PILOTING SAKAI IN A MASTER COURSE: DOES IT REALLY WORK?

Dr. Allard StrijkerUniversity of Twente, The Netherlands

SAKAI CONFERENCE, ATLANTA 5-8 DECEMBER 2006

Overview of the presentation

• Personal Background

• Organization

• Pilot

• Expectations

• Master program

• Course setup

• Conclusions

Personal Background

• Educational designer / Teacher

• Started in 1997 developer Teletop Course Management System

• From 2000 focus on research:– Standards for educational technology – Reuse of learning material– Interoperability

University of Twente Campus

Profile of the university

• Founded in 1961• Research University• Entrepreneurial Research University• First (and only) Dutch campus university• Focus on technological developments

and their management in the knowledge society

Education• 5 Faculties• 23 Bachelor programmes• 31 Master programmes

• Bachelor & Master students: 7357• PhD’s: 703• International students: 344• International PhD’s: 285

Personnel in numbers

13191337

1405

1324

1424

1281

1477

1241

1511

1218

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

ScientificPersonnel

Non-ScientificPersonnel

Campus Facilities • High speed network (UT)

– Wifi on whole campus (largest hotspot in Europe; > 650 AP’s on site + 14 AP’s in Enschede City)

• Labs– High pressure– Virtual Reality– Cleanroom

• MultifunctionalEducation facilities

• Etc.

History – Choice for a CMS

Blackboard, eCollege, Moodle, N@tschool

aTutor, ANGEL, .LRN,

LAMS

Sakai, Croquet, W

ebCT

Teletop Course Environment

What was going on? (1)• 1997: Initial development of TeleTOP in

Department of Educational Technology

• 2000-now: large-scale use of TeleTOP in all departments– Incl. new, richer releases– 2003: commercial spin-off: TeleTOP BV

• 2003: first student portal (developed by students!)

A little bit of history (2)• 2004: lots of activities

– open standards (IMS) are emerging, as well as the SCORM; we deliver a discussion paper

– we move more and more to J2EE for webapps– students complaints grow and grow (lack of

integration, information is out-of-date, inreliable and sometimes not findable)

– UT Policy = Campus Blend: all programmes will have f2f and online components (in different mixes)

Pilot - Reasons

• With start of Teletop a evaluation period of 4 years was set.

• Conclusion of evaluation report made clear a desire for– a services oriented approach– the use of portals– the use of open standards– tailored environment– New educational approaches

Pilot in Master program

• Master track Telematics Applications Education and Training (TAET).

• Twelve students

• Ten weeks runtime

• Study load of 140 Hours / 5 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System)

Expectations• The best of 10 year CMS experience• High standard of ease of use, web 20• Educational support• Mobile access• Complete integration of educational standards• Interoperability

– Import– Export

• Efficient• Effective• Reuse possibilities

Initial Course Setup

• Collaborative work on Wiki• Based on TAET Competences and

course topics

• Problem – Not experienced enough in use of Wiki.

• I was unable to track all individual contributions to grade

Final Course Setup

• Scientific report as result

• 4 assignments

• Teacher feedback after first two assignments

• Peer review after third assignment

• Presentation in last lecture

SAKAI Environment• Project site• Blend of

– Classroom sessions– Lectures– Workshops– Student presentations– Resources

• publishing course materials– articles– assignments and managing the meetings and doing the

assignments

Sakai Course environment

Problems

• Inconsistency in buttons, views, functions• A lot of clicking• Relation Assignments, Announcements,

Schedule was not clear• Menu behavior was problematic• Students could not always use drop box

– Alternative use of email, feedback problems

• Students could not find resources

Schedule overview

Schedule event edit

Schedule II

Sakai - Resources

Assignments overview

Sakai - Assignments

Sakai - Assignments

Sakai - Dropbox

Unaddressed Expectations

• No real collaboration possibilities• No educational support• No mobile support• No interoperability possibilities

– Import– Export

• No export possibilities based• Yet

Conclusion• The basic functionalities work

– But in my opinion not for a large audiences• Disappointed

– Inconsistency– Interface problems– Menu behavior– Unclear relations between functions such as

schedule, announcements, assignments, resources

– Technical issues, access students drop box– Inefficient, A lot of clicking

Solutions

• Handbook for interface use– Functions– Views– Button names

• Good examples– Mac OS– Windows

Thank you!

• Questions?

• Contact:– Dr. Allard Strijker– A.strijker@utwente.nl– http://users.gw.utwente.nl/strijker