University Information Technology (UIT) this semester installed a new, mobile?friendly interface for Trunk as one of many explorations being done on Sakai, the open?source learning management system (LMS) that powers Trunk.
The interface allows the Trunk login page to adjust to smart phones like Droids and iPhones by refitting to the smaller screens and becoming more touch?screen compatible, according to UIT Senior Solutions Specialist David Grogan.
"When you point to trunk.tufts.edu, Trunk recognizes that you're coming from a mobile device and switches the interface to be mobile friendly," he said.
UIT was able to develop the mobile?friendly landing page in a few weeks by modifying the codes provided by Sakai, Grogan said.
Three years ago, when Tufts began looking into other course management systems, the adequacy of the site's mobile interface was not a determining factor, LMS Implementation Project Manager Andrew Valenti said.
When Trunk was launched, Sakai's mobile interface login screen was disabled because it was unattractive, UIT Manager of Design and Usability Services Melanie St. James said.
"We wanted to make sure the mobile experience would be good enough to get going with," Grogan said.
Although UIT redesigned the mobile launch page, not all of the features of Trunk are mobile?friendly at this time, St. James explained.
"Once you're past this landing page we're really at the whim of whatever the Sakai developers have done on the baseline product," Grogan said. "Some of the tools work very well with the mobile device; others leave a little bit to be desired."
This is because, although some modifications have been made for the new interface, a decision has not yet been made to entirely fork, or re?write, the code, St. James said.
"We cannot redesign the entire Trunk system for mobile," she explained.
Specific attention is currently being paid to the "Resources" component of Trunk, St. James said.
"We have plans that are very nascent at the moment to go a little bit deeper with this to ensure that all the tools on Trunk are mobile?friendly," Grogan said.
"The other thing to think about is this is the end of one year of using Sakai or Trunk, so there's a bunch of different projects that are on the plate right now and you have to prioritize them," Valenti said.
Sakai is an open?source model, meaning that it is constructed and shared by a collaboration of people worldwide, similar to a grassroots organization, St. James said.
"It's basically a bunch of people who get together to write code and to design this thing, and it's free and it's distributed freely," she said.
"Because Sakai is open?source, that means we can go in and change the code ourselves," Grogan said.
However, the process for upgrading the software of an open?source model is very different from that of a third?party company like Tufts' previous service, Blackboard, St. James noted.
A new code could potentially be written, tested and redistributed to everyone who uses Sakai, but that process would not be easy to execute, St. James said.
"We have to be very careful about how we think about it," she said.
Currently, UIT is slowly and carefully looking at codes to avoid isolating Tufts from the work being done by other Sakai collaborators, according to Grogan.
"Right now we're just exploring and seeing what is possible, and hopefully we're all going to come together as a consortium of schools using this to share development experience and share coding," he said.
UIT is looking into what other Sakai collaborators are doing and thinking about mobile interfaces in addition to research being done on campus, Grogan said.
Three seniors in the Engineering Psychology program are conducting a project that will illuminate what Trunk users want out of a mobile interface, according to St. James.
The result of the study, which will wrap up at the end of the semester, will be essential in determining what the next steps will be for the Trunk mobile interface, Grogan said.
"The idea would be not to just develop something that doesn't have any relation to how people actually use the system," Valenti said.
"We're going out to the community and [asking] 'what would you like to be able to do on your device?'" Grogan said.
The creation of a mobile phone application is also being considered, Valenti said.
"It [is] unlikely that we would go for an iPhone app because we want whatever we develop to be accessible for all devices," St. James said.
If the Engineering Psychology program project reveals that a mobile application is more desirable then a webpage, steps may be taken to create a framework application for all types of mobile devices, Valenti said.
"There are a lot of unanswered questions right now," St. James said.
