An Instructors’ Guide to Sakai

Presenters: Dan Beeby and Jonah Bossewitch

Sakai is an open-source course management system and a likely candidate to power CourseWorks 2.0. Sakai is already in use at a number of institutions, and as the community strengthens, it could provide many attractive innovations for educators.

What Sakai is not:

Sakai: a brief history

+ Roots in OKI (from MIT)

+ Seed funded by Mellon+ Goal to have core schools running by ‘06

+ Four ‘core’ schools & SEPP

+ Now… Sakai Foundation

Sakai Today

+ Being used at: UM, IU, Foothill-De Anza+ Pilots at: 30+ schools (including CU)+ Releases:

+ 1.0 (10/04), 2.0 (6/05), 2.1 (12/05), 3.0 (6/06)+ Each release adds new/better tools

+ Future tools in new releases:discussion board, wiki, VITAL, etc.

+ More than just software

A Community Source Project: An Ecology

software

- base system- community

tools- local tools - software

- process-

communitycommunity

- developers- faculty & students

- administrator

s- support

process

- Sakai Foundation

- governance/board- discussion

groups

Common Goals of the community:

+ Educational Culture & Values

+ Similar challenges (in higher ed)

+ Transparency

+ The players - Sakai foundation, Sakai board, other CU groups

“C” is for…?+ ‘Course’ or ‘Content’

Management System (CMS)+ A Collection of tools+ Collaboration+ Communication+ asd

Rules+ Rules: ‘make’ a tool

+ Who creates, changes, approves, delivers?

+ How are materials received & used?

Essence of the engagement?

+ Comprehensive collection of student work over time = Portfolio?

+ Communication, structured or free form = Discussion? Chat?

+ Course administration/organization = Syllabus, calendar, announcements?

+ Collaboration, sharing work = groups? Wiki?

Tools can be “interpreted”

+ Looks same, functionally different:

vs.

+ e.g. Test vs. Survey+ a.k.a. eight different

ways to use the same tool

+ Looks different, functionally equivalent:

vs.

+ e.g. Assignments section vs. syllabus (to deliver assignments)

+ a.k.a eight ways to do the same thing

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Purposeful Choices:

+ The tool and rules affect how the tool will be used in class+ Autonomy group work+ Self-guided directed

Demo:

+ CW and Sakai sites side-by-side

Where is this going?

+ Constantly growing, improving

+ Broad community of adopters

+ Interesting new tools, tons of potential

+ CW aging (true? Stay tuned…)

+ Discovery, pilot, testing, adoption?

+ We’re here to help