Sakai Community and Technology UpdateSUNY WIZARDS CONFERENCE, 01 MARCH 2006

ANTHONY WHYTESAKAI FOUNDATION / UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Sakai in Ten MinutesWHAT IS SAKAI?

A COMMUNITY — a growing international alliance of universities, colleges and commercial affiliates working in open partnership with standards organizations like IMS and OKI and other initiatives like OSP's ePortfolio and JA-SIG's uPortal to develop open source enterprise-wide software applications to enhance collaboration, research and teaching within the higher education and research communities. A FOUNDATION — the Sakai Project, supported generously by the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations and a number of founding members of Sakai, has given way to the non-profit Sakai Foundation, a community-funded and community-sustaining institution fostering innovation and a common, open approach to software development and distribution.

A FRAMEWORK — The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) is an open-source, extensible framework for building and deploying enterprise-wide collaboration, teaching and research tools and services. It supports a variety of constituencies within higher education and beyond--students and instructors, researchers, project teams and work groups. Sakai's CLE offers interoperability, reliability and scalability in a system that is free to acquire, use and modify. AN IRON CHEF — the famous Hiroyuki Sakai

Why choose Sakai?COMMUNITY SOURCE MODEL — THE VALUE PROPOSITION

Academic Institutions• Control your own destiny — share in software development, distribution and ownership and sidestep limitations imposed by proprietary software.• Leverage leadership in teaching and learning — harness the intellectual capital resident within higher education to produce innovative software solutions for higher education. • Get back more than you give — achieve developmental economies of scale and cost savings implicit in inter-institutional cooperation and collaboration.Commercial Organizations• Gain new clients — establish and deepen business relationships within a growing academic community of Sakai adopters.• Enhance brand/name recognition — leverage the growing interest in open source software solutions in general and Sakai in particular to elevate one’s business profile in the marketplace.• Generate revenue — develop new revenue streams by providing goods and services to the Sakai community (e.g., implementation and integration, consulting, hosting and support services, custom tool development).

The Sakai ProjectA BIT OF HISTORY, 2003-2005

Sakai 1.0.0Founding members — the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford University in partnership with uPortal and the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI).

Goals — implement Sakai, adopt Open/Open licensing, share software ownership, contribute 5+ team members under board direction for two years; build community; secure funding, achieve sustainability.

Funding — $4.4 million by institutional staffing (27 FTEs), $2.4 million Mellon and $300,000 Hewlett grants, additional investment through partners.

Releases — 1.0 (Oct 04); 1.5 (Mar 05); 1.5.1 (May 05); 2.0 (June 05); 2.0.1 (Aug 05); 2.1 (Dec 05; 2.1.1 (Feb 06).

Sakai CommunityDiverse, robust and growing (100+)

Sakai Community: Institutional Partnerships, 2004-2006 by Quarter (n=90)

0

20

40

60

80

100

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Quarter

Partners

New Partners (Oct 2005 - present)• University College, Dublin (Eire)• University of Chicago (USA)• Tulane University (USA)• Apple, Inc.• Pearson Education• Charles Sturt University (Australia)• University of Limerick (Eire)• University of Oslo (Norway)• Michigan State University (USA)• University of Auckland (New Zealand; pending)

Sakai is free to acquire, use and modify. Joining the community formally as a dues-paying partner is not required.

Sakai FoundationNON-PROFIT CORPORATION FORMED IN OCTOBER 2005 TO SERVE THE SAKAI COMMUNITY

GovernanceTen board members elected by community representatives to serve three year terms. Empowered to represent the community publicly, manage Sakai’s IP, coordinate software design, development and distribution processes and act as “court of final appeal” on issues of contention between community work groups.

Board Members• Joseph Hardin, Univ. of Michigan• Brad Wheeler, Indiana University• Mara Hancock, Univ. of CA, Berkeley• Lois Brooks, Stanford University• Vivian Sinou, Foothill College

BudgetAnnual budget of approximately $1 million (USD) covering:

• 4-6 staff positions• Bi-annual conferences

IncomeAnnual community partner contributions of $10,000.00 (USD)($5,000.00 per annum (USD) for smaller academic institutions)

• Ian Dolphin, Univ. of Hull• Jutta Treviranus, Univ. of Toronto• John Norman, Univ. of Cambridge• Charles Severance, Univ. of Michigan• Chris Coppola, rSmart Group

• Sakai Fellows program• Outreach activities

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Sakai LicenseEDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY LICENSE

Sakai licensing permits commercial and non-commercial use of the software without any fees or encumbrance.

Sakai uses the Education Community License, a variant of the BSD license. It is designed to encourage a wide range of use including the production of derivative work in the commercial space.

