What is ORVSD?

The Oregon Virtual School District is a program led by the Oregon Department of Education that, in cooperation with a consortium of virtual learning providers throughout the state, seeks to increase access and availability of online learning and teaching resources to the people of Oregon. OSU is providing hosting and development resources through a partnership with the OSU Open Source Lab and the OSU Business Solutions Group.

• Project elements:
  • Student portal - a one-stop-shopping site for students for distance learning. Course catalog and search engine. "My Classes" and e-portfolio features are planned. Available to every student in Oregon.
  • Teacher portal - Being developed and deployed through the OSU Business Solutions Group customizing donated Microsoft software. Providing a collaborative environment for teachers to exchange information and documentation and access professional development resources.
  • LMS - ORVSD will be providing an open source Learning Management System for teachers to offer online courses. Targeted at teachers in schools/districts that do not already offer online courses, but the system will be available to any Oregon teacher who wants to use it.
  • Digital Instructional Material Content RFP - ODE is currently in the process of procuring a digital instructional material library. The contents of the library will be made available to Oregon teachers to use in online and traditional classroom instruction.

Open source components

Both the student portal and the LMS will be developed and hosted entirely upon open source systems. The Digital content library will be accessed through the LMS (the content itself will likely be hosted by the content vendor).

Microsoft components

A Microsoft Sharepoint-based Innovative Teacher Network system providing resources and training to teachers.