Update: Michael Korcuska has a blog post up about some small colleges that have been successful with Sakai.
Sakai has a reputation for being technology-driven and focused on the needs of large research universities. There was some truth to both of those claims in the early years of the project. However, the recent election of the Sakai Foundation Board Chair and Vice Chair are strong indicators that neither claim is true anymore. The community recently elected the Sakai Foundation board members and the board members, in turn, elected Josh Baron and Maggie McVay Lynch as Chair and Vice Chair, respectively.
Both Josh and Maggie come from small schools. Josh represents Marist College, a small liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, NY with about 4,200 undergraduates. Maggie represents College of the Redwoods, a community college in Eureka, CA with 6,774 students. These are not tiny schools, but neither are they huge. Both of these schools hire an external support company (rSmart) rather than managing their Sakai instances with their own IT department.
Equally importantly, both Josh and Maggie are teachers and not technologists. Both have advanced degrees in education. Both run their educational technology programs at their respective schools. And both came to prominence within the Sakai community for their contributions to developing the Teaching and Learning committee and, more generally, bringing pedagogy to the forefront of the Sakai community’s work and focus.
Thanks Michael for highlighting this topic. When I first got involved with Sakai in 2005 one of the things that really struck me was the fact that I was “judged” not by the school I represented but for the ideas I brought to the community and my time and effort in contributing to the project. As I got more and more involved I started to see the benefits that comes from working within this type of meritocracy where your “stature” is based on the value the community places on your contributions and not your name or the name of your school, etc. This model is one that I’ve now started to feel many organizations could benefit from adopting.
With regards to the specific issue of small schools and Sakai, I obviously completely agree that the notion that Sakai is only for large research institutions is, simply put, a myth. It is easy to understand how this myth began as the core institutions who started Sakai (MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana, etc.) were all large research institutions with big technology budgets. But this is a bit like saying that you need to have the resources of a Ford or GM (well, maybe these aren’t the best examples) just to be able to drive a car. Yes, you may need major resources to build a new car from scratch but certainly not to just drive one…which is kind of what we are doing at Marist….we drive Sakai but don’t build it…with one caveat, we like to toss in our ideas that we think might improve the driving experience and then help test those ideas when someone implements them. Which, now that I think about it, wouldn’t be a bad idea for car makers….;-)
Again, thanks for highlighting this important issue.