Sakai Distributed DevelopmentSAKAI 2.1: AN INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE

• Individual committers = 36• Academic Institutions = 10• Commercial Partners = 2• Continents = 4

• Individuals testers = 52• Academic institutions = 27• Continents = 3

Developers

QA

Sakai Production StatisticsEARLY ADOPTERS

Other Schools in Production• Univ de Lleida• Walsh University

In Production by Fall 2006• Arizona State• Boston Univ, Schl of Mgmt• Foothill College• Portland State• Stanford University• Univ of California, Berkeley• Univ of Cambridge• Virginia Tech

Pilots• Columbia University• Hong Kong Univ of Sci. and Tech.• Johns Hopkins University• MIT• Northwestern University• Rice University• Roskilde University• Rutgers• Texas State• SURF, Univ. van Amsterdam• Univ. of British Columbia,

Land and Food Systems

• Univ of California, Davis• Univ Fernando Pessoa• Univ of Missouri• Univ of Nebraska-Lincoln• Univ of North Texas• Univ of Virginia• Whitman College

Institution Stu Instr Other Total Sites Web Db Integration NotesEtudes Alliance 2477 83 2560 79 15K stu; 450 sites by F' 06Indiana University 109925 11439 121364 53945 16 1 PeopleSoftUniv of California, Merced 800 30 400 1230 305 1 1 Banner, uPortalUniv. of Cape Town 3922 44 74 4040 48 2 1 PeopleSoft/Novell Nsure22594 student accounts/126 faculty accountsUniv of Michigan 53818 3833 9630 67281 17453 8 1 UMIAC 2738 new course sites W '06Univ of South Africa 54270 3 1 Launched Jan. 06Yale University 6739 778 7052 14569 6839 4 1 Banner, CAS 478 new course sites W '06Totals 177681 16207 17156 265314 78669

Users Servers

Sakai Framework (SAF)KERNAL, COMMON SERVICES, PRESENTATION SERVICES

Abstract Tool Layout

Tool Code (Java)

Application Services

SAF—Common ServicesSAF—Common Services

SAF—KernelSAF—Kernel

SAF—Presentation ServicesSAF—Presentation Services

ServiceInterface (APIs)

ApplicatioApplicationn

FrameworkFrameworkFrameworkFramework

Tools • Responsible for GUI presentation; • Built-in persistence mechanisms prohibited

Services• Documented API required• Access other services via APIs only (not data models)• Presentation agnostic

Framework• Registrar for tools and services• Provider of common capabilities• No knowledge of domain objects

Sakai ToolsSAKAI 2.1.1 ENTERPRISE TOOLS AND SERVICES

• Profile/Roster• Quiz & Tests• Resources• Schedule• Section Mgmt• Syllabus• Web Content• Worksite Setup• WebDAV

Enterprise Tools• Announcements• Assignments• Chat Room• Threaded Discussion• Drop Box• Email Archive• Gradebook• Message Of The Day• News/RSS• Preferences• Presentation

http://cvs.sakaiproject.org/release/

Provisional Tools• Melete (content editor)• Roster• RWiki• SU (Super User)• Sakaiscript (web services)• TwinPeaks (external repository searching while using the WYSIWG editor)

Upcoming 2.1.2 release will feature OSP portfolio integration

Melete

The FutureNEW TOOLS, SERVICES AND TECHNOLOGIES

Short Term• Accessibility improvements• Blog• IMS Tool Interoperability• MailTool• Message Center• TwinPeaks refinements• Pluggable WYSWIG• RSS

Long Term• Sakai/uPortal integration• Enhanced LAMS integration• IMS Content Packaging Import/Export• IMS Common Cartridge

• Hierarchy• CourseManagement API• Section aware tools• JSR-168 Portlet• WSRP Consumer• WSRP Producer Portal• Portal friendly tool id URLs• Unit Test Framework

• JSR-170 Java Content Repository• Lucene• SCORM support• RDF Resource Description Framework support• OWL Web Ontology Language support (Semantic Web)

WSRP = Standardizing presentation-oriented Web services for use by aggregating intermediaries, such as portals

JSR-168 = specification defining a set of APIs for Portal computing addressing the areas of aggregation, personalization, presentation and security.

Sakai and LAMSINTEGRATION DEVELOPMENTS

http://lamsfoundation.org/integration/sakai2/walkthru/sakai04.2.htm

In October 2005 the LAMS Foundation announced plans to integrate Sakai and LAMS. In November 2005 source code and a binary distribution were released.

Charles Severance, Sakai Chief Architect, travels to Australia in two weeks to map out a tighter tools integration strategy with the LAMS team.

Sakai/LAMS Walkthrough

Sakai, uPortal and Banner IntegrationUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED

UC Merced adopted an “out of the box” configuration strategy to simplify integration efforts and shorten the rollout time frame.

Sakai is integrated as a single portlet (iFrame in this case). The portal has no awareness of course rosters and roles -- Banner integration is limited to Sakai. In contrast, Merced’s UCB Mail is exposed via an iChannel portlet rather than a JSR-168 portlet.

SUNY SLN 2.0 Open Source Strategy U-PORTAL, LAMS, SAKAI, OpenLDAP

SLN 2.0 -- Deploy uPortal, LAMS and Sakai. uPortal and Sakai are production ready and available to commence the transition from SLN 1.0 starting Fall 2006. uPortal serves as the single point of contact for users; Sakai is integrated into uPortal via a JSR-168 portlet. LAMS integration is deferred to SLN 2.1 but is introduced to the SUNY community in a pilot program.

The strategy is conservative and permits SLN to focus on other transition issues such as deployment, performance, data conversion and training.

SLN 2.1 -- Integrate LAMS into the Portal; connect Sakai to LAMS. LAMS provides alternate “view” knitting Sakai and non-Sakai capabilities together.

finis