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Willamette’s WISE Decision: a big Sakai fish in a small pond

Willamette’s WISE Decision: a big Sakai fish in a small pond. Cheryl Cramer Director of User Services Willamette University June 17, 2010. Willamette University. College of Liberal Arts 1900 students, 200 faculty College of Law 400, 38 faculty Atkinson Graduate School of Business

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Willamette’s WISE Decision: a big Sakai fish in a small pond

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  1. Willamette’s WISE Decision:a big Sakai fish in a small pond Cheryl Cramer Director of User Services Willamette University June 17, 2010

  2. 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  3. Willamette University • College of Liberal Arts • 1900 students, 200 faculty • College of Law • 400, 38 faculty • Atkinson Graduate School of Business • 260, 32 faculty • Graduate School of Education • 150, 23 faculty 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  4. WITS • Willamette Integrated Technology Services • Vice President for Technology • Stand-alone department, cooperative relationship with library 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  5. WITS • Face-to-face, rapid response service orientation • User Services Group: 7 • Network/Systems Administration Group: 3 • Tech Services: 4.5 • Administrative Computing: 3 • Office/Administration: 4 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  6. Relevant Experience? • Apache • Little, very little Tomcat • Some development (C/C++, Perl, php, not a lot of Java) • Some experience with open source (MySQL, Postgres, CAS, Bind, Pine) • Unix 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  7. The Path to Sakai • Blackboard Basic • Ho Hum • Courses created on demand • Average usage: 60 faculty, 100 course sites • Increasingly difficult to customize • Course Tools • Home-grown, single maintainer • Designed for graduate business school • Minor use in CLA 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  8. The Path to Sakai • Objectives • Provide a more complete experience for entire community • Lower the bar to participation • Integrate with LDAP and other University systems • Escape financial escalation of commercial products and potential for Blackboard as sole provider 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  9. The Path to Sakai • Major Stakeholders: • WITS • WITS/Hatfield Advisory Committee • CLA Deans Office • Faculty 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  10. The Path to Sakai • Contenders: • Moodle • Easier startup • Less flexible • Smaller feature set • Sakai • More difficult startup • Designed for collaboration • Built by people in higher ed to solve problems of higher ed 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  11. The Path to Sakai • Sakai Challenges: • Lack of large java project experience • Limited staff • Limited budget • Dealing with a number of tools sort of working together • Navigating the Sakai community 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  12. The Path to WISE • Pilot – Phase 1 – Spring Term 2007 • Version 2.5 • Download and run the pre-built version • WITS learning phase • Introduce Sakai to faculty in small group sessions • SakaiCAL – Summer 2007 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  13. The Path to WISE • Pilot – Phase 2 – Fall Term 2007 • Download and build the source code • Small group of invited faculty (10) • Skinned with riff on basic sakai skin • Pilot – Phase 3 – Spring Term 2008 • Opened to all interested CLA faculty • 25 brave souls 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  14. The Path to WISE • The Decision – April 2008 • “Bye Bye Blackboard” email • May - 2 weeks of “Meet Sakai” workshops and customization focus groups • July-August – Intro to WISE and specialized tools workshops • Practice sites • The Deadline – August 25, 2008 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  15. The Path to WISE • The Sweeteners • LDAP integration • Automatic course creation • Daily enrollment updating • Official photos in the Roster tool • Library e-Reserves integration • Roles for administrative assistants, librarians, academic listeners • Turnitin integration 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  16. The Path to WISE • Local vs. hosted 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  17. The Path to WISE • The search for a name… • Short and sweet • Limitations with ‘W’ • Maintain a straight face CLAW?? 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  18. The Path to WISE • Obvious choices already spoken for 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  19. The Path to WISE • The AHA moment: • Willamette Instructional Support Environment 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  20. The Path to WISE • The skinning process • Small committee! • confluence/display/UI/Sakai+screenshots • Comparison of institution home pages and Sakai skins • Web development office prototypes 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  21. The Path to WISE 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  22. The Path to WISE 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  23. The Path to WISE 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  24. What We Built - Production • Apache web server – virtual host on pre-existing web server, with mod_jk • 2 Tomcat servers in cluster • Virtual machines • 2.5 GB RAM • 15 GB HD • MySQL replicated cluster (pre-existing) • NFS server for Sakai files; ~120GB 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  25. What We Built - Development • Development Server (Tomcat VM) – build/development environment • currently building source from Sakai 2_6_x maintenance branch • changes tracked and stored in local subversion repository • Testing Server (Tomcat VM) – release candidate, QA, user testing environment 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  26. What We Built • Changes from OOTB Sakai • 10 non-stock modules • 1 home-made java class (Quartz job for SIS integration) • 3 java source patches (bug fixes from JIRA) • ~50 other file modifications (properties, pom, xml version strings, etc.) 