The Sakai Project

1. The Sakai Project University of Michigan Indiana University Stanford University MIT JA-SIG (uPortal) & OKI

2. SAKAI Proposal • U Michigan, Indiana U, MIT, Stanford, uPortal • Awarded 2-year Mellon Foundation funding • Build on JSR 168, OKI standards • CHEF 2.0 as framework and services implementations • uPortal as 168-compliant portal • Distributed development of tools – portable code • Tool Portability Profile (TPP) as part of grant Goal: interchangeable tools and components built at different places all working together

3. Hiroyuki Sakai Iron Chef French (Synchronized Architecting of Knowledge Acquisition Infrastructure)

4. Sakai Project Core Universities • Commitments • 5+ developers/architects, etc. under project leadership – no local responsibility for 2 years • Public commitment to implement Sakai • Open/Open licensing • Project • $4.4M in institutional staff (27 FTE) • $2.4M Mellon Foundation • Additional investment through partners

5. Contributions • University of Michigan’s CourseTools (CTNG) and Work Tools (WTNG) for group collaboration (from the CHEF project) • Indiana University’s Navigo Assessment, Oncourse Course Management System, Eden Workflow, and OneStart enterprise portal • MIT’s Stellar Course Management and Administration System; OKI OSIDs • Stanford’s CourseWork Course Management System, Navigo development • JA-SIG’s uPortal

6. Sakai Project Deliverables • Tool Portability Profile • Specifications for writing portable software • Pooled intellectual property…best of • JSR-168 portal • Course management system • Quizzing and assessment tools, etc • Research collaboration system • Workflow engine • …modular & pre-integrated • Synchronized adoptions at Michigan, Indiana, MIT, Stanford with open-open licensing

7. July 04 May 05 Dec 05 Jan 04 • SAKAI 1.0 Release • Tool Portability Profile • Framework • Services-based Portal • Refined OSIDs & implementations • SAKAI Tools • Complete CMS • Assessment • SAKAI 2.0 Release • Tool Portability Profile • Framework • Services-based Portal • SAKAI Tools • Complete CMS • Assessment • Workflow • Research Tools • Authoring Tools "Best of" Refactoring Activity: Ongoing implementation work at local institution… Primary SAKAI Activity Architecting for JSR-168 Portlets,Refactoring “best of” features for tools Conforming tools to Tool Portability Profile Primary SAKAI Activity Refining SAKAI Framework,Tuning and conforming additional tools Intensive community building/training Sakai Core Project Activity: Maintenance & Transition from aproject to a community • Michigan • CHEF Framework • CourseTools • WorkTools • Indiana • Navigo Assessment • Eden Workflow • OneStart • Oncourse • MIT • Stellar • Stanford • CourseWork • Assessment • OKI • OSIDs • uPortal

8. Open/Open Licensing • “..all work products under the scope of the Sakai initiative for which a member is counting matching contribution and any Mellon Sakai funding” will be open source software and documentation licensed for both education and commercial use without licensing fees.

9. Sakai Community Support • Developer and adopter support • Sakai Educational Partner’s Program (more below) • Commercial support • No exclusive deals – talk with everyone • Open-open licensing – open source, open for commercialization • For fee services will probably include… • Installation/integration, On-going support, Training

10. Sakai Educational Partner’s Program Fee: $10k per year, 3 years • Access to SEPP staff • Community development manager • SEPP developers, documentation writers • Knowledgebase • Developer training for the TPP • Exchange for partner-developed tools • Strategy and implementation workshops • Early access to pre-release code

11. SEPP Support • Developers to provide technical support for partners and liaison with the Sakai Core development team, • Support tools of immediate and specific interest to partners, such as a shared knowledgebase, • Technical documentation and specifications, • Administrative Support person to aid SEPP staff members and partners.

12. SAKAI Partners “institutions of higher education, both large and small … participating in the Sakai Project in ways that suit their local needs and timing. These may include: • contributing to funding the project to ensure an open source option for higher education, • participating in the discussion of strategic directions for the Sakai Project • developing educational tools based on Sakai’s Tool Portability Profile, and/or • adopting Sakai Project software at their institution.”

13. SEPP Objectives (1of 3) The objectives of the Educational Partner’s Program are to: • actively develop a large, self-sustaining community of institutions that share the Sakai Project’s open source vision • carry on a discussion of strategic directions for the Sakai Project as it emerges and evolves, • provide a Sakai Project roadmap describing the timing and features for Sakai software releases,

14. SEPP Objectives (2 of 3) • provide in depth developer and adopter training, • develop a leveraged support infrastructure of a common (or locally implemented) knowledgebase, and helpdesk • mobilize distributed resources for development and support of Sakai tools, • provide a marketplace for the sharing and exchange of Sakai-based tools/components, • facilitate purposeful interaction with the Sakai Core development team,

15. SEPP Objectives (3 of 3) • coordinate activities with other organizations, such as IMS or country-level agencies, • build on the experiences of the JA-SIG, CHEF, and OKI training and conferences, • facilitate Sakai community sharing of best practices in development, implementation, and support.

