sakai


 * Sakai**


 * 1.	Introduction:**

Sakai is a quite new term of open source systems that refer to academic institutions, commercial organizations and individuals who collaboratively work together to develop a common Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE). The Sakai CLE is a gratis community open source, and educational software platform allocating educational community environment. It is the [|Educational Community License] – one of the [|open source]  licenses. It targets on collaborative work to build up innovative software applications that are designed to enhance teaching, learning, researching and cooperating within education, community and commercial enterprises.


 * 2.	Description:**

The Sakai project constructs Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) software that extended under the [|Educational Community License] – a completely [|open source]  license to open community, and its membership fees are 100% optional. In addition, community and foundation that a group of people work together to explore for large scales of open source efficiencies are the Sakai project’s the key expectations. The [|Sakai community] works as a connecting tool to exchange, develop and freely distribute Sakai software to [|Sakai’s community]  - an oversea alliance of universities, colleges, and commercial affiliates. The [|Sakai project] comprised of [|Educational Partners], [|Commercial Affiliates]  and Educational Community License.

The Sakai’s system basically works on [|Course Management System] (CMS), [|Learning Management System] (LMS) or [|Virtual Learning Environment]   (VLE). Sakai is an adjustable tool to extend its framework and basic capabilities to develop collaboration tools and services. This software is accessible to use, modify, contribute, maintain and even evolve some technical features for better use. For example, [|Indiana University] has freely shared all of its Sakai training materials and animated the tutorial for Sakai software, and other partners are enlarging, refining and sharing their materials as well. Sakai is considered as a collaboration and learning [|product] that supports for teaching, learning, researching and collaboration. Many universities have been extensively utilizing Sakai to support their online education.


 * 3.	History:**

The idea and an early version of the Sakai software was derived from the [|University of Michigan], and its former structures were fundamentally constructed on existing tools that the largest phase came from the University of Michigan's “CHEF”. The developing process of the Sakai CLE was originally funded by a grant from the [|Mello Foundation] known as the [|Sakai Project]. It was originally established on the foundation of a sharing course management system collaboration and construction of four instructions: [|Indiana University] (Oncourse CL), [|Massachusttes Institute of Technology]  ([|Stellar] ), [|Standford University]  (CourseWork), University of Michigan (CTools, formerly CourseTools, based on the CHEF framework) working as a part of the [|Open Knokledge Initiative]  (OKI) and [|uPortal], and the project meeting started in January 2004.

Sakai is named after [|Hiroyuki Sakai] of the Food Channel Television program "[|Iron Chef] ". He was famous for his fusion of French and Japanese cuisine, and the Sakai software was also a fusion of teaching, learning, researching and collaborating.

With working efforts of four institutions’ staff members, the [|Sakai version 1.0] was released in June 2004 at the first Sakai conference that had 165 attendees, and the Michigan CHEF software was considered as the seed of design and technical framework. The [|foundation] group of four universities invited other institutions to join through the [|Sakai Partners Program], and the partner institutions also contribute finance to develop the program. University of Michigan launched Sakai 1.0 in August 2004, and Indiana University was the first to launch a large [|pilot] with [|Sakai 1.5] in a year later (in March, 5, 2004).

During development, redesign and innovation, [|Sakai 2.0]  was released in July 2005 with its vital improvement in design and system including portal, default skin (CSS), JSF, WYSIWYG Editor, Internationalization, Content review, course management API, Database and Authz. At that time, [|Sakai Foundation] was founded in October 2005 as a non-profit corporation to support and promote a community-developed open source which works in Collaboration and Learning Environment to aid education and community research. Besides, The Sakai intellectual property was funded through a copyright license agreement from the universities to the Sakai Foundation that had about 100 members and twelve well-known [|Commercial Affiliates] including Apple, IBM, Sun, Pearson Education and others.

In December 2005, [|Sakai 2.1] was introduced in a Sakai conference with 565 attendees to Austin, Texas. [|University of South Africa] used Sakai for 70,000 students in January 2006, and many other universities started pilots. Then, [|Sakai 2.4] that had many outstanding features on design and innovation was released in July 21, 2007, and; especially, [|Sakai 2.5]  is being released in November 2007 with some features such as assignments, samigo/ tests &amp; quizzes, gradebook,[| resources], [|schedule]  and [|help].


 * 4.	Impact on teaching and learning:**

The Sakai’s goals are to develop innovative software applications designed to enhance teaching, learning, researching, and collaborating in education. Each version has its own innovatively emerging features in design to support for education and research, and it comprises of many common characteristics of Course Management Systems including Generic[| tools] ([|announcements], [|drop box] ,[| email archive] , [|chat room] , forums, [|threaded discussion] , preference, presentation), teaching tools ([|assignments] , grade-book, assessment, management, [|syllabus]  and [|post’em] ) and portfolio tools (forms, evaluations, reports, glossary, and layouts). Sakai 2.4 has been outstandingly improved to support teaching and learning. Announcements and calendar summary allow instructors to post announcements for the class, and can add a week or month calendar to show more event information including attachments, link to [|schedule] events or even use color-coding to emphasize important ones. [|Grade-book] is used for course grades, comments for each assigned grade and revision critical grade data. Chat, messages and forums permit students to discuss with each other and instructors. [|Tests and quizzes] are an effective aid tool for teaching and learning. They allow instructors to email for sending necessary information to individual students. Test and quiz tools permit teachers to import/export assessments with attachments, change the feedback settings for assignments and even randomly choose questions and multiple attempts. For example, [|University of South Africa] and [|University of Cape Town]  had developed a tool for Sakai that is Q&amp;A (Questions and Answers). Q&amp;A tool allows students to ask questions which can be answered by other students or instructors or tutors. Questions are classified and ranked by the common answers or can be divided into categories. “Ninety percent of Sakai is used as a compliment to the classroom, ten percent is blended and distance learning. Acceptance has been great, by students and instructors alike”, said Feliz Gouveia. Centro do Recurrsos Multimediaticos, [|Universidade Fernando Pessoa].

To sum up, Sakai can be utilized with many different applications to support teaching and learning through small [|group collaboration], community systems, ePortfolios, [|wiki], blog, link tools, podcast and [|new tools].


 * 5.	Practical applications:**

The key factor of course management systems is to make Sakai become a collaborative tool that have capacities to switch its backgrounds and settings in order to allow users to work properly with each tool for their research and group projects, and it foundationally works on [|Java]  environment. Sakai gives users a suitable and stable online learning environment because it is easy to use, flexible and fast to improve thank to using open source (CMS applications). Moreover, the Sakai software has many helpful features and highly performing modular infrastructure that is prevalent in online and distance education. Besides, Sakai has integrated capacities for working with other applications such as uPortal and Pluot, and fits with e-learning standards.

[|Stephen Marquard] – Learning Technologies Coordinator of University of Cape Town said “UCT decided to move to open source in 2004, migrating from WebCT and a home-grown system. Open source offers the advantages of flexibility and avoids the risks of vendor lock-in and escalating license costs. We were attract to Sakai by the size and expertise of the community around it”

[|Sakai Features List] [|Run demo] (username: guest, password: guest) [|Sakai Overview] [|Download and run demo Sakai 2.4] [|Sakai 2.4.1]
 * 6.	Examples or demonstration:**


 * 7.	Reference:**

[|Sakai project website] [|7th Sakai Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands] [|6th Sakai Conference, Atlanta, Georgia]: [|Podcasts and Powerpoints]


 * 8.	External links:**

[|Saki Resources] [|8th Sakai Conference, Newport Beach, CA] [|Sakai map] [|Sakai Quebec] [|Sakai Software]