contact with a wide range of potential end-users of ANGEL services at SBU, LSE, DMU, UED, and SHU. In addition, detailed discussions of ‘secondary’ requirements have been held with institutional staff involved in development of local end-user interfaves (MLEs/ITEs), at UED (Edinburgh Student Portal), DMU (MLE Project) and LSE (LSEforYou).

Detailed Progress and Future Plans

Project Plan was submitted to DNER in Feb-2001. No comments have been received on it. Consortium Agreement has been agreed by partner representatives in principle, but is still subject to negotiation arising from consultation with various institutional legal advisers, and is therefore not finalised yet.

Preparatory work has been started on detailed protocols for ISE of systems products.

Future plans and objectives are as shown in the Project Plan, but with a greater proportion of development effort devoted to middleware services development, and consequently a lesser focus on the design of ANGEL-specific end-user interfaces. This should not significantly affect the contents or target dates of any Workpackage 5 or 6 deliverables (as far as they are detailed in the Project Plan), but it may entail a consequent change of focus of summative evaluation activities, from end-users of ANGEL to also include service administrators of institutional MLE/ITE interfaces

Discussions are in progress with Alan Robiette (representing JCAS) regarding the formal participation of one or more ANGEL partners as UK representatives in the (otherwise entirely US-based) pilot of the prototype Shibboleth system, probably commencing in October/November 2001.

Financial Summary Table

Please note that all Actual Expenditure figures shown above are provisional only, and subject to amendment after ratification of year-end totals with institutional finance records (which was not possible within the timescale required by JISC for submission of this report).

Figures shown as "JISC budget" are calculated pro-rata (for the number of months covered by this report) from the total JISC grant for the project over 30 months. We have noted JISC advice that the total budget for capital Equipment of £15,000 should be committed and claimed by the end of the next reporting period (Jan-2002).

The current underspend shown (£36,749) is within planned limits and due to staff posts not expected to be filled from the start of the project, the delayed recruitment to the developer posts at DMU and UED, and other expenditure which is not expected to be spread evenly throughout the course of the project.

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