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 - community community - developers - faculty & students - administrators - 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
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-sideCWSakai
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