Notes from the NITLE Sakai Virtual User Group

I attended a Sakai meeting online today. The meeting’s focus was on the integration of Sakai with Campus Services and here are a few ideas I want to remember.

Library Integration Section/Ideas

1. Use of Meebo as an instant messaging option within sakai – Why meebo and not the internal chat option? (allows people to have access to her if the person is not on sakai.)
2. Use HTML or TXT in the resource section allows greater access for cellphones and non-word/adobe pdf folks.
3. Jez’s example of bibliographic instruction made me think, can we reinforce what is being taught in the network orientation regarding sakai by using sakai to support the bibliographic instruction whenever possible.
   1. Want to avoid the perception that we are forcing faculty/courses to adopt Sakai across the board
   2. using Sakai to deliver library services
4. RefWorks101 – possible connection Jez with Jane…

Jez was kind enough to share her slides here.

Authentication Section/Ideas (Mike is not sure how much is transferable to anyone who hosts off-campus)

1. Creating an email alias for the course? Other than being short what is the benefit of this – do people want to email the course

Mike’s presentation at least gives me some background so I am not completely ignorant when we talk about this stuff with Longsight.

Jumping into the Frying Pan – Sakai @ Mt Holyoke

A big shout out to Julie and Mary for presenting this at Educause. I have gotten to know them through the NITLE Sakai Pilot. Two really cool women with a lot to say about implementing Sakai on a Liberal Arts Campus. They have a fairly full room for their presentation and seem to be on a roll for having most of us to leave happy with what we learned.

Details of their implementation

• Converted from WebCT 4.1 with about a 100 courses per semester on average.
• After the evaluation process ended up with Sakai based on Long term scope of the Sakai project.
• Used Unicon as consultants and agent to jump start the project – implementation consultation, training, and Skinning. But did local install.
• Included cross departmental professionals from the Blended IT organization as well as a web professional – Aside – Do we need to include Mike and Public Affairs for skinning?
• implementation was started and completed over the summer of 2006 – possible through support of Unicon. 20 WebCT users and new faculty targeted for the first semester in the end 86 courses were delivered that first semester. Also integrated e-Reserves and tried to focus on academic sites not project sites.
• Transitioned from MySQL database to an Oracle database. This was not based on performance or issue with MySQL but because of an institutional move.
• 60% of courses are using Sakai
  • 70% Humanities
  • 70% Social Sciences
  • 58% Languages
  • 50% Visual and Performing Arts
  • 45% Sciences (waiting for test and quizzes)
• unexpected outcome is the wildfire growth of project sites. They have not targeted this population it has grown by word of mouth. Standards of support are more difficult as these project sites tend not to fall neatly into the traditional departmental support structures.
• Mary is speaking of the importance of desktop coaching and a combination of local and remote support.
• Both Mary and Julie have repeatedly spoke of the need for a programmer at least 1/2 FTE and that it is formalized. Aside – I wonder if this is going to be something we need to right into the proposal but as a consulted service. I wonder if that is true of Whitman’s experience.
• Implementation of open source is a different process than implementing a commercial product. It takes on going energy for monitoring, decision making, and maintenance.

Sakai NITLE – Hosting Vs. hosted

Mary and I lead this discussion -

There is a spectrum of options and needs.  Clarity of needs and responsibilities is of utmost responsibilities is key to success no matter which option is selected.

Need to write more of a summary of the conversation and process with Susan.

See Also – Thoughts and Experiments » Sakai NITLE User Group

Sakai – Pedagogy Discussion

Busting the four-wall metaphor.  How can we extend learning beyond the walls of the classroom.  This seems to be the promise of online education as it removes the barriers of time and space.  The collegiality of higher education make the connections to the expert in the field and the learners on your campus.

Single instance promotes cross-collaboration courses.  Example of Mt Holyoke with a French course being taught on campus and the English course being taught in France share the same space.  Building on the thematic courses of the Melon Grant at the very beginnings of NITLE.  (Side note – Helen might want to consider this as a way to further pedagogy and build on past work. Might have issues to clear with the registrar.)

