Inside the Evolving Sakai
Collaborative Learning Environment
“When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.”
- Larry Ellison, Founder and CEO, Oracle
Josh Baron
Director, Academic Technology and eLearning
Marist College
Sakai Foundation Board of Directors
How many are
running Sakai today?
How many are
piloting or evaluating Sakai?
How many came because you
thought there would be
rice wine and sushi?

Presentation Overview
What is Sakai? – A view from 10,000 feet
 The CLE Software
 The Community
 The Foundation
 Why Sakai? – Driving Innovation
 Sakai: Myth vs. Reality
 New Initiatives and Directions
 Q&A (Please ask as we go…)

What is
Sakai?
Community
Collaborative
Learning
Environment
Software
Open-Source
Model
Remind me at the end and
I’ll tell you where the name
comes from 
Sakai
Foundation
What is
Sakai?
Community
Collaborative
Learning
Environment
Software
Open-Source
Model
Sakai
Foundation
The CLE Software
Courses
Portfolios
Projects
My Workspace
Be Kind, Don’t Hog the Wi-Fi! 
SAKAI
DEMONSTRATION
CLOSE TO 50
ADDITIONAL
“CONTRIB” TOOLS
Synchronous conferencing
Image Gallery Tool
SOLO – Offline Sakai
Sakaibrary – Library integration
Timeline Tool
What is
Sakai?
Community
Collaborative
Learning
Environment
Software
Open-Source
Model
Sakai
Foundation
The Sakai Community
Over 160 Production and140 Pilot Instances on 7 continents
Sakai Commercial Affiliates
An Enterprise Solution (or not)
Number of Users
Institutions
130,000+
Indiana, UNISA
60,000+
Michigan
11,000 - 50,000
UC Berkeley, Rutgers,Yale,Virginia Tech, RINET, Cape
Town, Etudes Consortium, New England (AU), Valencia,
Windsor,
1,000 - 10,000
Marist College, Cambridge University, Cerritos, Charles
Sturt, Fernando Pessoa, Lleida, Mount Holyoke,
Northwestern, Rice, Roskilde, Saginaw Valley, UC
Merced, Whitman, Arteveldehogeschool, eTech Ohio,
AMDG Inc., OHSU, Limerick, Ross Institute
Increasing Number of Committers
December 2006 (n=116)
April 2008 (n=225)
94% increase in 16 months
What is
Sakai?
Community
Collaborative
Learning
Environment
Software
Open-Source
Model
Sakai
Foundation
The Foundation
“Community source builds upon the open source production and development
models but introduces more formal commitments and coordination to the work
and strategic directions.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_source)
Protects open-source license
 Manages Sakai Partners Program

◦ 100+ members

Coordination and facilitation
◦ Staff coordinate work within the community
◦ Host yearly conference and regular meetings
◦ External communication
Why Sakai? – Driving Innovation

“Built by educators, for educators”
◦ Bottom line is not a profit-margin

“Crowd-sourcing”– The human collective
◦
◦
◦
◦
5 Foundation staff
225 developers & 500 active contributors
10,000+ instructors & 1,000,000+ students
Communities of practice – powerful PD opts!
Decoupling “code” from the “service”
 Open standards support interoperability

◦ IMS Course Cartridge, QTI
Sakai: Myth vs. Reality
Sakai is only for large research institution
 You need lots of developers to maintain Sakai
 It’s free, right?

◦ No license costs but it isn’t “free”
◦ ROI investing in human capital vs. licensing fees

A bunch of volunteer can’t build anything useful!
◦ What about Linux? Apache? Your local FD?
◦ Robust software engineering process followed

Using OSS without commercial support is crazy!
What myths have you heard?
Institutional Resource Snapshot
Code
Commits
Role
PM
Technical Lead
Sys Admin
DBA
Developer
QA
UI Designer
Instructional
Designer
Technical Writer
End-User
Support
Trainer
Totals
HIGH
HIGH
MED
MED
MED
LOW
LOW
LOW
Michigan
(45K
users)
.75
Stanford
(14K
users)
1.00
Rutgers
(27K
users)
.50
GA Tech
(20K
users)
2.50
.50
3.00
1.50
1.00
1.00
.25
3.00
.50
1.00
.50
1.00
UCT
(25K
users)
.50
.25
.25
Yale
(15K
users)
.20
.50
.10
.10
2.50
.25
Rice
(10K
users)
.10
.10
.50
.10
.50
.10
.25
Cerritos
(20K
users)
.10
.10
.20
.10
.10
.10
.10
.25
.10
.10
1.00
2.00
1.25
.75
.50
.25
3.00
.50
14.00
.10
4.00
9.25
1.00
1.00
1.25
5.25
.50
4.75
.50
3.75
1.50
.50
.25
5.15
.50
2.00
.10
1.85
New Initiatives & Directions

Teaching and Learning Group
◦ Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award
◦ OpenEdPractices.org

Yearly international conference
◦ Sakai 2009 – Possibly Boston

Regional meetings and hackathons
◦ Cambridge (July 08)
◦ Berkley & Virginia Tech (Fall 08)


K-12 Sakai Conference (RINET)
User Experience Initiative
What might the future look like?
Where to learn more…
Home: http://www.sakaiproject.org
Issues: http://bugs.sakaiproject.org
Collab: http://collab.sakaiproject.org
Wiki:
http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence
 Michael Korcuska, Executive Director,
mkorcuska@sakaifoundation.org
 Anthony Whyte, Community Liaison,
arwhyte@sakaifoundation.org




Inside the Evolving Sakai
Collaborative Learning Environment
Josh Baron
Director, Academic Technology and eLearning
Josh.Baron@marist.edu
(845) 575-3623