Sakaie-Learning Update @ CPUTSeptember 2009

Stephen MarquardCentre for Educational Technology

University of Cape Town

stephen.marquard@uct.ac.zatwitter.com/stephenmarquard

Overview

• The product category and the industry• About Sakai• Vula: UCT’s Sakai implementation• Where is Sakai going ?

The LMS is dead

R.I.P.

Well, not quite.

But reports of its death are only slightly exaggerated.

What is Sakai?

The Sakai Project is:• Community: Educational institutions,

commercial affiliates and other partners (112 members, more adopters)

• Code: open source, extensible, service-oriented, scaleable, diverse, 1.2m lines, 52 developers (ohloh.net)

• Foundation: Board and small staff which carries out co-ordination and community-building activities

Where is Sakai?

Open Source in higher education

• Diversity is good• Community is good• Community spawns community:

– Fluid (rich accessible user interfaces)– Kuali (finance & admin systems and workflow)– OpenCast (webcasting)

Why did UCT choose Sakai?

• 2004: – WebCT: low uptake, mixed opinions– home-grown system: not sustainable

• Sakai decision was about open source vs proprietary:– Allows us to deliver new tools and services– We benefit from development by other institutions– We can customize and extend the environment for UCT requirements

• Strategic value of being part of an international open source consortium– Community with significant experience in educational technology– Founded by MIT, Stanford, Indiana, Michigan, now 100+ consortium

members (significant number in the global top 200 universities)• Good integration with other enterprise systems (less administrative

overhead, fewer support issues)• Sound technical architecture (e.g. high availability through clustering, web

services, open framework, APIs)

Sakai at UCT

• Vula was launched at UCT in Feb 2006 (2-year transition from legacy environments)

• Use is voluntary (encouraged but not required by UCT’s Educational Technology Policy)

• Vula is mostly used in support of campus-based face-to-face courses (relatively few distance or block-release courses)

Part of an eLearning ecosystem

Live audio/video conferencingAdobe Connect

Webcasting / video streaming incl. lecture captureOpenCast

OER Directory

Institutional repositoryDSpace/Fedora

LAMS

CBT / Training / HelpVirtual Expert, SCORM

Turnitin

Cloud

“Open UCT”

OER content

Personal Learning Environments

IMS LTI-enabled“shareable tools”

Vula Vital Stats

Type Active users Jan – Oct 2007

Active users Jan – Oct 2008

Percentage increase 2007 to 2008

Staff [1] 1,141 2,313 103%

Student [2] 16,861 20,351 21%

Guest 1,436 3,221 124%

Total 19,438 25,885 33%

Year 2006 2007 2008

Total course sites created (includes test sites and sites created but not used) 191 907 1348

Number of staff with the role of Site owner, Lecturer or Support staff 242 505 1202

91% of UCT students logged in to Vula at least once during 2008 (20,351 / 22,231)

Concurrent user sessions

Up to 13,000 people log in to Vula every day

28,000+ people use Vula

Why do people use Vula?

• Bread and butter uses (esp. important for large courses)– Announcements– Course content– Tutorial group signup and management– Assignments (with Turnitin)– Entering student marks (Gradebook)– Tests and Quizzes– Online discussion, student questions and feedback– Course evaluations

• Student pressure (“other courses use Vula”)• Course design requires online components

(some courses can no longer be run only F2F)• Provide support in learning areas where students struggle• Support innovation in teaching and learning model

UCT students and staff love Vula

My overall experience using Vula has been (n=3,935)

2124

1656

130 15 100

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

very positive positive neutral negative very negative

Staff (n=148): 53% very positive, 42% positive, 5% neutral, 0% negative

Student survey highlights (Oct 08): Course use

I would prefer my courses to ...use Vula extensively: 60%make moderate use of Vula: 31%

Use of Vula has improved my learning80% agree or strongly agree

Most valuable benefit (choose one)Improved resource sharing: 23%Improved course administration: 21%Improved communication: 17%Improved my learning: 16%Improved my time management: 11%

Student survey highlights (Oct 08): Other use

Valuable or very valuable for (top 6 in descending order, 51% to 40%):

• Student activism (e.g. Green Week) • Student societies • Student governance (e.g. SRC, Faculty Councils) • Personal use (e.g. store work, backup files) • Academic writing• Participating in research projects

Student survey highlights (Oct 08): Using Vula

I found it easy to learn how to use Vula93% agree or strongly agree (30%, 63%)

I can quickly do what I need to do or find what I'm looking for on Vula:91% agree or strongly agree (33%, 58%)

When you have a problem with Vula, what do you most often do to get help?71% ask a friend or another student14% Ask a lab administrator or lab assistant

My overall experience using Vula has been:96% positive or very positive (42%, 54%)

Exploring innovative uses of learning environments

• Wikis• Simulation games• Mashups• Project sites• Communities• Where are we going?

