Wikis, polls and blogs new features on replacement for WebCT

Across campus, buzz has been steadily spreading about a new service provided by the university called Sakai. From a link on the university homepage to a Web address listed in various course syllabi, Sakai has surely entered the university's consciousness.

Michael Korcuska, executive director of the Sakai Foundation, said Sakai is a course-management system, the primary purpose of which is to support collaboration in the university community.

Sakai was created through a partnership between University of Michigan, Stanford, Massachusettes Institute of Technology and Indiana University in 2004. Today Sakai operates in 200 universities has over a million users worldwide.

Janet DeVry, manager of instructional services, said the university joined educational institutions across the globe using Sakai because WebCT, the university's former course management system, was purchased by its biggest competitor, Blackboard.

Devry said support for WebCT was diminishing because of decreased capabilities, which caused the university to seek another learning-mechanism system. Although WebCT will still be available through spring 2010, the university is in the process of transitioning from WebCT to Sakai.

Mathieu Plourde, an instructional designer at IT User Services, said Sakai is superior to WebCT.

"One of the biggest differences between WebCT and Sakai is that Sakai has a lot of tools," Plorde said. "WebCT is very streamline. Sakai is a much more powerful platform than WebCT."

He said WebCT remains the same, but Sakai can continually change.

"We are working with whole Sakai community to make the product better and that's something that wasn't there with WebCT because we were using basically the same version of WebCT for four years," Plorde said.

Although the switch from WebCT to Sakai may seem strange to users at first, Sakai is a more advanced system, Korcusca said.

"Things may look a little different but you can do everything you can do on WebCT on Sakai, and so much more," he said. "Part of the reason to use Sakai is not just to use the product but to join an open-source community and a collaboration of universities working to propel the system. "

The Sakai Foundation's Website deems Sakai's mantra "Collaboration and Learning Environment for Education: Free to use, free to develop, freedom for education."

Korcusca said Sakai promotes innovation among its members.

"The overall aspect of Sakai is the cooperation between universities across the world," he said.

Although a major aspect of Sakai is the communication encouraged between universities, Sakai will be tailored to each specific university, Korcusca said. Each university has the ability to add its own capabilities to the product, including blogs, wikis, quizzes, polls and timelines.

In the first week of the semester, more than 9,000 students, out of the approximately 16,000 undergraduates, accessed Sakai and 419 courses had been published by 266 faculty members.

Plourde said he believes the response is because Sakai provides university professors with valuable resources.

"We have a tool that can help them innovate in their courses and try to get students involved with student-generated content and active learning," Plourde said. "It gets the students involved and gets their hands dirty a little bit. We believe that's the best way to learn and that's what were trying to promote."

DeVry said Sakai is efficient and has the potential to empower user-created content that will greatly extend the classroom's reach.

"It's technology to enhance learning," she said. "It's not just technology for technology's sake."

DeVry said professors have not been forced to use this service, but some have because they feel Sakai is an improvement. "No one has required faculty to use this -- they have found that it improves the teaching-learning experience," she said. Richard Gordon, instructor of computer science and information science and information resource consultant for IT, said Sakai exposes students to technological advances and modern styles of communication they may experience after graduation

He said the collaboration Sakai promotes not only prepares students for the work world but also enhances each university community as a whole.

"There are educational institutions over six continents all contributing to this, which means it's a tremendous opportunity for growth," Gordon said.