Update: Lois Brooks now has a blog post up about the transition as well. Well, I’m sad but not surprised to report that Michael Korcuska has been wooed by an organization with deep pockets to take on a very important role. The founder of LinkedIn, who is apparently a personal friend of Michael’s, invited him […]
Sakai
Academic Study of Blackboard vs. Sakai at UNC School of Medicine
Brian Moynihan has posted his Masters Thesis on University of North Carolina School of Medicine’s LMS evaluation, which eventually came down to a shootout between Blackboard and Unicon-supported Sakai. There’s a lot that’s of interest in this paper, particularly around the complexity of higher ed IT environments and the need for integration, but these two […]
Sakai, Small Schools, and Pedagogy
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 […]
Mellon Foundation RIT Project Concludes a Success
This is a guest post by Jim Farmer. Apologies to Jim; this has been sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks now. “The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is closing a grant program that financed a series of high-profile university software projects, leaving some worried about a vacuum of support for open-source ventures.” – Marc […]
How to Understand and Follow the Sakai Foundation
My friend Patrick Masson has started an EDUCAUSE wiki page to develop a working definition of “openness”. I’m going to sidestep the hot debate around that topic and focus instead on the distinction he makes between openness and transparency, which he defines as “provid[ing] the stakeholder community access to–and perhaps even a platform to inform–the […]
A Brief Word about the Mellon Foundation and Sakai
Update: Sakai Executive Korcuska has a more detailed blog post about what the Mellon Foundation is actually doing and the impact (or lack thereof) on Sakai. There’s been a fair bit of hand wringing online about today’s piece in the Chronicle indicating that the Mellon Foundation will be “eliminating” it’s Research in Information Technology grant […]
Sakai 3: What It Is and When To Move To It
I have been getting a lot of questions from the Sakai-curious lately about the whole Sakai 2 vs. Sakai 3 question. When will Sakai 3 be “ready”? When is a good time to migrate? If I’m under pressure to migrate in the short term, what should I do? Should I go to Sakai 2 and […]