Considerations and Concerns When Moving from Commercial to Sakai

Jeshua Pacifici, GEDI Assistant Director

and Learning Systems Consultant

NOTICE

• Copyright Jeshua Pacifici and Kim Gausepohl, 2006. This work is the intellectual property of the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the authors. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the authors.

Virginia Tech; Blacksburg, VA

• Land grant research institution• 8 colleges, 78 masters and 62 doctoral degree

programs, DVM • 25,000 students, 6000 graduate students (total)• 1500+ faculty

Learning Systems at VT

Blackboard at VT

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Maintain Users Access Users Guest Users

Choices

Vendor System

• Vendor learning system support– Stability and reliability of online learning

environment– Data integration (user and course data)– System-wide support: Help desk, help

pages, documentation, user training– Relationship with vendor support manager– Ability to leverage your university’s

technical teams

Why are We Interested in Open Source?

• Vendor license/hosting fees

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Why are We Interested in Open Source?

– Vendor license/hosting fees– Problems: vendor support and

product migration– Leverage University’s

academic and IT resources – Serve institutional goals– Localization: Ability to modify

and customize functionality and interface

– Interoperability and proprietary code limitations

– Usability: diverse pedagogical and research needs

– Vendor goals incompatible with institutional goals

Concerns with Open Source Software

• Migrating course data from legacy or existing LMS’s to open source LMS

• Transition - moving users away from existing system– User concerns

• Ease of use • Stability and Reliability

– Support concerns• Lack of Admin tools (unsexy)• Documentation

• Open source is not free (how much not free?)

Participating in the design process (herding cats)– Coordinating developers and development:

conflicting skills, schedules and objectives– Need for “overarching” vision integrating tools

– Collaboration environment demands new skills– Requires higher skilled staff– Role of QA and Usability– Changing framework (Hibernate) -- upgrades to latest

code create incompatibilities– “Volunteer” and “Voyeur” mentality– Sakai Requirements Voting: 250+ > 1 (statistics)

Concerns with Open Source Development

Management Implications

– New Open Source Systems involve learning, testing, training, developing, documenting, migrating

– Existing Vendor Systems• The big question “When is

Blackboard going away?”• Do you continue to “grow”

your vendor product?• Planning the transition

– Everyone resists change, not just users

Managing New Open Source Systems

– Know your institution’s strengths and resources

– Identify your faculty needs and preferences

– Line up upper level support – Remember…without the

vendor the buck stops at your desk

Lessons Learned

• Supporting a few on a new system is as time consuming & resource dependent as supporting many (25,000+) on an enterprise level system

• Work closely with end users – they are using systems in ways that will surprise you

• We reap the benefits of our collaboration! We are much stronger, diversified, and more capable

• There’s no perfect or easy solution for an enterprise level system (vendor or OS); it is critical to manage expectations

Recommendations• Know Thyself (and thy institution)

• Target early adopters & work with them throughout the process (grassroots approach)

• Focus on your strengths

• Find a niche (low hanging fruit)

• Partner with other depts within your institution (eg. CS)

• Partner with similar institutions and develop ways to share knowledge, experience, and resources

Questions & Answers

Contact InformationJeshua Pacifici jeshua@vt.eduLearning TechnologiesVirginia TechBlacksburg, VA 24061-0232

Images: Digital Vision