Strength of Sakai is the Course Site and the Project Sites.

See Also – Thoughts and Experiments Sakai User Group Meeting

Sakai – Developing a Community Resources

Members of this group were Susan, Kevin, CT
A small group focused on issues of how do we as a NITLE Sakai community engage with the larger Sakai Community.

The Idea that we should use the Sakai space that was created for interactions we should put the our money where the mouth is and use the space to support the tool that we are using. The usefulness is dependent on the length of commentment NITLE has to the Sakai pilot.
The use of the Video conferencing tool for month mini show and tell is another option for coming together for showing the successes and troubles.

There is a large responsibility to take our issues from our small group to the larger Sakai community. Thus, we need to talk with the larger community productively as a collection of small colleges. How can we bridge the gap and avoid reinventing the wheel perhaps a small schools or user support space.

Nothing is for free in the Sakai world so how do we collaboratively generate ideas, prototype solutions, and contribute back to the community the tools we need. Is this a responsibility that NITLE can assist with through contract work or by coordinating resources across this group.
See Also – Thoughts and Experiments » Sakai NITLE User Group

Sakai NITLE User Group

SAKAI Meeting Notes to Remember â??

Mike Osterman â?? Whitman College interested in growing the liberal arts focus within the larger Sakai community that seems to have a large school focus.

Mt Holyoke transitioned from WebCT (after 6 years) to Sakai.  They have some experience with what are the actual costs of running Sakai.

Clarmont Colleges can provide insight on how to run a collaborative instance. They have cross registration between 7 colleges.  They would be a good rationale for a larger Sakai instance for NITLE?

Do we need to actually have programming?

Mini Conference Topics –

Pedagogy – Moving Beyond the Garage

Hosting On campus  vs Off Campus

Finding the Path to Buy In

Non Academic Uses of Sakai

Developing and Communicating the Vision

Adding OSP

Integration with  Single Sign On and ERP

Developing Community Resources

Host or Hosting – sakaiproject.org

As it turns out our pilot of Sakai is turning out as we predicted.  Faculty are content with most features of Sakai and willing to live with the parts they are not enthusiastic about.   It is nice to be validated from time to time and shows what a little planning and professional expertise can do to get a project off on the right foot.

Things are going well enough that I received a new assignment that I want to complete over fall break, the capital request for implementing Sakai.  The question is to have Sakai running oncampus or contract hosting with a company.  My original thought back in the day, wouldn’t it be nice to have another company manage the boxes, upgrades and back ups which it might still be the case but the spinning and stalling experienced by the faculty and students in the pilot are of concern.   This seems unexceptable to me and leads me to think oncampus control is better.  The upfront costs might be more but does it make more sense as the traffic won’t get clogged passing through offcampus servers between here and the host.

Learn more about the Sakai project at sakaiproject.org.

Questions for the Sakai Panel.

Technical Questions

what kind of down time for customizations and upgrades

Yale -

• downtime required for major upgrade (24 – 36 hours) might be wise to identify a longer window -
• downtime for customizations and or patches are variable and attempted to do it only once a term

Marist -

• similar for Yale for upgrades but do not have the staff for customizations

Batch populate students

• Yale has done it
• Marist is going to rely on rSmart
• there are no specific hooks directly into sakai from Banner, Datatel, etc the community shares their homegrown modules
• three ways to populate – I don’t know what these are but I hope someone does
• perl calls web services
• java code and pokes into sakai and then schedule that into sakai
• java code that is called at log in time.

WebDAV breaks in safari what’s up with that?

• the webDAV native in Sakai is old. Currently a group is working to develop a new and widely used WebDAV interface. (most likely coming in v2.6)

What is the most health window for transition to Sakai?

• 3 year scenario -  (1)try it out (2)opt in (3)get the left overs

Does Sakai support text book cartridges?

