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Sakai & Vula @ UCTPresentation to eLearning Update held at CPUT, Cape Town, 4 September 2009Stephen Marquard, [email protected], twitter.com/stephenmarquardCY-BY-SA
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Sakaie-Learning Update @ CPUTSeptember 2009
Stephen MarquardCentre for Educational Technology
University of Cape Town
[email protected]/stephenmarquard
Overview
• The product category and the industry• About Sakai• Vula: UCT’s Sakai implementation• Where is Sakai going ?
The LMS is dead
R.I.P.
Well, not quite.
But reports of its death are only slightly exaggerated.
What is Sakai?
The Sakai Project is:• Community: Educational institutions,
commercial affiliates and other partners (112 members, more adopters)
• Code: open source, extensible, service-oriented, scaleable, diverse, 1.2m lines, 52 developers (ohloh.net)
• Foundation: Board and small staff which carries out co-ordination and community-building activities
Where is Sakai?
Open Source in higher education
• Diversity is good• Community is good• Community spawns community:
– Fluid (rich accessible user interfaces)– Kuali (finance & admin systems and workflow)– OpenCast (webcasting)
Why did UCT choose Sakai?
• 2004: – WebCT: low uptake, mixed opinions– home-grown system: not sustainable
• Sakai decision was about open source vs proprietary:– Allows us to deliver new tools and services– We benefit from development by other institutions– We can customize and extend the environment for UCT requirements
• Strategic value of being part of an international open source consortium– Community with significant experience in educational technology– Founded by MIT, Stanford, Indiana, Michigan, now 100+ consortium
members (significant number in the global top 200 universities)• Good integration with other enterprise systems (less administrative
overhead, fewer support issues)• Sound technical architecture (e.g. high availability through clustering, web
services, open framework, APIs)
Sakai at UCT
• Vula was launched at UCT in Feb 2006 (2-year transition from legacy environments)
• Use is voluntary (encouraged but not required by UCT’s Educational Technology Policy)
• Vula is mostly used in support of campus-based face-to-face courses (relatively few distance or block-release courses)
Part of an eLearning ecosystem
Live audio/video conferencingAdobe Connect
Webcasting / video streaming incl. lecture captureOpenCast
OER Directory
Institutional repositoryDSpace/Fedora
LAMS
CBT / Training / HelpVirtual Expert, SCORM
Turnitin
Cloud
“Open UCT”
OER content
Personal Learning Environments
IMS LTI-enabled“shareable tools”
Vula Vital Stats
Type Active users Jan – Oct 2007
Active users Jan – Oct 2008
Percentage increase 2007 to 2008
Staff [1] 1,141 2,313 103%
Student [2] 16,861 20,351 21%
Guest 1,436 3,221 124%
Total 19,438 25,885 33%
Year 2006 2007 2008
Total course sites created (includes test sites and sites created but not used) 191 907 1348
Number of staff with the role of Site owner, Lecturer or Support staff 242 505 1202
91% of UCT students logged in to Vula at least once during 2008 (20,351 / 22,231)
Concurrent user sessions
Up to 13,000 people log in to Vula every day
28,000+ people use Vula
Why do people use Vula?
• Bread and butter uses (esp. important for large courses)– Announcements– Course content– Tutorial group signup and management– Assignments (with Turnitin)– Entering student marks (Gradebook)– Tests and Quizzes– Online discussion, student questions and feedback– Course evaluations
• Student pressure (“other courses use Vula”)• Course design requires online components
(some courses can no longer be run only F2F)• Provide support in learning areas where students struggle• Support innovation in teaching and learning model
UCT students and staff love Vula
My overall experience using Vula has been (n=3,935)
2124
1656
130 15 100
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
very positive positive neutral negative very negative
Staff (n=148): 53% very positive, 42% positive, 5% neutral, 0% negative
Student survey highlights (Oct 08): Course use
I would prefer my courses to ...use Vula extensively: 60%make moderate use of Vula: 31%
Use of Vula has improved my learning80% agree or strongly agree
Most valuable benefit (choose one)Improved resource sharing: 23%Improved course administration: 21%Improved communication: 17%Improved my learning: 16%Improved my time management: 11%
Student survey highlights (Oct 08): Other use
Valuable or very valuable for (top 6 in descending order, 51% to 40%):
• Student activism (e.g. Green Week) • Student societies • Student governance (e.g. SRC, Faculty Councils) • Personal use (e.g. store work, backup files) • Academic writing• Participating in research projects
Student survey highlights (Oct 08): Using Vula
I found it easy to learn how to use Vula93% agree or strongly agree (30%, 63%)
I can quickly do what I need to do or find what I'm looking for on Vula:91% agree or strongly agree (33%, 58%)
When you have a problem with Vula, what do you most often do to get help?71% ask a friend or another student14% Ask a lab administrator or lab assistant
My overall experience using Vula has been:96% positive or very positive (42%, 54%)
Exploring innovative uses of learning environments
• Wikis• Simulation games• Mashups• Project sites• Communities• Where are we going?
