Getting Started with OpenSALT

I made a new Getting Started with OpenSALT video yesterday (embedded at the end of the article). Whenever talking about OpenSALT, I’ve said its core purpose is to create, manage and associate competency frameworks. From those three pillars come every other feature and planned capability. For ACT’s public/open governance server, we added the ability to comment on frameworks as well.

Create

To create frameworks in OpenSALT we assume you’re coming at things from two perspectives:

1. You have an existing framework from another system you want to import
2. You want to create a framework from scratch

For Option One I recommend the Spreadsheet Importer. You copy and paste the list of frameworks and give it a hierarchy with SmartLevel. Alternatively you could import the basic list with the “Import Children” link although it only imports a limited set of fields. If you have a CASE json file of course that is probably the best option, which supports the elements within the CF Package.

To create a framework from scratch, follow the directions in the video below or:

1. Create New Framework from the front page
2. Select “Add Children”
3. Click on your first child statement to Make Parent and then add more children

The fullStatement and Notes field support rich text (non-native to CASE, so other systems will show the markdown) and with extensions turned on in OpenSALT, images as well.

Manage

When we’re talking about managing frameworks, one typically thinks of security/ownership, export options and cloning/versioning. You may also manage Access to certain users on specific frameworks if they are not in the same organization as the owner. Organizations in OpenSALT allow multiple organizations on the same server — which close off their private drafts to others on the server as well as disallow owned frameworks from being edited without proper permissions. For a list of specific rights afforded Logged in Users, Editors, Super Editors and Super Users, please see the User Rights Table.

Associate

Associations are the heart of CASE — and exchanging associations is the business purpose. Also called crosswalks, the purpose is to show how competencies in one framework relate to competencies either in the same framework (associations such as Precedes) or others. This article by Karen Gross from 2012 gives a great primer on how educators use the term crosswalk.

You may use the spreadsheet update feature to associate external or same-server associations in bulk via adding the identifiers. The more associations to show relationships within and between frameworks, the better the CASE ecosystem grows.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this short introduction to the three primary uses of OpenSALT. I didn’t mention the CASE API that most businesses will care about for actually serving up their competencies in Open Badges, CLR, LTI Resource Search etc. That usage is more on the backend and this blog focuses on what people, “see” about CASE. Short video how-to below! For more information, please see opensalt.org or github.com/opensalt/opensalt