16. SEPP Meetings • The initial SEPP meetings are planned for June and September of 2004. • The semi-annual SEPP meetings will have a technical track for training software developers and implementers and an administrative track for Sakai strategy and user support. • Partners may send two developers to each meeting for formal training in the Sakai Tool Portability Profile by the lead technical staff of the Sakai Project.

17. What Can Be Done Now - Look At: • www.sakaiproject.org • uPortal (www.ja-sig.org) • JSR 168 • Chef (www.chefproject.org) • OKI (web.mit.edu/oki) • J2EE/EJB/JBoss • Tools won’t be built this way, won’t even see EJB’s • Services should be built this way • Clustering, scaling, caching, cache coherency – rely on entity beans • Avalon, Spring, Pico • Inversion of Control models • Levels 1,2, 3 • Loader models

18. What should we be doing here at UVa? • Start a regular series of discussions • Become familiar with the various pieces and technologies in the Sakai project • Get plugged into the Sakai project • Start planning how to take advantage of Sakai • Assess existing Toolkit functionality versus Sakai, e.g., what to keep, what to replace • Start designing the ToolkitNG based on Sakai • Envision and design the larger MyUVa that includes ToolkitNG

19. MIT’s Stellar

20. Stanford’s CourseWork

21. uPortal

22. Indiana’s OnCourse

23. Michigan’s CTNG Sites are accessed via their tab Foreign Language support Synoptic views Customizable page menu Presence

24. Michigan’s WTNG

25. Michigan’s WTNG More examples – chat, lab notebook, schedule, web page

26. Tool Portability Profile • The Open Knowledge Initiative’s (OKI) OSIDs OKI Service Interface Definitions • The JSR-168 portlet specification • Built into Michigan’s CHEF and • JA-SIG’s uPortal • User interface abstraction for localization

27. uPortal talks to portlets, aka tools, across the JSR 168 interface, aggregates their content, and presents their content to users. uPortal JSR 168 Portal CHEF Provides the place for the tools to run, the services, and communication between them. CHEF JSR 168 Portlet Container Tools use the services (storage, notification, workflow, …) made available to them by the framework. … Tool aka portlet Tool aka portlet Tool aka portlet Tool aka portlet Services – OKI, CHEF implementations/extensions

28. JSR-168 Instant Tutorial • JSR-168 leverages the Servlet API – anything Servlet references, JSR168 just adopted • The concepts of actions and context are there (basic MVC with some separation of logic and presentation)(enough C that you can do M&V separately) • Great support for JSP as rendering language, or the portlet could choose to call Velocity or XSLT to do the rendering. • The API is very rich and solves many of the complicated problems of living inside of a portal. • WSRP and JSR-168 are well aligned (i.e. remote and local portlets will play well together) • There is a Jakarta project to develop JSR-168 middleware (Pluto) • Pluto does not implement a portal – it can be used by many portals, that’s the portlet container concept, and one of the main points of 168 • So, we really like JSR 168

29. Some Standards • OKI – services interfaces • JSR 168 – portals, portlet containers • SCORM – looking for someone to build portlet, service – interchange format - zipformat, manifest, etc; runtime environment - pop-up frame set, database-persistent scratch space – island? Out of band agreements need to be codified for integration into Sakai • LOM – Looking at it, like IMS standards • IMS – where applicable, like QTI for assessment • Increasingly coordinated with OKI efforts – what/how • Emerging effort for common architectures • XML/XSLT - sure, as part of, say, QTI spec, or for display rendering • RDF – of increasing interest to Chef team – stay tuned

30. Chef Project • Encompasses CT.NG, WT.NG, NeesGrid, NMI, other users of Chef • Is the core software development effort • Providing framework for tools that go to make up the other offerings, eg, CTNG, WT.NG, DissertationTool (cTools) • We are currently running Chef 1.2 for CT.NG • Chef 2.0 is foundation for Sakai

31. Administration User presence Schedule Announcements Resources Assignments Discussion eMail Archive Dropbox Chat News (RSS) Webpage Tool Synopsis Notification Anonymous comment Public view WebDav Search CourseTools.NG  SAKAI Tools

32. Gateway to CTNG – supports non authorized view of sites, general info about the application

33. Sites tool – non-authorized users can see site content designated as Public

34. Each user has their own private worksite – My Workspace Personal tool list for user, customizable create, edit, configure worksites join sites summary of sites – announcements, schedule private resources RSS feeds, links to web pages

35. Example summary in My Workspace – schedules from all sites in which you are a member From the Educ 100 site From the Sample site

36. Various views Recurring events Custom fields

38. Hierarchy of folders Optional permissions by role on folders

39. Resources accessible via WebDav Drag/drop to/from CTNG resources

40. Multiple layout options Threaded, star formats Categories, topics for organization

41. Open, Due, Close date control Inline, attachments, both for submissions Return for resubmission, review

42. Instructor view creating an assignment

43. Student view creating a submission

44. Instructor’s view Student’s view

45. Multiple chat rooms via Options Users present In Chat Presence – users focused on site

46. Email Archive of all email sent to the site User’s preferences control how they receive email none, as they come in, digest

47. News tool – display any RSS feed

48. Web content tool – display any URL

49. Permissions per role can be set per tool Support can add additional roles

50. Permissions per folder per role can be adjusted Let Students post files to this folder