Plone in Japanese Higher Education

Presenter

Jonathan Lewis

Track Type

• Education
• Case Study
  

Summary

This presentation outlines the current state of adoption of Plone in higher education institutions in Japan. The findings are based on interviews with university administrators, faculty members and companies providing Plone services to institutions. The task of diffusing Plone among Japanese universities is not easy: a number of domestically developed alternatives are available; administrators often have little understanding of either the technologies or open source; many students use mobile phones rather than PCs for internet access; and end-users will not readily use English documentation. Nevertheless, universities are now belatedly introducing CMSs and Plone is a serious candidate. Questions addressed include: What kind of sites is Plone being used for? Why do institutions choose Plone rather than rival systems? What work is being done in-house and what outsourced? What improvements in Plone could make deployment better or easier? What is the involvement of Japanese universities in the national and worldwide Plone communities? What teaching of Plone is taking place? I hope that the discussion will highlight features of Plone for higher education that could be better used by Japanese institutions, and address the wider question of how Plone can be spread beyond its traditional bastions of Europe, the US and Australasia. (Jonathan Lewis is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University, where he has been running Plone sites since 2005. He co-teaches a course on Plone to graduate students, and has been a member of the Japanese Plone Users Group since 2004.)

Video or Slides

Coming after the Symposium