Sakai
Overview
July 13, 2005
Joseph Hardin
Sakai Board Chair
University of Michigan
School of Information
KYOU / sakai
Boundary, Situation
Genesis of Sakai – Through
Michigan Eyes
• In the beginning there were two activities –
Teaching & Research - “what faculty do”
• Online tools should support both
• But initial work was bifurcated
1) Work in building and analyzing Research
Collaboratories – the online support of research
and research teams
2) Work in building/analyzing Course Management
Systems – online teaching support
2
CourseTools
Over 42,000 users at the end of 2003, retired Fall 2005
3
WorkTools
Over 9000 users (2000 active) at the end of 2003.
Migrated to Sakai Spring 2005.
4
Sakai Concepts
• It is both research and teaching - it is all
“collaboration” - many tools in common
– Teaching: Courses, tools, drop-boxes
– Research: Putting the user interface on the
Grid and Virtual Organizations
Teaching and
Learning
Collaborative
Research
Collaboration and
Learning Environment
5
So, Let’s Build a Single System
•
Build a framework that can be easily
added to – modular
• From the beginning – make it both
1) a powerful research support environment
2) A competitive learning management
system
We need a unified theory,
and practice
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A 15-Year Mission @ UM
Portal Technology
Jetspeed 2.0
uPortal 3.0
Websphere É
Java
Swing
JSR-168 Technology
Legacy
Channels,
Teamlets
CHEF
Services
JSR-168
Portlets
Sakai GUI
Sakai GUI
Sakai
Teamlet
Sakai
Teamlet
OKI
Services
Sakai
Other
Services
OGCE Grid Portal
NEESGrid
CHEF
Science of Collaboratories
Worktools (Notes Based)
CTools
CTNG
Coursetools (Notes Based)
SPARC
1991 - 1997 1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
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SPARC
2/2001 600 users 800 data sources
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Science of Collaboratories
people-to-people
Communication,
Collaboration
Services
groups-toinformation
Digital libraries &
documents
Distributed,
media-rich
information
technology
groups-tofacilities
Remote
instruments
http://www.scienceofcollaboratories.org/
NSF Funded ITR 9
Teaching and
Learning
Collaborative
Research
Collaboration and
Learning Environment
CourseTools
CHEF
WorkTools
CHEF= CompreHensive collaborativE Framework
This was the first run at the problem at UM
10
But others were thinking like us
• Home grown CourseTools-like systems
were reaching end of life at IndianaU,
UMichigan, MIT, Stanford
• Standards and interoperability were hot
topics
• The open source model was emerging as
viable in the application space (or we
could make it so)
Resources could be mobilized
11
So, CHEF -> Sakai
CourseTools
CHEF
WorkTools
CHEF
Sakai
The Research and Teaching Tool Project
developed legs – built a community
12
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
software into a pre-integrated collection of open
source tools.” (January, 2004)
Sakai Project receives $2.4 million grant from
Mellon Foundation; support from Hewlett Foundation
13
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
14
Why: All the simple reasons
These 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
15
Online Collaboration and Learning Environments
IUB Oncourse Growth
are Key Tools for our Faculty and Students Now
90%
80%
70%
Percentage
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Spr99
Fal99
Spr00
Fal00
Spr01
Fal01
Spr02
Fal02
Sp03
Fa03
Sem es ters
Cours es
facultyX2
Students X2
Rapid, continuing growth in adoption and use.
Just keeps growing.
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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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Supporting the Class
Sakai as Course Management System (CMS)
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Supporting the Lab
Sakai as collaboratories - support for online research teams
19
Ctools – List of Worksites – Classes, Projects
Both students and faculty can set up projects.
In fact, we are seeing the rate of project creation surpass
that of class creation. People like to work/learn together.
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Bringing the lab to the
classroom
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Jan 04
Sakai Project Timeline
July 04
MIT
•Stellar
SAKAI 1.0 Release
•Tech Portability Profile
•Framework
•Services-based Portal
•Refined OSIDs
& implementations
SAKAI Tools
•Complete CMS/CLE
•Assessment
Stanford
•CourseWork
•Assessment
OKI
•OSIDs
Dec 05
Activity:
Maintenance &
Transition from a
project to
a community
Michigan
•CHEF Framework
•CourseTools
•WorkTools
Indiana
•Navigo Assessment
•Eden Workflow
•OneStart
•Oncourse
May 05
Primary SAKAI Activity
Architecting for JSR-168 Portlets,
uPortal OKI services JSFaces, etc. Developing
Sakai 1.0 design,
Tech Portability Profile.
SAKAI 2.0 Release
•Tech Portability Profile
•Framework
•Services-based Portal
SAKAI Tools
•Complete CMS
•Assessment
•Workflow
•Research Tools
•Authoring Tools
•Partner Tools…
Primary SAKAI Activity
Refining SAKAI Framework,
Tool development to TPP.
Intensive community building/training
22
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 Affiliates
Based on open-open licensing – open source, open for
commercialization
SCA – 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.
23
Sakai Educational Partner’s Program
Developing 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, 2005
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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
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University of California, Los Angeles
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University of California, Merced
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University of California, Santa Barbara
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University of Cambridge, CARET
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University of Cape Town, SA
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University of Colorado at Boulder
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University of Delaware
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University of Hawaii
•
University of Hull
•
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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University of Minnesota
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University of Missouri
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University of Nebraska
•
University of Oklahoma
•
University of Texas at Austin
•
University of Virginia
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University of Washington
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University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Virginia Polytechnic Institute/University
•
Whitman College
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Yale University
New
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University of Melbourne, Australia
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University of Toronto, Knowledge Media Design
25
Institute
Some Sakai Partner Projects:
Examples of Early Community
Contributions to the Sakai Project
26
Grad Tools
The 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.
