Using Sakai in Research at Rutgers University

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Using Sakai in Research at Rutgers University

• Gayle K. Stein, Ph.D.
• Associate Director for Instructional Technology
• Tom Grzelak
• Associate Director for Research Technology
• Office of Instructional and Research Technology
  (OIRT)

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What is Sakai?

• A community and foundationa group of people and
  resources supporting the code and each other,
  realizing large scale Open Source efficiencies
• A collaboration and learning product with
• A set of tools which have been tested and
  released as a unit
• An extensible framework for building
  collaboration to support a wide range of teaching
  and research

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Sakai 2.1.1 Tools
Message of the Day News/RSS Roster
integration Resources Samigo - QTI
Assessment Schedule Section Management Syllabus We
b Content Wiki
Announcements Assignments Chat Room Threaded
Discussion Drop Box Email Archive Gradebook Melete
- Content Editor
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History

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

To begin, the Sakai Project received a 2.4
million grant from the Mellon Foundation
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More Sakai project history

• Each of the 4 core universities committed
• 5 developers/architects under Sakai Board
  project direction for 2 years
• Public commitment to implement Sakai
• Open/Open licensingCommunity Source
• Overall project levels
• 4.4M in institutional staff (27 FTE)
• 2.4M Mellon, 300K Hewlett
• Additional investment through partners
• The Sakai Project became the Sakai Foundation
  in January, 2006

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The Sakai Foundation

• The Foundation manages a small staff to
• - coordinate evolution of the Sakai software
• - provide advanced developer support for members
• - conduct quality assurance work on Sakai
  releases
• - track contributor agreements and manage the
  Sakai IP
• - manage conferences and meetings for the Sakai
  Community

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Sakai Foundation members
Albany Medical College Monash University University of California, Los Angeles
Arizona State University Nagoya University University of California, Merced
Australian National University New York University University of California, Santa Barbara
Boston University School of Management Northeastern University University of Cambridge, CARET
Brown University North-West University (SA) University of Cape Town, SA
Carleton College Northwestern University University of Colorado at Boulder
Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching Ohio State University University of Delaware
Carnegie Mellon University Portland State University University of Hawaii
Ceritos Community College Princeton University University of Hull
Coast Community College District Rice University University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Columbia University Ringling School of Art and Design University of Melbourne
Cornell University Roskilde University (Denmark) University of Michigan
Dartmouth College Rutgers University University of Minnesota
Florida Community College at Jacksonville Simon Fraser University University of Missouri
Foothill-De Anza Community College Stanford University University of Nebraska
Franklin University State University of New York University of North Texas
Georgetown University Stockholm University University of Oklahoma
Harvard University SURF/University of Amsterdam University of South Africa (UNISA)
Hosei University IT Research Center Syracuse University University of Texas at Austin
Indiana University Texas State University - San Marcos University of Toronto, Knowledge Media Design Institute
Johns Hopkins University Tufts University University of Virginia
Lancaster University Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) University of Washington
Loyola University, Chicago Universitat de Lleida (Spain) University of Wisconsin, Madison
Lubeck University of Applied Sciences University College Dublin Virginia Polytechnic Institute/University
Maricopa County Community College University of Arizona Whitman College
Marist College University of California, Office of the Chancellor Yale University
MIT University of California Berkeley University of California Berkeley
University of California, Davis
105 and Growing
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How Sakai got to Rutgers

• Version of WebCT used in NB/P and Camden at end
  of useful life
• Wanted to see what other options were
• Learned about Sakai in Campus Technology magazine
  January, 2004
• Liked community source concept
• Shortly after it was made publicly available in
  July, 2004, our CTO began to test it
• We hired staff in December, 2004
• Put up demo copy of 1.0 during the summer
• Launched Pilot with 2.0 in Fall, 2005

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The Pilot Fall 2005

• 50 faculty members
• 5,000 students, in classes ranging from 15
  students to 1,200 students and across all
  disciplines
• Results
• Easy to use
• Still young but promising
• Anyone affiliated with Rutgers can set up site

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The Pilot
Spring semester begins
Pilot begins
Pilot ends
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Fall 2006 Architecture
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Sakai at Rutgers

• Staff
• Applications Developer
• Systems Programmer/Administrator (1.25)
• Instructional Designer
• Other staff who are working with us
• Campus-based instructional designer (2)
• Web developer/campus-based instructional designer
  (0.25)

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Sakai in Research

• Motivation
• Open source, open license
• Intuitive, easy to use
• Cyberinfrastructure
• - Collaborative environment for
  internal/external
• - Front-end for tools/applications
• - Same environment as courses

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Research Demo Site

• Created site to demonstrate tools
• Joinable

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Additional general collaborationtools under
development

• Blog
• Shared Display
• Shared Whiteboard
• Multipoint Audio
• Multipoint Video
• Open Source Portfolio
• SakaiBrary (TwinPeaks)

These are works-in-progress by members of the
Sakai eResearch community. There are no dates for
release.
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Web Services

• Standard web technology that can facilitate
  communication of data into and out of Sakai
• OIRT exploring to create bridge between
  existing tools and Sakai using web services
• We are currently collecting information about
  tools that faculty have developed in their labs
  that they might want to integrate with Sakai
  using web services

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For more information

• sakai.rutgers.edu
• sakaiproject.org
• Email sakai_at_rutgers.edu
• Gayle K. Stein, Ph.D. (gstein_at_rutgers.edu)
• Tom Grzelak (grzelak_at_rutgers.edu)
• oirt.rutgers.edu