University of North London to Establish International Virtual Learning Environment Using Open Text's Livelink

Livelink enables university students to collaborate and share knowledge, wherever they are in the world

Beaconsfield, UK - 1999-03-03 - The University of North London, one of the UK's most innovative universities and a pioneer of access courses in the UK, has chosen Open Text's Livelink to provide a cost-effective way to deliver virtual and distance learning in the next millennium. Livelink is an intranet-based collaborative knowledge management application, which will provide students, both locally and globally, with access to a continuously up-to-date reservoir of knowledge.

All over the world, universities and colleges are reorganising themselves to exploit the benefits of an emerging educational market based on the Internet. Mike O'Reilly, Intranet Services Manager for the University of North London commented: " Livelink will be ideal for students who are required to work in groups or collaborate on projects and presentations. For example, we are planning to use Livelink to deliver courses with an institution in Hong Kong. Students and staff will be able to collaborate on projects, hold discussion groups and create their own learning space. It will also be used for sending essays, exams and course work between students and lecturers."

"Livelink's added functionality as a document management solution will be an essential tool to help lecturers cope with the task of managing the large number of student assignments, currently being delivered as e-mail attachments," comments O'Reilly.

"Imagine a lecturer receiving 300 assignments, which you may have to delegate to several tutorial assistants. Livelink helps to centrally manage all these documents, and the workflow process makes it possible to monitor at what stage in the marking process the tutors are at," he continued.

Delivering courses to a world-wide market requires an adherence to technical and educational standards. A new world-wide standard, Instrumental Management System (IMS), for describing on-line courses, has been developed by a consortium including Educom (an association dedicated to researching the practical integration of the Internet with education), major US universities and many of the world's largest computing and publishing companies.

O'Reilly comments: "We hope to use Livelink's powerful meta-data language to enable IMS compliant courses. Supporting students from all around the globe is extremely difficult if you have to deploy proprietary clients. Livelink is an attractive option for on-line courses because it is based purely on the Internet, requiring only a browser for a client. This will lead to savings in terms of both time and resources."

"In our search for a knowledge management solution, ease of deployment and security were very important issues (online examinations and assessments will eventually be stored in the system). Livelink integrates with LDAP which is the basis for the university's security," explains O'Reilly.

The University of North London currently provides access to course information via the BASIS module from Open Text. It is looking forward to supplementing BASIS's powerful text management features with Livelink's collaborative tools.

"Because Livelink is a web based knowledge management solution, it provides an excellent opportunity for students to learn, wherever they are in the world - there are no excuses for not doing homework now! These are exciting times in the virtual and distance learning market and Livelink provides a cost-effective and innovative way for students to be educated," concluded Derek Buchanan, UK Country Manager, Open Text.

Pricing and Availability

Livelink Activator for BASIS is available immediately. It is priced from £12,000 per Livelink server.

For more information, please contact

Jill Wilkin
Marketing Director, Northern Europe
Open Text UK Ltd.
(00 44) 01494 679700
jwilkin@opentext.co.uk

Myriam McLoughlin
Account Manager
Grant Butler Coomber
(00 44) 0181 322 1922
myriamm@gbc.co.uk