28
Keeping track of
student progress
toward a degree.
More time for learning,
and teaching.
29
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
31
ETUDES Consortium – Sakai Pilots to Production
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 colleges will migrate to Sakai by July 1, 2007.
32
Skins at Course Site Level
33
Melete – Lesson Builder
34
Composing content online
using a WYSIWYG Editor
Linking to websites to supplement
or support the content of a lesson
This is MELETE
Uploading all types of
documents for lesson
components/content
35
Student View – Navigation & Licensing
content
Navigation
is created
automatically
Authors can license their content
37
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.org
Tracking Sakai releases – 1.5 and 2.0
38
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. We are also doing the
same with research tools – here’s some examples:
39
Open Grid
Computing
Environment
Example:
Submitting
a job
to the
GRID.
Note research computing tools added on left. 40
NEESgrid interface
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NEESgird interface
43
NEESgrid interface
44
NEESgrid: Data viewer
45
NEESgrid: LabNotebook
46
NEESgrid: Simulation
47
Remember, Sakai Concepts
• It is both research and teaching - it is all
“collaboration” - many tools in common
– Teaching: Courses, tools, drop-boxes
– Research: Building user interface and
services on the Grid and Virtual Organizations
Teaching and
Learning
Collaborative
Research
Collaboration and
Learning Environment
48
SCA – Sakai Commercial Affiliates
First Generation – Open Source Software Support
Support for the Sakai
codebase, or support of
Sakai users = SCA Member
49
‘Second
Generation’
SCA Partners
50
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
Chandler/Westwood
PKI
Dartmouth
Twin Peaks
Navigator
51
…sees two significant areas of activity and investment on the part of institutions
and higher education communities (…) with the Sakai Project having the
promise of playing a keystone role in both of these areas:
• Open-source Business and Learning Solutions: Institutions are driving
towards collaborative, open systems for content creation, management and
delivery, as well as administrative and support systems. The institutions see open
systems as a way to reduce operating costs and a growing dependency on
proprietary software vendors, and as a way to unleash the innovation and
creativity of their faculty and students.
• Interoperable Learning Content: Institutions are driving towards
interoperable learning materials (textbooks, tests, supplemental materials).
Institutions increasingly are differentiating themselves in their effort to attract
students through specialization (…) A key need, therefore, is for content to be
standards based and interoperable in order to simplify its acquisition. A related and
critical need is the effective ability to find learning materials across a vast array of
electronic sources.
IBM believes that Sakai is one of the answers…
52
What IBM plans to do with Sakai Project…
Reference Architecture: Working with a group of higher education leaders and
partners, IBM intends to publish a reference architecture for the higher education
industry and to create an integration stack (…)
SW Stack and Offering: With the Sakai application as the core, IBM plans to build
an end-to-end software stack(…)
HW Stack and Offering: Building on the software stack, the next logical step is to
build a combined software/hardware stack and provide clients with what we are
calling a “Sakai-in-a-Box” offering that enables them to order a Sakai installed
server that they simply plug in and configure to their specific institution’s needs. This
will be a significant factor in enabling a fast adoption rate for Sakai.
Hosting Stack and Offering: Examining the successful business models of
commercially successfully Course Management Systems highlights the fact that
being able to provide a web-accessible ‘hosted’ offering is a key factor in fast
commercial adoption(…)
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What IBM plans to do… 2
Code Donations: IBM is well known for our significant contributions of source
code to the open source community, and we are open to considering the
donation of IBM owned assets to the Sakai community.
“Commercial” SW expertise: As one of the world’s largest software
companies,IBM Software Group can offer the Sakai Project significant
experience across the full spectrum of code development, packaging, testing
and commercialization.
Global Sales and Marketing Channel: IBM manages the single largest
Education Industry channel in the world, combining the most experienced
team of IBM Education Industry sales experts in the world with the most
extensive Business Partner channel in the world. With the key to Sakai’s
success being quick, broad commercial adoption, having an experienced,
global channel will be a significant contributor.
Both universities and commercial partners
contributing code and expertise. Benefit of
open source strategy.
54
And, interestingly…
• Sun
• Apple
• Unisys
?
Are 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.
55
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.56
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.
57
Sakai Releases
• Enterprise Quality Teaching and Learning,
Research and Collaboration
Sakai 1.0
Jan 2004
Sakai 1.5
Jan 2005
Collaboration/Research
Sakai 2.0
Sakai 2.1
Jan 2006
Enterprise “suitability”
Teaching/Learning
58
Known Pilots and Production
• Boston University School of
Management
• Carleton College
• Foothill-De Anza Community
College 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.
59
(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.
60
But, it is also…
The name of a famous Iron
Chef. (More fun!)
It is also (we think):
Which has connotations,
we are told, of moving
across boundaries, of being
involved in a complex
situation. (Right?)
Appropriate for us.
61
Conference Growth 100% in 6 months
Chart June 3
450
400
350
Rigistrants
300
DecConftot
250
JuneConfTo
Linear (June
200
Linear (DecC
150
100
50
0
1
3
5
7
9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 65
DaysFromSiteStart
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Sakai Foundation
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•
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•
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Setting up a not for profit corporation
Liability protection
Home for core development, support
Architecture, development, QA, production
Sustainability for community
63
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
We are in a rapid growth phase.
64
Thanks
Q&A
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