Creating collaborative spaces with Wikis

• Wikis provide scaffolding for students to share information about themselves and contribute to a shared knowledge base

The “HETWiki” : History of Economic Thought (3rd year course), created by students working in pairs following a template. Students entries were assessed to form part of the course mark.

Simulation games create microworlds for (more) authentic learning experiences

• Applied International Trade Bargaining– 3rd year Economics Course in which student teams

role-play countries engaged in WTO negotiations– Evolved from

• WebCT (2005 and earlier), to • WebCT (course) + Vula (students) (2006), to • Vula with multiple sites (and maybe Facebook?) (2007)

• Inkundla yeHlabathi / World Forum Online– International Law simulation

Trade Bargaining students use project sites to co-ordinate bargaining tactics with other countries

Mashups with Google Maps

The Sakai Maps

tool creates a

mashup between

Sakai and Google

Maps. In this site,

postgraduate

History students

share the

geographic location

and other

information about

primary source

documents being

studied through the

Aluka digital

archive.

Vula project sites

14% of all Vula sites are project sites created by students.

Of those, 49% are created for academic purposes.

Project sites are also used by staff, for example for research collaboration.

(Survey of Vula project sites, May 07)

Student project sites

Surveyed active student-

created project sites from

Feb 06 to May 07 (site

title, description, content /

tools) to categorise by

intention, purpose or

activity.

Academic

Course project 35

Peer Support: Academic 16

Tutor/Student interaction 7

Postgrad research 4

Total 62

Social / personal

Student Society 34

Social interaction 14

Student Governance 7

Student Activism 5

Residence Life 4

Personal Development 1

Total 65

From courses to community

The SRC site

is visited by

over 50% of

UCT students

eLearning in a changing environment

• Critical mass reached (“everything should be on Vula”)– More support and training requirements– High-stakes usage (tests, final exams)– Demand to “fill in the gaps” in features– “We can do X on Vula” (e.g. course evaluations)– Potential for deriving greater value from network effects (data analytics / early-warning systems)

• Rapid innovation in and adoption of Internet services (e.g. Facebook, Google Apps) are redefining end-user expectations and changing application usage patterns

• The above and more available bandwidth will create demand for better integration with Internet services

• The “product category” of the LMS is aging and in the process of reinvention (aka. “the LMS is dead, long live the … ?”)

What are students using?

Institutional services … but also Internet-based services.

Student survey highlights (Oct 08): ICT use

What other information and communication technologies do you often use? Don't

usePersonal

onlyAcademic

onlyPersonal & Academic

SMS (cell phone text messaging) 1% 24% 2% 73%

GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail or other webmail 6% 20% 4% 71%

Google applications (e.g. Docs, Calendar, Groups) 36% 10% 7% 46%

Your own blog (e.g. blogger, Livejournal) 79% 12% 3% 5%

Instant messaging (e.g. MSN, AIM, GTalk, Mxit) 26% 40% 3% 32%

Internet phone or video conferencing (e.g. Skype) 55% 30% 3% 13%

Facebook, Myspace or other social networking sites 9% 55% 3% 33%

Wikipedia or other social content sites 11% 8% 24% 57%

Flickr, Youtube or other social media sites 34% 43% 4% 19%

Online news sites (e.g. News24, IOL, ...) 16% 20% 12% 52%

Virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life) 89% 5% 3% 3%

Online games (e.g. World of Warcraft) 79% 16% 2% 3%

Peer-to-peer file sharing (e.g. bittorrent, DC++) 42% 24% 4% 30%

Online research journals and databases 18% 3% 53% 26%

Websites with academic content from other universities 31% 3% 44% 22%

Sakai 3

See slides on SlideShare:

http://www.slideshare.net/mkorcuska/sakai-3-boston