Sakai at URI |
Sakai is a Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) 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).
The current installation of Sakai provides the same tools previously available in WebCT plus Melete (a.k.a. Modules, a lesson builder tool). The student monitoring tool, Site Stats, will be provided shortly. In the future, we will add more tools including podcasts, blogs, and portfolios.
Working With Sakai
Background Scheduled Maintenance Downtime Help and questions, email: Join our listserv |
Update, 11/03/09
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When are Course Sites Available?
The schedule for course availability for the following semester is:
May 1 |
for |
Fall semester |
Recent statistics on Sakai usage show that we have over 15,400 My Workspace Sites, 1,089 course sites, and 836 Project Sites. At peak times, we have had over 1700 concurrent sessions in progress.
Sakai endeavors to support as many browser as possible. However, as with any complex Web-based system, being able to support all Web browsers is an extremely difficult task. The following operating system/browser combinations were used during Quality Assurance (QA) testing for Sakai 2.5.4 and 2.6.0, and can be considered as a suggested list for supported browsers:
| Windows XP and Vista | Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Firefox 3 |
| MacOS X | Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 |
| Linux | While not widely tested as part of QA, users can likely use Sakai successfully with Firefox 2 or 3. |
Users of the browsers below have reported some aspects of Sakai as not working correctly.
Internet Explorer 8:
Compatibility problems have been reported with IE8. The problems may be overcome by running in compatibility mode. If you didn't turn on compatibility as part of installing and configuring IE8 initially, go to Compatibility View Settings under Tools to adjust the setting:
You can also include this tag in pages:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7">
The following behaviors are consistent with IE8 use and are not resolved by switching on compatibility mode:
- Sakai drop down menus do not work.
- The text color feature in the WYSIWYG text editor does not work; i.e., the user cannot change the color of the text. Also, the drop down menus in the WYSIWYG editor do not work.
- The "Insert Horizontal Line" button (an html Horizontal Rule) in the WYSIWYG editor is displayed in a location entirely outside the text area.
- Resources have been observed to have horizontal and vertical alignment issues, but if users are using IE8 they are much more likely to have encountered the drop down and WYSIWYG issues before they ever notice misaligned resources.
Also problems with: Macintosh Safari, Windows Internet Explorer 6, Windows Safari 3.1, Macintosh Internet Explorer, Camino 0.7, Netscape, and Opera.
If you encounter reproducible problems with a specific browser-Sakai functionality combination, please file a bug report in Jira.
We are not quite at the point where we can establish our own FAQ site. However, Sakai and the University of Delaware both have a comprehensive FAQ site that will answer many general questions also applicable to URI's Sakai installation.
Sakai Discussion Listserv: Communicate with URI Sakai Users
Subscribe to the public Sakai listserv, sakai-uri@listserv.uri.edu, by sending an email message to listserv@listserv.uri.edu with the following command in the body of the email:
SUBscribe sakai-uri
The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) is a free and open source Courseware Management System. It features a set of software tools designed to help instructors, researchers and students collaborate online in support of their work--whether it be course instruction, research or general project collaboration.
For coursework, Sakai provides features to supplement and enhance teaching and learning. For collaboration, Sakai has tools to help organize communication and collaborative work on campus and around the world. Using a Web browser, users choose from Sakai's tools to create a site that meets their needs. To use Sakai, no knowledge of HTML is necessary.
But the product vision reaches beyond teaching and learning applications. Many Sakai deployments include as many or more project and research collaboration sites. In addition, the Open Source Portfolio e-Portfolio system is a core part of the Sakai software. Finally, the Sakaibrary project links library resources to Sakai.
Sakai is highly customizable to meet the needs of the institution, the individual instructor, and the students. Sakai's architecture is modular, allowing individual instructors to select the tools they want for their class. Sites can also be configured that are specifically designed for research collaboration or administrative work groups. And because the source code is freely available, the option to change or add features is always open.
Faculty, students and staff benefit from the rich array of tools and features that are available with the Sakai CLE. Because leading universities around the world developed these tools, they are sure to meet academic needs. For more on Sakai, go to the Sakai Website.
The University has no choice. Among the many reasons are the following:
- Blackboard Inc., a company that merged with WebCT Corporation in 2006, announced that development and support of WebCT Campus Edition 4.1, which URI is using, is being discontinued. Their new product, WebCT Vista, is not a simple replacement for WebCT 4.1, so moving to Vista would have been as much of a change as to any other competing product. Furthermore, when WebCT merged with Blackboard Inc., they announced that within two years another new product would succeed Vista and Blackboard's own system. Choosing either Vista or Blackboard would likely have required a move to a second new product within a few years.
- The vendor ceased enhancing WebCT in December 2008.
- Non-catastrophic maintenance was reduced in priority starting January 2009.
- WebCT 4.1 has incompatibilities with future versions of hardware and LINUX.
- URI's annual license price for WebCT/Blackboard will be increased from $30K to $85K.
The Replacement Search Process
In April 2008, the search for the WebCT 4.1 replacement began. All faculty members were invited to participate, and a core evaluation team was formed to help guide the larger community of courseware management system users through this process. An invitation to attend meetings was extended to all interested parties on campus.
After months of research and discussion by the evaluation team, Sakai and Blackboard/WebCT were chosen as the two finalists and brought to campus in September for a general presentation open to all members of the community.
On September 29th, a meeting was held to choose the WebCT4.1 replacement. The meeting was audio-recorded and posted on http://media.uri.edu/itms/Comparison_20080929.wav. The first part is
the comparison; the second part is the discussion among the attendees. For a look at the comparison of the two products, please refer to the Review of Functionality Improvements over WebCT4.1 document.
At the end of the meeting, the attendees agreed unanimously, by a show of hands, that Sakai is a better fit for URI, with concern voiced by faculty that they would need sufficient support from ITS for course migration from WebCT to Sakai and then for the ongoing use of Sakai.