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  27. The Rollout • Blackboard Migration • Only requested course materials • Sakai Migration tool • CD Archive with Bfree • Student assistant • Training, training and more training • Intro to WISE • Specialized tools workshops 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  28. The Rollout • Small contract with Longsight • Integration with Datatel for automatic course creation and population • Eased the intimidation factor • Load balancing and testing • Source for best practices information 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  29. The Rollout • Identified key project site users • Deans Office: • Online position searches • Faculty and Academic Councils • Human Resources • Flu shot clinic signup • Advising Signups 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  30. The Rollout • Help Desk Participation 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  31. The Rollout • Provide maximum access 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  32. 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  33. Growth and Acceptance • Fall 2008 • 80 instructors • 180 course sites • Spring 2010 • 170 instructors • 400 course sites • “My students are asking why I’m not using WISE”! 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  34. What Do People Use? • Resources: 100% • Roster, Syllabus, Announcements, Gradebook, Mailtool, Sign-up • Assignments, Schedule, Forums, Blog • Chat, Wiki, Tests & Quizzes, Site Stats 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  35. What Do People Like? • Instructor view of official photos in Roster tool • Sign-up tool • Project sites – and the ability to add colleague accounts • Automatic course site creation and updated student enrollment information • Availability of site statistics 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  36. What do people like? • Open Source • Sustainable 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  37. What Do People Like? Miho Fujiwara (Faculty, Japanese): My students and I found that putting syllabus, handouts and other instructions in Resource were very convenient and helpful. (Those students who tend to lose handouts do not have to ask me twice any more!) I also share our research Data with my research partners in Japan by using WISE. This is much easier than sending large data back and forth by e-mail attachment. I used "Sign-up" function for my advising and also oral exam appointment. It was much easier for both my students and me to keep a track of an appointment. "Drop Box" was handy for my senior students to hand in their senior presentation (PPT) and paper electrically. When they presented their PPT, all I have to do was to open my WISE site for the class and students open their files they previously sent. In the past, it took extra time for students to down load files to a classroom computer and different students brought their files in different way (e-mail attachment, H drive, Memory card, etc.). With WISE it was very straight forward. 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  38. What Do People Like? • Teresa Hudkins (Director of Admissions): Although I've used WISE only as a member of the Academic Status Committee, I wanted to let you know how great it is! It has saved pounds of paper, and it has allowed us to sometimes meet by email rather than in person which has been a great thing for this group of busy people. So thank you, and I hope WISE will continue to be available for us in the future. It's very cool! • Rita Moore (Dean, GSE) I must say we have appreciated the Wise resource and tools immensely in the SOE. It has helped us organize information for accreditation, the day to day of the School, and to keep everyone informed in general. Faculty have come to ask, "will that be posted on Wise?" Many thanks to you and your team! 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  39. Complaints • Pasting from Word in the FCKeditor • The wiki interface • Creating blog entries with Blogger tool • Wanting blogs and wikis that are more transparently public • Making WebDAV work • “I should be able to figure it out all by myself” 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  40. Problems in Paradise? • Mostly from people trying to figure it out all by themselves! • “My site disappeared” • “I don’t have a tab for my site” • One “stop the presses” issue in 3 years 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  41. What We Learned • Work with others, ask questions • Mike Osterman – Whitman College • Mary McMahon, Jezmynne Dene, everyone at Claremont Colleges • Sakai conferences, obviously • Write to the list serve and hear back from the programmers 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  42. What We Learned • Set a maintenance window, advertise heavily and use it • Take care with patching vs. repair • Limit rebuilding over course of academic year • Build a central repository of emails/questions 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  43. What We Learned • The value of being able to track memory utilization over time • Insight into heap in times of trouble • Ability to tune threshholds over time • Connect cacti (network graphing solution) to SNMP interface built into Java Virtual Machine 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  44. What We Learned 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  45. On-going Issues • Business school still using two applications • Generating local help documentation • Working behind-the-scenes with the database • Small pool of help if something goes wrong 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  46. Open Issues • Do we open up project site creation to all? • How do we handle course archive/deletion? • Can we make sections work? • Leveraging SIS integration code to populate other types of sites • How do we effectively reach and help students? • Coming need for portfolios 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  47. cramerc@willamette.edu 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  48. [Additional content] [Section Title Slide] 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  49. http://wise.willamette.edu/portal/site/LAW-Test-01-08_FA: demonstration of building encapsulated web site E-Reserves – Link tool Bill Kelm Gameplan site 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

  50. http://wise.willamette.edu/portal/site/LAW-Test-01-08_FA: demonstration of building encapsulated web site • Web Classes and Projects: WebCAP • > Collaborative Project, Learning and Class environment: CPLACE • > Class and Project Space: CAPSpace • > Collaborative Classes and Projects: CCAP • > Collaborative University Environment: CUE • > Collaborative Learning in a University Environment: CLUE • > Collaborative Learning and Sharing Space: CLASS • > Share Time and Resources: STAR • > • E-Reserves – Link tool • Bill Kelm Gameplan site • Assigning admin assistantsreviewed wise-admin email to Kephart’s message on 8/8/08 11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

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