InCommon Federation Discussions About Online Student Services

[Dean Woodbeck <>]

InCommon Student Collaboration Group Minutes

December 9, 2011

Attending: 

Jim Bouse, University of Oregon

Karen Hanson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Keith Hazelton, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Noreen Hogan, University of Oregon

Charlie Leonhardt, Georgetown University

Arnie Miles, Georgetown University

Dave Moldoff, AcademyOne

R.L. “Bob” Morgan, University of Washington

John Pierce, Georgetown

Ann West, Internet2/InCommon

Dean Woodbeck, Internet2/InCommon (scribe)

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Overview 

Ann provided an overview of the Commit Collaborative (formerly known as AdmitMe project).

• Leveraging federated identity for SSO for K12 students progressing to higher education
• Involves higher ed institutions and associated organizations/partners (such as ACT, College Board, Common Application, etc.)

Major desired outcomes:

• SSO for student
• Operation of an IdP that handles the authentication process
• Providing an identifier that those who participate (universities, companies, etc) can use
• Enabling the testing groups (such as SAT, ACT) to update the IdP with new information as they identity proof their test-takers

Scope:

• Initial scoping is the admissions process – specifically federated authentication for prospects
• May incorporate other areasi the future
• Technical and business groups also meeting
• InC-Student represents the higher ed interest

Details:

• Concept – a user might be presented with a list of things that could happen. In the application process, for instance, the user could be asked if they want test scores sent to the institution, or perhaps reference letters
• Schools would not store this information, but would store the federated identifier to allow for access
• Schools would decide at what point they issue a NetID (likely when the student is admitted and needs to access additional services from the specific university)

Future:

• Theoretically, the federated ID could follow the student throughout the lifecycle and on into alumni status – perhaps used for grad school application process, for instance.

All of this is driven by the individual. The individual is, for instance, not asserting the ID, but asking the institution to do so for them. Institutions may not need to store anything besides the ID, which would provide access to test scores, reference letters, and other data from the original sources (where the information would be stored). 

The next step is to develop some draft information flow diagrams.

NEXT MEETING - Friday, January 6 – 3 pm ET / 2 pm CT / 1pm MT / Noon PT