Creating collaborative spaces with Wikis
• Wikis provide scaffolding for students to share information about themselves and contribute to a shared knowledge base
The “HETWiki” : History of Economic Thought (3rd year course), created by students working in pairs following a template. Students entries were assessed to form part of the course mark.
Simulation games create microworlds for (more) authentic learning experiences
• Applied International Trade Bargaining– 3rd year Economics Course in which student teams
role-play countries engaged in WTO negotiations– Evolved from
• WebCT (2005 and earlier), to • WebCT (course) + Vula (students) (2006), to • Vula with multiple sites (and maybe Facebook?) (2007)
• Inkundla yeHlabathi / World Forum Online– International Law simulation
Trade Bargaining students use project sites to co-ordinate bargaining tactics with other countries
Mashups with Google Maps
The Sakai Maps
tool creates a
mashup between
Sakai and Google
Maps. In this site,
postgraduate
History students
share the
geographic location
and other
information about
primary source
documents being
studied through the
Aluka digital
archive.
Vula project sites
14% of all Vula sites are project sites created by students.
Of those, 49% are created for academic purposes.
Project sites are also used by staff, for example for research collaboration.
(Survey of Vula project sites, May 07)
Student project sites
Surveyed active student-
created project sites from
Feb 06 to May 07 (site
title, description, content /
tools) to categorise by
intention, purpose or
activity.
Academic
Course project 35
Peer Support: Academic 16
Tutor/Student interaction 7
Postgrad research 4
Total 62
Social / personal
Student Society 34
Social interaction 14
Student Governance 7
Student Activism 5
Residence Life 4
Personal Development 1
Total 65
From courses to community
The SRC site
is visited by
over 50% of
UCT students
eLearning in a changing environment
• Critical mass reached (“everything should be on Vula”)– More support and training requirements– High-stakes usage (tests, final exams)– Demand to “fill in the gaps” in features– “We can do X on Vula” (e.g. course evaluations)– Potential for deriving greater value from network effects (data analytics / early-warning systems)
• Rapid innovation in and adoption of Internet services (e.g. Facebook, Google Apps) are redefining end-user expectations and changing application usage patterns
• The above and more available bandwidth will create demand for better integration with Internet services
• The “product category” of the LMS is aging and in the process of reinvention (aka. “the LMS is dead, long live the … ?”)
What are students using?
Institutional services … but also Internet-based services.
Student survey highlights (Oct 08): ICT use
What other information and communication technologies do you often use? Don't
usePersonal
onlyAcademic
onlyPersonal & Academic
SMS (cell phone text messaging) 1% 24% 2% 73%
GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail or other webmail 6% 20% 4% 71%
Google applications (e.g. Docs, Calendar, Groups) 36% 10% 7% 46%
Your own blog (e.g. blogger, Livejournal) 79% 12% 3% 5%
Instant messaging (e.g. MSN, AIM, GTalk, Mxit) 26% 40% 3% 32%
Internet phone or video conferencing (e.g. Skype) 55% 30% 3% 13%
Facebook, Myspace or other social networking sites 9% 55% 3% 33%
Wikipedia or other social content sites 11% 8% 24% 57%
Flickr, Youtube or other social media sites 34% 43% 4% 19%
Online news sites (e.g. News24, IOL, ...) 16% 20% 12% 52%
Virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life) 89% 5% 3% 3%
Online games (e.g. World of Warcraft) 79% 16% 2% 3%
Peer-to-peer file sharing (e.g. bittorrent, DC++) 42% 24% 4% 30%
Online research journals and databases 18% 3% 53% 26%
Websites with academic content from other universities 31% 3% 44% 22%
Sakai 3
See slides on SlideShare:
http://www.slideshare.net/mkorcuska/sakai-3-boston