In the kitchen with Sakai!

Adam Hauerwas Providence College

April 11, 2013

http://bit.ly/nercomp_sakai13

Why are we in the kitchen?

• Sakai started with University of Michigan – Collaborative

Higher Education Framework (aka CHEF)

• Chef Hiroyuki Sakai, Iron Chef French

http://hungrysormuijai.blogspot.com/2010/06/iron-chef-sydney-event-hilton-2010.html

Sites in Sakai are like meals…

• Different ingredients make up a meal (rice, fish, vegetables)

• Different components make up a site – people – roles – tools – content

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Onigiri_bento_by_dwittkower.jpg

As meals, Course and Project Sites are like bowls of rice (gohan)

• Why? Well, they’re pretty plain! – You need to do something to it in order

to make it interesting

• It’s a foundation (asagohan, hirugohan, bangohan)

Project Site • Roles

– Organizer

Participant Guest

• Tools – Whatever!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricephotos/4763112266/sizes/n/in/photostream/ • Talk about boring!

Course Site • Roles

– Instructor

Student

– Course Assistant Course Designer Demo Student Guest Lecturer Librarian Observer Tutor

• Tools – COURSE TOOLS

Syllabus Resources Announcements Calendar Assignments Messages

– SITE MANAGEMENT Roster Site Editor Site Statistics

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricephotos/4763112266/sizes/n/in/photostream/

So what’s for dinner?

• Can you make a site that helps me in my job? – Communicate with my advisees – Arrange advising visits

• How about communication in a discipline? – Enroll people by major? minor?

class year? – Communicate with seniors?

juniors?

Advising Sites are rice balls (onigiri) • Roles

– Advisor

Advisee

– Assistant

• Tools – COMMUNICATION

Announcements Calendar Messages

– PROJECT TOOLS Resources Sign-Up

– SITE MANAGEMENT Sections Site Editor

http://www.flickr.com/photos/philman/4213399077/sizes/z/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/framboise /182229930/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Program Sites are hand rolls (te maki)

• Roles – Chair/Director

Faculty Major Minor Student

– Assistant

Guest

• Tools – COMMUNICATION

Announcements Calendar Messages

– PROJECT TOOLS Resources

– SITE MANAGEMENT Roster Sections Site Editor

http://www.flickr.com/photos/strausser/131237280/

To make these dishes, you make a template first

• Create a project site in Sakai • Grab its Site ID from the Sites tool

(or by copying the URL from a hyperlink) • Use the Realms tool to create roles • Make these new sites be templates

(the Sites tool for within the UI, or in the local.properties for SIS)

A template is like plastic food

• It’s a copy of a dish that you can point to, and say “I want one of those”

• Unfortunately, changing the template doesn’t change dishes made from that template

http://www.flickr.com/photos/megadem/143836743/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Put the food in the window

• Templates get put “on display” in the local.properties

• Don’t forget shiso (roles to synchronize)!

Raw ingredients come from “the server farm”

• The SIS knows courses, users, and rosters

Ingredients aren’t limited to “just rice”

• The SIS knows about more than just the basics, so we created our special dishes

A “sous chef” could prep the ingredients…

• We created a middleware server to slice and dice data for Sakai!

The sous chef gives ingredients to Sakai – not the farm

Sakai

members

users courses

Three files are sent to Sakai using “Basic SIS”

Sakai doesn’t really care what’s in the sausage!

but you can put whatever you want in each file (as long as it’s internally consistent).

How does it work?

• Virtual Machine with Win2K8 R2 and SQL Server Express

• Free or open source tools to deal with data – Logparser to read files into SQL – Batch scripts to run queries – BCP to output courses.csv, users.csv, members.csv, sections.csv

– WinSCP to copy files rSmart

The courses.csv file places an “order” by template

• Rows in the file specify the template

• The file “points” to the “plastic food” in the local.properties

So what else can you make?

• Student Congress Elections (okonomiyaki) – Students enrolled by Class Year – Uses the Evaluations tool to

vote for candidates

http://www.flickr.com/photos/weasel-on-wheels/6812266556/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Anything else?

• Placement Testing (sushi on a conveyor belt!) – Language and Math tests for incoming students – Photos uploaded for student ID’s – Undeclared students asked for interests

prior to registration

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiptoe/2581698058/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Every kitchen’s different

• You might use CM API and not Basic SIS – Create additional .csv files based on

student attributes / relationships – Create templates in the system for

manual site creation

• Unclear to me how much of what we do is vendor-specific (e.g. role maintenance)

Questions?

Digestif

• Hope I haven’t stuffed you too full • Hungry for more?

– Reach out to “Iron Chef Adam” at hauerwas@providence.edu

• Fill out the comment card at http://bit.ly/nercomp_sakai13