• IMS common cartridge standard not finalized so this causes some issues.  hopefully by fall as a patch for v2.4.   As the standard is finalized the publishers will most likely just start publishing these cartridges at that point it will become more universal.  The IMS common cartridge charge is being lead by the Publishers.

Another implementation story. This one from Yale.

Unique challenges to implement Sakai -

• balancing the desire to making customizations for your local community with the ability to integrate said customizations with future releases.
• Managing needs and expectations of campus community
• Staffing

Balancing Desires of Customizations

Benefits of Sakai’s model

• greater influence and control over the technology
• benefit from a world wide community of developers
• development is driven by universities and governed by peers

Challenges

• pace of change is dizzying (needing to keep up with releases)
• communication within the community can be tough (too much communication and too little communication all at the same time).    Jive as a discussion board that can be plugged into Sakai. The lack of communication side is this a larger issue for institutions that develop compatible tools, whether core or plug in.
• just because you can customize doesn’t mean you should

Managing Needs and Expectations

• find collaborations that work across campus to meet needs remember customization is not the best long-term solution.
• know what sakai can be and what you want it to be.
• collect input from faculty students and staff (same ways we are doing this)
• set priorities share and finalize priorities to communicate
• Communication is key.  Know they audience.

Issues of Staffing

• outsource support and/or hosting
• keep all systems in house invest in in house personnel.  This has produced benefits for other projects in addition to LMS
• having someone that can pull the various pieces of how the institution works and who can help them.  Trust, trust, trust.
• shifting of staff responsibilities and department affiliations

I need to look at the blogging tool as this has been found to be good enough for educational blogging.  Will this be true for Allegheny?

Remember -

Our primary job is to support teaching, learning and the exchange of ideas not to produce software

Next Up Presentations on implementing Conversations

First from Marist -Josh Baron asked his support team to stand up to be recognized.  No one stood because he is it.  (A good chuckle from the crowd)

Marist was looking to replace its lms.  After research it was evident that Sakai is the best choice, even for a small school with minimal development support. Why?

• The community source development model is going to drive instructional technology innovation.  There is a desire to be involved in the innovations.
• The consolidation of the LMS marketplace.  This landscape takes away from innovation and encourages one size fits all.  With Sakai and community source the bottom line is teaching and learning not profits.
• The chance to have some say in the tools that get the focus of the development community.
• Decoupling of code and services – see better support and services as a result of the community development model.  (A mention of rSmart as a support service provider).
• the open standards (service oriented architecture)  customize the system with minimal costs compared to doing the same with a proprietary LMS. Example of this is plugging in a discussion board.  (Which ones)

Myth and Reality -

• Talking to ROI – while not free he prefers to put the money toward human capital
• community developers – the success of community developers
• Not a passing fad – too many large schools are committed and do not have a plan b

Marist has chosen iLearn as brand…

Getting into Production

Phase 1 – Gaining Real World experience without risk

• Production Pilot used the IDCP program as it is a fully online program, cohort based and self contained faculty.
• 6 months prior advanced planning started including becoming a Sakai Education Partner

Phase 2 -

• Online HS program on gaming in summer 2006
• expanded the IDPC to include two additional cohorts and additional faculty

Inital Outcomes -

• hard to learn, but this can be said of any new interface.
• need better support looking to rSmart group for assistance in this
• missing key tools -
• lacks private discussion areas (jForums have private discussion capablities)
• the tools are being developed

Phase 3 -

• Spring 2007 added yet another IDCP cohort
• Work with faculty developer
• Sakai eLearning Luncheons
• presentations to the Cabinet
• Develop ‘decision criteria’ to communicate the process of assessment and implementation.
• partnering with rSmart.  Not trying to sell the company but they are happy to this point.

Mentioned that moving to Sakai will be fiscally neutral considering the licensing cost of current system

Idea for the LMS group – conduct a ‘Gap analysis’ to communicate the differences from current system.

Perception is truth.