What is Sakai
Introduction
The Sakai software initiative aims to “design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education” See http://www.sakaiproject.org.
A simple way of describing the Sakai software would be to say that it one of its forms it can look and perform look like a typical learning management system such as WebCT or Blackboard. In reality it is much more than that – it aims to recognise that scholarly activity extends beyond teaching and learning to research and other activities and that a scholar moves seamlessly between those activities in the course of their work. Sakai therefore aims to be a collaboration framework that can support a wide range of collaboration tools that can be mixed and matched to suit the needs of the particular scholarly environment in which it is to be deployed.
The Sakai initiative began in early 2004 with an initial community comprised of the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT and Stanford University. Since that time the Sakai community has grown rapidly and now encompasses over 80 higher education institutions from around the globe. CSU has been a observing member for most of 2005. In addition to the 80 higher education partners there are a series of commercial affiliates providing services and assisting in the development of Sakai.
The original Sakai initiative built on some seed software known as Chef. Sakia was aimed at taking that seed software and turning it into something very special – hence the name Sakai – the Iron Chef.
As the inertia of the project has grown so too has the progress of the software development. In less than two years the Sakai framework has evolved from a simple shell to a solid collaboration and environment.
The combination of recent industry mergers and the remarkable progress of the Sakai process have given rise to interest from Australian higher education organisations. A number of high profile institutions have now outlaid funding for Sakai partner membership, however at this stage (December 2005) CSU is the only Australian institution to have formally announce a commitment to provide developers to the Sakai foundation.
Sakai is a community source initiative. Community based software is a form of open source software. It is characterised by the fact that the community is made up primarily of organisations rather than individuals as is the case for open source software. In Community Source, the community of member organisations support and control the development of the software, influence its functionality and its development priorities but then make the software freely available.
Modern Community Source initiatives are quite different from the collaboration that was the CASMAC administrative systems initiative in Australia during the mid to late 1990’s. Modern Community Source initiatives are characterised by voluntary membership, shared contributions of developer resources and the presentation of the resulting software to the broader community.
There is a rapidly emerging trend in the HE sector world wide and in particular in the United States, for HE institutions to tire of the costs and constraints imposed, by commercial vendors on their missions critical software applications, including their teaching and learning applications. This first resulted in the adoption of open source products such as uPortal and Linux but quite recently has resulted in the formation of groups dedicated to community-based software development. The most significant of these initiatives is the Sakai initiative.
The Sakai initiative originated as a collaboration between MIT, Stanford, Indiana and Michigan which attracted support from the Mellon Foundation. The group is now supported by about 80 other institutions and about 10 commercial organisations. It has just moved from a funded project to become a true Community Source Foundation.
One of the emerging outcomes of successful open source and community source developments is a change within the commercial market place. There is now an increasing trend for commercial providers to offer implementation and support services for open source products or to build additional functionality on the top of an open source product.
More information on the Sakai community source development effort can be found at the Sakai homepage http://www.sakaiproject.org/ SAKAI IN TEACHING AND LEARNING