| Stable release | 2.8.0 / April 18, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Course Management System |
| License | Educational Community License |
| Website | http://www.sakaiproject.org |
This page is about the software project, for other meanings, see Sakai.
Sakai is a community of academic institutions, commercial organizations and individuals who work together to develop a common Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE). The Sakai CLE is a free, community source, educational software platform distributed under the Educational Community License (a type of open source license). The Sakai CLE is used for teaching, research and collaboration. Systems of this type are also known as Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).
Sakai is a Java-based, service-oriented application suite that is designed to be scalable, reliable, interoperable and extensible. Version 1.0 was released in March 2005.
As of September, Sakai is estimated to be in production at over 300 institutions and being piloted by considerably more. A map showing many of these is available.
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The development of the Sakai CLE was originally funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation as the Sakai Project. The early versions of the software were based on existing tools created by the founding institutions, with the largest piece coming from the University of Michigan's "CHEF" course management system. Sakai, is a play on the word “chef,” and refers to Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai.[1]
The original institutions started meeting in February 2004. Each institution had built a custom course management system:
In 2005 Indiana University moved all of its legacy systems to the Sakai implementation OnCourse. On October 5, 2007, the University of Virginia announced that it will be implementing Sakai throughout the university instead of the ToolKit.
Once the first version of Sakai became publicly available, the original five institutions invited other institutions to join through the "Sakai Partners Program". The partner institutions contributed to the program financially and by submitting code to the project. Blackboard is beginning to experience Sakai as a serious competitor.[2]
As the project phase neared completion in 2005, the Sakai Project set up a foundation to oversee the continued work on Sakai. In 2006 the Sakai Foundation named Dr. Charles Severance, who previously had served as Chief Architect, as its first Executive Director. On July 24, 2007 Dr. Severance stepped down as Executive Director, and Michael Korcuska was selected by the Sakai Foundation to fill the role. Following Michael's departure in February 2010, Lois Brooks became interim Executive Director, with Ian Dolphin, a former Sakai Project Board member becoming Executive Director in August 2010. Development work is currently supported by community members (resources provided by academic institutions and commercial affiliates as well as individual volunteers) and the Sakai Foundation.
The Sakai software includes many of the features common to course management systems, including document distribution, a gradebook, discussion, live chat, assignment uploads, and online testing.
In addition to the course management features, Sakai is intended as a collaborative tool for research and group projects. To support this function, Sakai includes the ability to change the settings of all the tools based on roles, changing what the system permits different users to do with each tool. It also includes a wiki, mailing list distribution and archiving, and an RSS reader. The core tools can be augmented with tools designed for a particular application of Sakai. Examples might include sites for collaborative projects, teaching and portfolios.
The Sakai community is an international alliance of universities, colleges and commercial affiliates working with standards organizations and other open-source software initiatives to develop and freely distribute enterprise software applications using Sakai's community-source approach. Many institutions in the Sakai community are members of the Foundation, but joining the Sakai Foundation is not required to use the software or participate in the community.
The Sakai Foundation is a member-based, non-profit corporation. It encourages community-building between individuals, academic institutions, non-profits and commercial organizations and provides its members with an institutional framework for their projects. The Foundation also works to promote the wider adoption of community-source and open standards approaches to software solutions within the education and research communities.
In 2009, the Sakai Foundation announced its intention to merge with Jasig,[3] another organisaton supporting the development of open source software for education. The process is due to complete by the early summer of 2012.
The Sakai Foundation and Community currently organizes an international conferences each year. Regional conferences take place annually in Japan, Australia, Europe and South Africa.
Each year new Board Members were elected from nominated candidates. Voting by Sakai Foundation member representatives typically takes place during October and November. Newly elected members start their terms with the first Board meeting of the new year and their terms last 3 years.
Board members are elected by the institutional and corporate representatives as specified in the Sakai Foundation bylaws. A current list of institutional and corporate representatives is posted on the Partners Program page.
Sakai Foundation Board of Directors:.[4]