Sakai & Open Educational Resources

University of New England, NSW, Australia

Michael Korcuska, Executive Director, Sakai Foundation

Agenda

• A brief introduction to Sakai• Open Education: The Time is Now• Sakai and OER• Sakai 3?

About Sakai

Sakai History

Courseware Management SystemStarted in 2004

Michigan, Indiana, Stanford, MIT (and Berkeley)

Mellon Foundation Grant

2.6 release complete

Why Start Sakai?

5 Schools with Homegrown CMSInefficient to build 5 systemsWanted to maintain controlExperts in teaching and learningDesire to work together and share knowledge

Why Sakai?

• Stanford wrote about 20% of the original code in Sakai. What we have received in return is five times what we have put in, a tremendous return on investment. The value of community source is very real to us.

Lois BrooksDirector of Academic Computing Stanford University

Coursework, Stanford University

Defining Sakai: Product Scope

COURSE MANAGEMENT — all the tools of a modern course management system.RESEARCH & COLLABORATION — project sites for research and work group collaboration.SAKAIBRARY — Library-led component to add citations directly into Sakai.PORTFOLIOS — Open Source Portfolio (OSP) is a core part of Sakai.

Course Management

Portfolios

SakaibraryResearch &

Collaboration

Sakai on the ground

200+ PRODUCTION/PILOT DEPLOYMENTS: From 200 to 200,000 users

Sakai today

• 5 of 10 top Universities use Sakai• Stanford• Berkeley• Cambridge• Columbia• Oxford

• #11 (Yale) does too!

Open Source Value

Vendor Software

Local Version New Version

Customization

New Version

Local Version

Customization Again

Proprietary Software Brick Wall

Defining Sakai: Foundation• MISSION — manage & protect intellectual property; provide

basic infrastructure & small staff; help coordinate design, development, testing & distribution of software; champion open source & open standards.

• GOVERNANCE — ten board members elected by member reps to serve three-year terms; Executive Director manages day-to-day operations.

• PARTNERS — over 100 member organizations contribute $10K per year ($5K for smaller institutions).

• BUDGET — funds 4-6 staffers, admin services, computing infrastructure, project coordination, conferences, Sakai Fellows Program, advocacy & outreach activities.

Why Sakai?

• UCT decided to move to open source in 2004, migrating from WebCT & a home-grown system. Open source offers the advantages of flexibility & avoids the risks of vendor lock-in & escalating license costs. We were attracted to Sakai by the size & expertise of the community around it.

Stephen Marquard, Learning Technologies Coordinator, University of Cape Town

Why Sakai?

• The people in this room are the best qualified to define the future of the VLE.

• You don’t need to be alone: Sakai community shares software, ideas and risks

Design the Future with the Best Academic Partners Around the World

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Cape Town Open Education

Cape Town Declaration

We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.

This emerging open education movement combines the established tradition of sharing good ideas with fellow educators and the collaborative, interactive culture of the Internet. It is built on the belief that everyone should have the freedom to use, customize, improve and redistribute educational resources without constraint. Educators, learners and others who share this belief are gathering together as part of a worldwide effort to make education both more accessible and more effective.

Endowment Divide

• If Harvard has $34.9 billion or Yale $22.5 billion, fewer than 400 of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities in the United States had even $100 million in endowments in the fiscal year that ended in June. Most had less than $10 million.

-- New York Times (February 4th, 2008)

Scholarly Journals

Publisher

University

Winners & Losers

Activity Winners Losers

Scholarly Journals, Monographs

Faculty, Publishers, Scholarly Discipline Associations

Provosts, Librarians, Faculty

Textbooks Authors, Faculty, Publishers, Resellers

Students, Provosts, Authors, Faculty

Software (H.E. Unique)

Monopolistic Firms Provosts, Faculty, Staff, Students

In the Digital Ditch

The Same is True in Software

• Blackboard: Cornell University• WebCT: University of British Columbia• Angel: Indiana University

Out of the Digital Ditch

Premises• Not a money problem• Coordination problem• We’ve failed to protect our values

We can self coordinate for our interests and our values…WITH [or without] corporate partners

The Time is Now

• The silver lining of the financial crisis• Momentum is building

• Open source is well established• OER & OSA are gaining momentum (in

English)• Design sustainable models for using and

contributing

Compact for Open-Access Publishing

We the undersigned universities recognize the crucial value of the services provided by scholarly publishers, the desirability of open access to the scholarly literature, and the need for a stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide open access to their journals’ contents. Those universities and funding agencies receiving the benefits of publisher services should recognize their collective and individual responsibility for that funding, and this recognition should be ongoing and public so that publishers can rely on it as a condition for their continuing operation.

California Open Source Textbooks

• California spends $350 Million annually• K-12 only

• 10 Approved for use already• Related efforts in Texas

• Population of two states totals 60 million

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

Interesting OER

• Connexions (www.cnx.org)

• Platform for publishing and rating OER• ck-12 (www.ck-12.org)

• Publisher of digital textbooks• Folksemantic (http://www.folksemantic.com/)

• Widget to bring related OER onto page• dScribe and OERca

dScribe and OERca

• University of Michigan• Joseph Hardin, founder of Sakai

• dScribe• Project that uses students to turn UM

courses into OCW courses

• OERca• Software tool to manage OCW

publishing process• Integrated into Sakai (contrib)

https://open.umich.edu/wiki/Main_Page

Sustainability?

• Build OER creation into your subject• Proposed process

• Choose OER resources for your subject• Use those resources in first half of term• Then have students modify/extend/create

OER resources as a project

SAKAI 3Why and What and When

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Why Build Sakai 3?

• Changing expectations• Google docs/apps, Social

Networking, Web 2.0• Success of project sites =

Sakai beyond courses

• New technologies• Standards-based, open

source projects• JCR (Jackrabbit)• Open Social (Shindig)

• Client-side programming• JavaScript/AJAX

Why Now?

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.John F. Kennedy

Proto by Hubert Stoffels

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Everything is Content

Sakai 3 Themes

Learning Space Construction

Academic Networking

Breaking the Site Boundary

Academic Workflows, not (just) Tools

The unSakai

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SAKAI 3 DEMO

http://3akai.sakaifoundation.org