Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005

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Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005

• Ian Bloor
• Project Manager
• De Montfort University
• ipb_at_dmu.ac.uk
• http//mle.dmu.ac.uk/impetus

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Infrastructure for Multi-Professional Education
and Training Using Shibboleth

• Partners
• De Montfort University
• University of Leicester
• University Hospitals of Leicester
• Background
• Pathway Project
• Multi-Professional Education and Training Centre
• Aims
• Develop and test an authentication and
  authorisation infrastructure for the MPET Centre,
  based on Shibboleth
• Report on technical, organisational and legal
  aspects
• Timescale
• May 2004 January 2007

Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005
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Multi-Professionalism
Department of Health, 2000. A health service for
all talents developing the NHS workforce.

• access to high quality services when needed,
  seamless care between primary, secondary and
  tertiary settings
• It is about looking at the workforce in a
  different way, as teams of people rather than as
  different professional tribes. For too long we
  have planned and trained staff in a
  uni-professional/uni-disciplinary way without a
  clear and comprehensive look at the future.
• " . . . it is important that the NHS should work
  together with the higher education providers and
  accreditation bodies to develop education and
  training arrangements which are genuinely multi
  professional."

Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005
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Multi-Professional Training

• shared learning - in clinical settings as well as
  the classroom
• common learning objects
• credit transfer between disciplines and between
  Institutions
• HEIs are being asked to work collaboratively,
  with awareness of their particular specialisms,
  rather than competitively

Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005
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MPET Centre User Needs Analysis

• Method interviews with stakeholders
• Findings
• Wide range of users, with diverse roles
  students, teaching staff, clinical staff,
  administrators, researchers, visiting lecturers,
  etc
• Wide range of systems and resources - in the
  Centre, the partner organisations, and national
  and international sources
• e-Learning integration 3 VLEs Blackboard,
  Fretwell-Downing, Kallidus
• Compromise and ownership
• Continued

Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005
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User Needs Analysis (2)

• Any time, any place access - Support for
  Roaming
• Hardware
• Fixed location and Wireless
• PDAs
• Different methods and protocols for issuing IDs
  and Passwords NHS introducing Smartcards
• Accountability need to track resource use and
  costs

Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005
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Shibboleth

• Problems
• More complicated than we had envisaged
• Documentation for some prerequisites not clear
  e.g. mod_jk
• Multiple components, multiple versions
• Sensitive to local environment, e.g. firewalls
• Partial Solutions
• UK Support Group
• Set of standard benchmark implementations?

Core Middleware Programme Meeting 16 May 2005