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- What is Sakai?
Sakai is a sophisticated, easy-to-use, extendable set of course management tools that make it easy for you to organize and collaborate with anyone (students, colleagues, research partners to name a few), from anywhere in the world where an internet connection is available. - Who created it?
Sakai has its origins at the University of Indiana and the University of Michigan, where both universities independently began open source efforts to enhance their course management and collaboration systems. The effective and successful collaboration between these two schools caught the attention of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford, who soon joined the project, along with the Open Knowledge Initiative and the uPortal consortium. Today over 80 institutions of higher education have partnered together for one goal: Sakai. - Why did they create it?*
The answer is simple: cooperation. Previously, institutions of higher education all worked separately, hiring programmers to develop to suit their specific course management and collaboration needs at any given time. These systems proved useful, though difficult to extend and scale. As a result, institutions found performing much of the same work and rebuilding from scratch. With Sakai, universities can join there efforts to create a single system that is easy to customize, and thus able to keep up with the fast pace of technology. - Why UC Davis is adopting it*
The course management tools in MyUCDavis have become increasingly difficult to extend and scale. By combining the resources, dedication, and expertise of the top universities, our campus will have the opportunity to transition to the next generation of course management and collaboration tools. - What's in it for me?
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- Instructors: Provide a collaborative learning environment for students that is accessible on and off campus, encourage collaborative learning by allowing students to build publicly editable wikis, encourage critical discourse on discussion boards, keep track of your courses, host virtual office hours from any location with high-speed Internet access.
- Researchers: Network with colleagues, organize data, collaborate on projects, chat in real time, brainstorm solutions on discussion boards, host video conferences, and stream PowerPoint presentations, just to name of few of the possibilities.
- Students: Host Web sites, plan events, share files, form social networks, organize student groups, host study sessions, collaborate on creative projects, create research groups, and more.
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