Sakai Project Overview

TERENA(Trans-European Research and Education

Networking Association)Poznan, Poland

June 6, 2005

Joseph Hardin,University of MichiganSchool of Information

Sakai Board ChairKYOU / sakai

Boundary, Situation

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Building Open Source Educational and Research Infrastructure

• Course Management Systems are now a central part of a university’s services

• Remote research collaboration tools are becoming essential for participation in national and international projects - for faculty of all schools

The Sakai Project provides both in what we call a Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE)

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Online Collaboration and Learning Environments are Key Tools for all our Faculty, Staff, Students

now. Everyone uses them.

We’re experiencing rapid, continuing growth in adoption and use. Just keeps growing.

StudentsFacultyCourses

100%

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Challenges for Higher Education Online Learning & Research

We must push the frontiers of innovation for users, getting faculty innovations in teaching and research available to a large community rapidly; in addition to providing basic, reliable services

We must deliver sustainable economics to large university systems, lowering the cost of key infrastructure as much as possible, while delivering innovation

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Supporting the ClassSupporting the Class

Sakai as Course Management System (CMS)

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Supporting the LabSupporting the Lab

Sakai as collaboratories - support for online research teams

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So, The Sakai Project - 2004

“The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, the uPortal Consortium, and the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) are joining forces to integrate and synchronize their considerable educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools.” (January, 2004)

Sakai Project receives $2.4 million grant fromMellon Foundation; support from Hewlett Foundation

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Initial Sakai Funding

• Each of the 4 Core Universities Commits– 5+ developers/architects, etc. under Sakai Board

project direction for 2 years– Public commitment to implement Sakai– Open/Open licensing – “Community Source”

• So, overall project levels– $4.4M in institutional staff (27 FTE)– $2.4M Mellon, $300K Hewlett (first year)– Additional investment through partners

Heavy commitment from founding schools

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Why: All the simple reasonsThese are core infrastructures at our Universities• Economic advantages to core schools, partners• Higher ed values – open, sharing, building the

commons – core support for collaboration tech• We should be good at this – teaching, research

are our core competencies• Maintains institutional capacity, independence• Ability to rapidly innovate – move our tools

within/among HE institutions rapidly Based on goals of interoperability -

Desire to harvest research advances and faculty innovation in teaching quickly

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Michigan•CHEF Framework•CourseTools•WorkTools

Indiana•Navigo AssessmentOneStart•Oncourse

MIT•Stellar

Stanford•CourseWork•Assessment

OKI•OSIDs

uPortal

SAKAI 2.0 Release•Tool Portability Profile•Framework•Services-based Portal

SAKAI Tools•Complete CLE•Assessment Tool•Research Tools•Authoring Tools

Primary SAKAI ActivityDesigning, Building, Refining SAKAI Framework,

Tuning and conforming additional toolsIntensive community building/training

Activity: Ongoing implementation work at local institutions…

Jan 04 July 04 May 05 Dec 05

Activity: Maintenance &

Transition from aproject to

a community

SAKAI 1.0 Release•Tool Portability Profile•Framework•Services-based Portal•Refined OSIDs & implementations

SAKAI Tools•Complete CLE•Assessment

Sakai Project Timeline (Aggressive)

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Sakai Project DeliverablesWorking Code – CMS/CLE- Collaboration and Learning

Environment – Sakai 1.0 – Modular Tools + Framework• Course management system – core tools plus

• Quizzing and assessment tools, [OSPI], etc• Research collaboration support• Portal (uPortal 2.3, 3.x)

Tool Portability Profile• Specifications for writing portable software to

achieve application ‘code mobility’ among institutions – modular tools and services

Synchronized development, adoptions at: Michigan, Indiana, MIT, Stanford – Sakai 1.0 is next generation CourseWork, CHEF, Oncourse, Stellar

Sakai Community – Committed and active

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Basic Sakai Strategy

• Partner with like minded institutions

• Build an open, world-class system

• Use/develop open source products

• Build framework for easy tool building

• Build international community of adopters and contributors

• Move innovation into tools quickly

Build the Open Source Community

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So, What is Sakai?• Sakai is a project – an initial grant for two years• Sakai is an extensible framework - provides basic

capabilities to support a wide range of tools and services – teaching and research

