Last week, on Monday, I attended an NSF  panel to discuss a survey that is administered by NSF regarding High Performance Computing Clusters as a part of a larger survey. The discussion was around the utility of the current survey and the results of the survey and what can be done to improve the use of the data. It was interesting to hear that with the exception of one attendee, most of us are either non-users of the data or casual users of the data. There was one person who is a heavy user because she is involved in writing a research paper on this subject with an Economist. In my opinion, NSF should partner with EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS). EDUCAUSE administers a detailed annual survey that is filled out by a large group of its members and it has also developed a fairly complex tool to consume the data by slicing and dicing the data. Why replicate the effort and especially when there is an overlap in questions. Besides, we all are being surveyed to death!

Since I talk about a “duality” issue below, I thought I would share a picture of a sculpture from our trip that I talked about in my last post. If you look carefully, you should see an elephant facing left and a bull facing  right. Sculptures of this kind are all over the place in that area and seems to have been a favorite pastime or challenge for the sculptors during the 6th – 11th centuries!

On thursday, I went to Google in NY City to talk to Google Sites developers (along with representatives from two other educational institutions) about how we use Google Sites and the issues we face and of course, our own opinions on how they can improve the product. Given that this team had been listening to a wide variety of users for almost a week,  they seemed genuinely interested and attentive to what we had to say. I am thankful to get the opportunity and I hope what I had to say was useful.

Stylistically, the other two institutions were getting a bit deep into specifics such as how it would be great to have a different navigational structure etc. which are extremely useful. I intentionally skipped my presentation once I realized that they probably would have heard the nitty gritty details already or will hear from the others with me. I stuck to some of the higher level themes as well as a quick overview of some of the course sites at Wellesley. What I outline here are some of what I discussed there and additional thoughts.

Are Sites here to Stay?

I posed this as an open question – “Are Sites going the way iGoogle”? (As you know, iGoogle will be phased out in 2013). The answer was “Hope Not”, meaning that they have a group who is listening to what the issues are with Sites is an indication that Google is interested in revamping it. The reason for my question is actually tied to some of what I write below, but in a nutshell, I was curious to know if based on what all they have heard over a week they may have decided that this is way too much rework and therefore not worth it. I did not get that feeling.

What exactly are Sites for?

It is my understanding that Sites was released initially to encourage easy way to create websites using a controlled/templated environment. “Controlled” in the sense that extensions such as adding javascript, other stylesheets or newer extensions such as HTML5 are either not possible or non-trivial. Google provided a set of gadgets to accomplish a whole host of things and also encouraged the development of an ecosystem in terms of the Gadgets and more recently Apps Scripts. However, website world has come a long way and using this to maintain a website is going to have a limited utility. We all mentioned how we are using other CMS such as Drupal for the institutional websites. We also felt that regardless of this, the new Sites should allow for some of the CMS like features such as reuse of content in multiple sites/pages as well as the need to bring in dynamic content from databases.

In a nutshell, I think the team needs to figure out what the new generation of Sites will be? Will it be an open architecture that allows us to create and maintain websites easily or simply a platform for federating/aggregating content for presentation (like iGoogle).

Some issues with current Sites

One of the major issues with the Sites is the “duality” problem – Tools behave differently in Sites than when they are accessed outside. For eg. Google Groups behaves differently as a product than when it is embedded/accessed from Sites. Of course this was resolved recently. Similarly, the larger issue of the Apps for EDU vs Consumer App “duality” problem. There are major differences between the two platforms that the end users don’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to. Institutions tend to turn on some consumer apps and issue the usual cautions about them being governed by different set of agreements.However, users don’t pay a lot of attention to this distinction. So, when a user needs to construct a site and wants to bring in various components together, he/she is likely to have a site with EDU components and consumer components with very different EULA (End User License Agreement) mashed together. Some cautions/preventions of this mix and match is desirable or better yet, just remove this duality altogether so that all popular consumer apps are folded into EDU agreement.

Many of us pointed out the lack of Auto Save as well as different behavior of Sites in comparison to the other Google tools as an issue.

Then the “File Cabinet”, yeah! – there was universal dislike for this. Our advice was to leverage the strengths of Drive more and integrate it more seamlessly. I strongly stressed the need for a Dropbox feature and an open architecture for a gradebook like feature.

Where can Sites fit in for us?

I strongly believe that for Google Apps for EDU schools, Sites can be a tremendous asset as a Learning Management System (LMS). With the suggested changes above – easy navigation, easy aggregation of other Google tools, Drive integration and Dropbox – it can satisfy the need that most long for – a single place to conduct business. I therefore strongly recommended that they take this into consideration in designing the new Sites. Frankly, Google has the potential to make this a commercial “LMS” killer (app)! I also told them how this can also be the platform for MOOCs because Google already understands the scale issue and many MOOCs are already using YouTube. Why not ask all students enrolled in a MOOC to create a Google account (if they already don’t have one) and provision an LMS like environment? Who wants to learn a different LMS for classes in the College vs a MOOC?

As always, I felt like we are doing some creative and leading edge work with the Sites – automating the creation of sites, populating them with class lists etc.

We also got a chance to meet with the new product manager for Google Apps for EDU. OK, don’t start imagining a mid 40’s man in suit and tie – it is a Williams grad, class of ’04, wearing jeans and a sweater, taking in all of what we had to complain, with a smile.  We complained about a lot of things  – Sites storage, confusion around the Vault (backup storage) pricing and anything else that came to our minds. And, he followed up with an answer to the vault question promptly.

I thoroughly enjoyed the visit and it was nice to see that our opinions are being sought. Now, we just have to wait and see if any of them are going to be implemented.

Go Google LMS!