Pilot target constituents:   (Community colleges or K-12 schools/districts)

USM Universities participating in Coursera pilot and MDREN members using NJvid  and Desktone VDI services.

Pilot Scope:   (number of IdPs / size of constituents)

We are naming this program MDTrust and proposing a partnership with Fischer International and InCommon to get this program launched.

We are proposing a one year pilot that we can use to quickly enable some key services in the state, namely the launching of a partnership with Coursera, to evaluate this platform for support of remedial and wide-scale education.

The two key goals of our plan is to

1) leverage existing standards in higher education such things as InCommon, and

2) developing a partnership with a commercial provider, Fischer.

While InCommon is the preferred approach in higher education, it has seem only limited adoption in the community colleges and has very limited use in K-12.

The partnership with Fischer International leverages the very aggressive pricing Fischer is offering higher education and builds on a relationship that Fischer has developed with Coppin State University ( a USM University) .  Our plan is provide consulting services to members of MDREN that would help them adopt the Fischer International offerings to facilitate a Shibboleth presentation of external credentials for participating schools.

Initial Pilot Goals:   (benefits and desired outcomes)

The evaluation effort of the pilot will help determine if the InCommon pilot can develop a cost-effective and flexible strategy that provides authentication and value for all members of MDREN.

Targeted start and end dates for initial pilot:

One year pilot to quickly enable some key services in state. Expansion beyond the first year depends on results of pilot.

Post-pilot longer term goals:        (plans for expansion)

If use of InCommon is successful we will continue to expand its use across the different tiers within the state of Maryland.  If as a result of the pilot we find that that this solution does not meet our needs we will re-examine our development  of a  federation solution, probably in partnership with Fischer, to serve the state of Maryland.

Federation model selected for project:

We will be using InCommon and working with SPs and members who are not InCommon members to establish bi-lateral metadata exchange.

InCommon Affiliate assistance/role in pilot:    (if applicable)

During the pilot we propose to ask InCommon to waive the first year fees for community colleges and K-12 organizations. MDREN will encourage SP’s we want to engage to join InCommon; however for those unwilling to do so, we will work with Fischer and these service providers  to establish a direct, referred to as bi-lateral , trust connection from the institution.

Targeted applications or cloud services: (Canvas, InBloom, internal, etc.)

We are now working with different vendors and partners to set up Shibboleth access for our members to services where either the service provider or our member is not an InCommon member.

For Coursera, we are working with our members who are not InCommon members to gain access with a “bi-lateral agreement” even though Coursera is an InCommon Service Provider.

For NJvid, the video archive service from New Jersey, we have coordinated a “bi-lateral agreement” for use of our members.

We are working with Dell and will be following up with North Carolina VCL to continue the VDE service in the future and are determining their SP status.