• Sakai is a set of tools - written and supported by various groups and individuals

• Sakai is a product - a released bundle of the framework and a set of tools which have been tested and released as a unit

• Sakai is a community – an emerging group of people and resources supporting the code and each other, realizing large scale Open Source efficiencies in Higher Ed

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Sakai Technical Goals

Provide environment • to write tools and services which seamlessly move from

one Sakai deployment to another – tool portability• where the addition of a new tool does not de-stabilize the

existing tools – modularization• to allow tools to exist both within Sakai and stand-alone

(I.e. easy porting of external tools into Sakai without requiring rewrite – well, minimal rewrite)

• and capabilities so that Sakai services and tools can be accessed using web services.

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Sakai Foundational Documents

• Sakai Style Guide - Describes in detail how Sakai tools are to look and operate regardless of implementation technology

• Sakai Java Framework - Describes the Sakai Application Framework (SAF) as implemented in Java

• Sakai Tool Portability Profile - Describes how to write tools and services to be portable across Sakai systems (in progress)

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Service Oriented Architecture• Decompose tool code into presentation elements

and service elements• Provides an abstraction (API) which shields the

tool code from the implementation details of the service code.

• Allows separate development of tools & services.• Allows effective unit testing of services• Allows an implementation to be replaced

transparently with another implementation as long as the API contract is fully met – e.g., choice of many ‘Discussion Tools’ for users

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Sakai Application Framework• SAF - Kernel - An augmented web application

which enables the Sakai APIs to be called from the web application - this is a rich but not constraining environment

• SAF - Common Services - A set of common services available to all tools (authentication, authorization, hierarchy, repository, others)

• SAF - Presentation Services - A set of Sakai specific JSF tags to handle presentation details and provide widgets such as a date-picker or WSYWIG editor.

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Sakai Integration and Development Choices

• Develop a TPP Compliant Tool

Assured to be portable across Sakai environments• Integrate a web application

– Responsible for own presentation and compliance to style guide (may use Sakai JSF tags if JSF is used)

– Can operate both stand-alone and within Sakai• Integrate via web-services

• Capability being developed

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But, More than a CMS

Sakai is more than Course Management System.

Sakai = Collaboration & Learning Environment

Meant to support the full spectrum of scholarly activities, and leverage adoption across them

• Support for teaching/learning• Support for online research communities, faculty,

research staff, and students• Support for Staff – eg, project work, surveys, etc

All of this made easier by the ability of any user to set up a group workspace.

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Sakai in Production at UM, IU Now

• We have about 25,000 people using CTools in at least one course at UM. That is about ~54% of candidate users at University of Michigan.

• There are over 1000 course sites representing nearly 2000 sections this term.

• Our transition from the legacy system will be complete this Fall, 2005; legacy system ‘turned off’; then we are all Sakai/Ctools at UMichigan

Doing fine…

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Building the Sakai Community • Developer and Adopter Support for Universities

SEPP - Sakai Educational Partner’s Program Community for ongoing development, adoption, support

• Commercial Support – Sakai Commercial AffiliatesBased on open-open licensing – open source, open for commercializationSCA – Fee-based services from vendors include…

• Installation/integration, on-going support, training• Think of as “Sakai Red Hats”

Also, IMS Global Learning Consortium – building standards; working with CLE/CMS vendors on interoperability between frameworks, e.g., WebCT, BlackBoard, Sun, Cisco Learning, etc.

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Sakai Educational Partner’s ProgramDeveloping the Community to Guide the Source.

• Membership Fee: US$10K per year ($5K for smaller schools), 3 years

• Access to SEPP staff– Community development liaison– SEPP developers, documentation writers

• Invitation to Sakai Partners Conferences– Developer training for the TPP, tool development– Strategy and implementation workshops– Software exchange for partner-developed tools

• Seat at the Table as Sakai Develops

The success of the SEPP effort will determine the long term success of the project.

