e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: OAE

  • Now UC Berkeley and Charles Sturt University Leave Sakai OAE

    Just three months ago, the University of Michigan and Indiana University made a joint decision to “pause investment” in the Sakai OAE project. The latest news is that the University of California Berkeley and Charles Sturt University (in Australia) have also decided to leave the Sakai OAE project. The only schools remaining as part of the Sakai OAE Steering Group are New York University, Cambridge University, and Georgia Tech.

    Ken Romeo from Stanford has an excellent post summarizing the Berkeley and Sturt announcement and resulting community discussions, based on his first-person experience in the early version of OAE. It is worth reading his entire post, but I’ll quote a few key sections.

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  • University of Michigan and Indiana University pause investment in Sakai OAE

    In news that seems to be well understood in the Sakai community but not elsewhere, Sakai founding members the University of Michigan and Indiana University have collectively decided to pause investment in the Sakai Open Academic Environment (OAE) project – formerly known as Sakai 3.

    Most institutions working with Sakai are using the  Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE), formerly known as Sakai 2 – think of CLE as an enterprise LMS like Blackboard or Desire2Learn. Sakai OAE is a next-generation learning platform based on learner-center, collaboration design originally released as version 1.0 in September 2011.  I cannot think of a direct comparison to OAE in a commercial offering, but that is part of the difference. CLE is essentially an evolutionary approach to the LMS, whereas OAE is a revolutionary approach to a learning platform based on different use cases. The Michigan and Indiana decision affects their participation in OAE but does not change their participation in CLE.

    Ian Dolphin, executive director of the Sakai foundation, made an announcement dated June 7th:

    I wanted to appraise you of a recent development in the Sakai OAE project. Indiana University and the University of Michigan recently decided, for a variety of local factors, to pause their investment in the project effective July 1st in order to re-assess institutional direction. We are all aware of the challenging environment facing higher education and understand that local priorities sometimes change institutional involvement in collaborative ventures such as ours.

    The remaining project partners have met to effect planning in this new circumstance. They remain committed to the success of OAE, are heartened by the substantive advances made in recent months, and are confident of a sustainable future path.

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