Edu-leaders

In today’s rapidly changing technology, institutions of higher learning must consider the following:

• Is it possible to implement a flexible, affordable, and sustainable learning system that will grow with our organisation’s evolving needs?

• How can we create a unified framework through which communities of interest can access information, experts, and resources?

• How can we move content between systems, share learning objects, and create new, lightweight learning applications that empower learners to make sense of concepts, data, and the knowledge generated in our institution?

It is in this context that I would like to talk about one of the most innovative projects in open source and open learning — the Sakai Project.

In 2004, Indiana University, University of Michigan, MIT, and Stanford received a $2.4 mn grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation to form Sakai, a community of educationists, organisations and institutions to develop a Common Colaboration and Learning Environment (CLE).

The Sakai CLE is today used in higher education research institutions around the world to support instruction, research, and outreach. Predicated on collaboration, the system is open-source and has open standards.

Sakai aims to turn students into active learners and contributors and the instructor into a facilitator. The instructor activates tools and gives students, or groups of students, permission to use them as they like. The instructor does not have to be an expert in the  tools. This is just the start of the difference between Sakai and LMSs.

In the traditional models of learning, Learning Management Systems (LMSs) support and use the tools associated with traditional teaching methods, in which the instructor controls the learning environment. The instructor decides what to teach and how to teach it.

On the other hand a collaborative learning model like Sakai by definition, asks students to cooperate to reach consensus in open-ended activities.

The collaborative learning environment (CLE) is best suited to group work, where students can freely interact with each other and construct their ideas together. Finally, because the CLE is student-centred, students are in control of their own learning and ultimately, the outcome of their learning.

With Sakai, students are active learners and contributors, and the instructor is a facilitator. Specifically, the instructor activates tools and gives students, or groups of students, permission to use as few or as many tools (and some or all of the functionality of the tools) as they like; the instructor does not have to know the tools inside and out. Students can selforganise and make their learning visible, and instructors build a community of learners where responsibilityis shared among the group rather than owned by the instructor.

Its ability to offer group collaboration sites is one of Sakai’s most powerful features, and the sites are easy to set up, so users can serve themselves.

On many campuses, collaboration sites have become so popular with faculty and students that Sakai adoption rates areincreasing, with less resistance to the change of course management system than might have been expected.

Collaboration sites can be used by researchers who need to work with their colleagues around the world, by faculty engaged in governance committee work, and by students working with research committees, study groups, or activity clubs.

Sakai contains a rich variety of group and individual communication tools, as well as standard LMS capabilities. Tools are either ‘core’ or ‘provisional’. Core tools have been through a rigorous quality assurance process and are part of the Sakai download; provisional tools have been proposed and/or are in a state of development.