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Sakai Educational Partners – April 1, 2004• Arizona State University• Boston University School of Management• Brown University • Carleton College• Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching• Carnegie Mellon University• Coastline Community College• Columbia University• Community College of Southern Nevada• Cornell University• Dartmouth College• Florida Community College/Jacksonville• Foothill-De Anza Community College• Franklin University• Georgetown University• Harvard University• Hosei University IT Research Center• Johns Hopkins University• Lubeck University of Applied Sciences• Maricopa County Community College• Monash University• Nagoya University• New York University• Northeastern University• North-West University (SA)• Northwestern University• Ohio State University• Portland State University• Princeton University• Roskilde University (Denmark)• Rutgers University• Simon Fraser University• State University of New York

• Stockholm University • SURF/University of Amsterdam• Tufts University• Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain)• Universitat de Lleida (Spain)• University of Arizona• University of California Berkeley• University of California, Davis• University of California, Los Angeles• University of California, Merced• University of California, Santa Barbara• University of Cambridge, CARET• University of Cape Town, SA• University of Colorado at Boulder• University of Delaware• University of Hawaii• University of Hull• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign• University of Minnesota• University of Missouri• University of Nebraska• University of Oklahoma• University of Texas at Austin• University of Virginia• University of Washington• University of Wisconsin, Madison• Virginia Polytechnic Institute/University• Whitman College• Yale UniversityNew• University of Melbourne, Australia• University of Toronto, Knowledge Media Design

Institute

Known Pilots and Production

• Boston University School of Management

• Carleton College • Foothill-De Anza Community Co

llege District

• Indiana University • Johns Hopkins University • Lübeck

University of Applied Sciences, Germany

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Northwestern University• Rutgers• Stanford University

• University of California, Berkeley

• University of California, Merced

• University of Cape Town, SA • University Fernando Pessoa,

Portugal • University of Lleida, Spain • University of Michigan • University of Missouri • University of Virginia • Whitman College • Yale University

Growing pretty quickly.

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Some Sakai Partner Projects:

Examples of Early Community Contributions to the Sakai Project

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The Berkeley Grade BookUniversity of California, Berkeley funded

development of an on-line grade book.

The UC Berkeley grade book is now in pilot on the Berkeley campus as a stand alone tool, and moving into pilot at IU.

It is part of the 1.5 release.

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Grad ToolsThe University of Michigan’s Grad Tools provides

doctoral students and faculty a way of tracking degree progress from the point of choosing an advisor to degree conferral.

Doctoral students create their own site, which contains an automatically personalized dissertation checklist based on data from their department and from the graduate school. Students control access to their Grad Tools site, and use collaboration features common to CTools, including file storage, group email, email notification, structured discussion, and more.

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Keeping track of student progress toward a degree.

More time for learning,and teaching.

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Samigo – Testing and Assessment

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Melete – Online Lesson Authoring Tool – Part of ETUDES Project

Foothill College’s Melete, an online lesson authoring environment, is the classroom component of ETUDES (Easy to Use Distance Education Software) that is being rewritten in Java for Sakai-based ETUDES-NG. Melete offers instructors the ability to author online learning modules. Melete features extra controls to assist online teachers/learners, such as the ability to set prerequisites and the pacing of material.

The Hewlett Foundation funded deployment of Sakai for the service provided to 48 California community colleges.

Part of 2.0 release

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300 faculty from 17 community colleges (highlighted in red on next slide) from the ETUDES Alliance have committed to a pilot of ETUDES-NG (Sakai 1.5 + Samigo + Melete) in the spring and summer of 2005.

Three colleges will go into production in the fall. More to follow in the spring.

All 48 colleges migrate to Sakai by July 1, 2007.

ETUDES Consortium – Sakai Pilots to ProductionETUDES Consortium – Sakai Pilots to Production

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Skins at Course Site Level

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Melete – Lesson Builder

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Linking to websites to supplement or support the content of a lesson

Composing content online using a WYSIWYG Editor

Uploading all types of documents for lesson components/content

This is MELETE

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Accessibility metadata

Ability to check for lack of compliance with Section 508 accessibility guidelines

Will plug in to TILE from U Toronto.

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Student View – Navigation & Licensing

Navigation is created automatically

content

Authors can license their content

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Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI)

OSPI is a community of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of the leading open source electronic portfolio software.

The Open Source Portfolio software is individual-centered, enabling users to gather work products and other artifacts to be stored and shared with others, and used for personal growth and development. The ePortfolio toolset is being developed on the Sakai infrastructure providing a stand alone application as well as an integration of rich portfolio tools in the full suite of Sakai applications.

See www.theospi.orgTracking Sakai releases – 1.5 and 2.0

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All these are examples of distributed development of innovation – Sakai Partners building new tools,and sharing them immediately with the community,through the Sakai platform.

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Building Contribution Community• Receiving code fixes and folding them in• Receiving large tools and working to integrate

them effectively– XWiki– Blog– Jabber Instant Messaging– SCORM player– RDF-based visual concept mapper

Rapidly growing area. Possible because we’re open source. Thus anyone can contribute. Necessary to achieve goal of rapid innovation within mature system. We filter contributions to core release. All available in contrib area of CVS.

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SCA – Sakai Commercial Affiliates

First Generation – Open Source Software Support

Support for the Sakai codebase, or support of Sakai users = SCA Member

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‘Second Generation’SCA Partners

Sakai Commercial Affiliate Proposal

“IBM and Sakai: Building a Successful Learning Ecosystem

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• Open Source Business and Learning Solutions

• Interoperable Learning Content• Reference Architecture• SW Stack and Offering• HW Stack and Offering• Hosting Stack and Offering• Code Donations• ‘Commercial’ SW Expertise• Global Marketing and Sales

Both universities and commercial partners contributing code and expertise. Benefit of open source strategy.

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and, recently…• Sun

• Apple

• UnisysAre also asking about joining the Sakai Commercial Affiliates, and proposing to do similar things with the Sakai Community

Validation of Open Source Model…Useful partners in open source community.

?

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Open Source Dynamics• Open Source Projects are crucial to

supporting innovation in higher ed• We have some examples now of ‘for

higher ed, by higher ed’ OS efforts• A literature is developing around the

dynamics of open source communities• We learn from experience and add to

our common stock of knowledge; we are learning institutions, after all.

The Sakai Project is a pioneer in this, devising its own open source strategy: Community Source.

Steven Weber

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Part of Much larger Whole• Multiplying Open/Community Source

Efforts• integration, standards…innovation

• Figuring out how to work together • Development, operations, maintenance, timing,

evolution, building open source community in HE

PKIDartmouth

Chandler/Westwood

Twin PeaksNavigator

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So, join the Sakai Community• Main site: www.sakaiproject.org – outward looking• Bugs: bugs.sakaiproject.org – open, active• Sakai-wide collaboration area

– collab.sakaiproject.org; sakai work sites, discussion lists, resources areas; working instance of Sakai

– sakai-dev@sakaiproject.org – open mail list, active– sakai-user@sakaiproject.org – open mail list, active

• Sakai Educational Partners (SEPP)– Separate mailing lists, discussion areas; for internal use– Dedicated staff – technical and admin support– Two conferences per year; regular VTCs, phone calls

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Summer Conference 2005Conference Co-Chairs SEPP

Partners – Yale and Cambridge

Technical Description of 2.0- 3.0 Dev & Contrib Processes

Governance Discussion Underway Now

Baltimore, MD, USA

June 8-10 (soon)

Over 400 attendees

14 countries, 31 states, 5

continents

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(Aside) What’s in a Name?A little history – the Sakai Project had the Chef

Project as one of its precursors.

Chef = CompreHensive collaborativE Framework

We named it that way for fun – we liked the Japanese ‘Iron Chef’ TV show.

SAKAI at one time meant: Synchronized Architecture for Knowledge Acquisition Infrastructure – too big a mouthful!

Now it is just ‘Sakai’ without all capital letters. It is just a nice word. We like the sound.

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The name of a famous Iron Chef. (More fun!)

It is also:

Which has connotations,we are told, of moving across boundaries, of being involved in a complex situation.

Appropriate for us.

But, it is also…

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Thank You

sakaiproject.org

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