New lessons in course management: a group of universities have banded together to offer a low-cost course management software alternative; commercial vendors compete with new applications.In mid-July, just one week before college and university leaders were to launch into their summer season of conferences, a nonprofit group known as The Sakai Project This page is about the software project, for other meanings, see Sakai. Sakai is a community of academic institutions, commercial organizations and individuals who work together to develop a common Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE). (www.sakaiproject.org) introduced software for higher education higher education Study beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. providers to use for course management. Sakai's project leaders timed the announcement right. Sakai's goal of providing open source software that may someday save academic computing departments significant amounts of money was the subject of casual commentary during the week that followed. Hallway conversations at the annual conference of the Society of College and University Planning, held in Toronto, speculated about this new set of tools for creating course Web sites, posting homework, creating e-mail threads and bulletin boards, archiving lectures, and uploading lectures. Why the Interest? The Sakai Project is taking the best solutions from course management systems built at four universities--the University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. , Indiana University Indiana University, main campus at Bloomington; state supported; coeducational; chartered 1820 as a seminary, opened 1824. It became a college in 1828 and a university in 1838. The medical center (run jointly with Purdue Univ. , Stanford University Stanford University, at Stanford, Calif.; coeducational; chartered 1885, opened 1891 as Leland Stanford Junior Univ. (still the legal name). The original campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. David Starr Jordan was its first president. (CA), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--and offering them to any interested party. Built as an open source system, Sakai's software is meant to be shared among education providers and enhanced by partner schools' academic computing departments. If the higher ed sector takes interest and supports the project, Sakai's open source software may end up providing an alternative to commercial course management systems in this nascent sector of the software industry. Course management systems serve one of the most traditional institutions--the academies of learning--but have been available for only the past seven years, with much development occurring during just the past few. Academic computing managers have taken a variety of approaches to providing online tools for faculty and students. In addition to using the best commercial resources, some, like the four universities launching The Sakai Project, took the do-it-yourself route and developed home-gown applications. Now Sakai stands to provide a different solution. To date, Blackboard (www.blackboard.com), WebCT (www.webct.com) and eCollege (www.ecollege.com) are among the leading commercial systems. Added together, the client bases of these companies represent thousands of educational enterprises. In addition, there are a mix of campus IT solutions and other projects that have morphed into commercial offerings. One example is ANGEL, the course management system of CyberLearning Labs (www.cyberlearninglabs.com) which was developed in the mid-1990s in the CyberLab of Indiana University-Purdue University. CyberLearningLabs has since spun off as a commercial venture. Today, more than 80 percent of the four-year private and public universities that use course management systems have settled on a "single product standard" for course management, meaning they use one primary system, says Kenneth Green, director of The Campus Computing Project (www.campuscomputing.net), an independent enterprise that studies higher education technology trends. Having a single source for CMS (1) See content management system and color management system. (2) (Conversational Monitor System) Software that provides interactive communications for IBM's VM operating system. is a logical development, says Michael Roy, director of academic computing services at Wesleyan University Wesleyan University, at Middletown, Conn.; coeducational; chartered and opened 1831. There are special cooperative study programs with the California Institute of Technology and the engineering department of Columbia Univ. (CT), who adds that Wesleyan once used two CMS systems but eventually settled on one provider. "We found that when we ran both, the faculty couldn't help each other. There is a lot of this collegial col·le·gi·al adj. 1. a. Characterized by or having power and authority vested equally among colleagues: "He . . . support that happens on campus." Those colleges and universities that don't use a single source CMS model are probably providing a "detente dé·tente n. 1. A relaxing or easing, as of tension between rivals. 2. A policy toward a rival nation or bloc characterized by increased diplomatic, commercial, and cultural contact and a desire to reduce tensions, as through " for departments that need to use a non-commercial or homegrown home·grown adj. 1. Raised or grown at home. 2. Originating in or characteristic of a locality: "Rock is homegrown music in the United States, evolved from blues and country and Tin Pan Alley" CMS system for very specific applications, says Green. Commercial CMS systems have come to require significant investment. A university serving 15,000 students could spend $75,000 annually in licensing fees to use a commercial course management system. CMS providers charged less in annual licensing fees when they introduced their systems to the market, but soon realized they had to increase pricing if they were to grow. In 2002, higher ed users of two major commercial systems were hit with annual fee increases as high as 20 percent. The installation of such complex systems generally require a school to spend an additional $10,000 to $20,000 on a commercial vendor's consulting services. Then come the infrastructure costs. "The cost of buying the software only begins to capture the cost of running the system," says Roy, who is also a member of the Northeast Regional Computing Program (www.nercomp.org), a group whose members look at innovative ways to use technology in the classroom. It can cost at least $100,000 annually to pay the staff to keep the servers backed up, to install patches and perform upgrades, and to ensure that the software works with other databases. Any software, including course management software, requires these infrastructure costs "if you look at all those who touch the system," he adds. By contrast, The Sakai Project is asking that users become partners and pay $10,000 annually to use its CMS software. Partners are asked to sign a three-year agreement to use Sakai. For this they have a say in where the project focuses its resources and energy. Given that Sakai is an open source project, any institution can download the code for free. The management team at UMassOnline, the online education department of the University of Massachusetts The system includes UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth (affiliated with Cape Cod Community College), UMass Lowell, and the UMass Medical School. It also has an online school called UMassOnline. , initially invested $500,000 in its commercial CMS system, says David Gray David Gray can refer to:
Sakai's Ascent The Sakai Project, which is loosely named after television's "Iron Chef For the American version of this show, see Iron Chef America. Iron Chef is a Japanese television program produced by FujiTV. The original Japanese title is Ironmen of Cooking ( " Sakai Hiroyuki, will include the best of the CMS systems built by the four universities, along with applications from the uPortal Consortium and the Open Knowledge Initiative. These six entities officially banded together in late 2003 to collaborate on Sakai, while working on some other open source projects. "The systems at Michigan, Indiana, MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and Stanford were built in 1997 and 1998," explains Joseph Hardin, director of the collaborative technologies lab at UM, and chair of the Sakai board of directors. All four systems were due for upgrades. "We were looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. the next step," he says. "We are at a point where we can contribute to standards development and provide working collaboration." Sakai is a $6.8 million endeavor. That total includes the $2 million in staff time and financial resources that each of the four universities have agreed to dedicate to the software's development. It also includes $300,000 in grant money from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, philanthropic organization founded in 1966 by engineer and entrepeneur William R. Hewlett (1913–2001), co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, his wife, Flora Lamson Hewlett (1914–77), and their eldest son, Walter B. (www.hewlett.org) and $1.2 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a foundation endowed with wealth accumulated by the late Andrew W. Mellon. It is the product of the 1969 merger of the Avalon Foundation and the Old Dominion Foundation. (www.mellon.org). By late July, 43 IHEs had agreed to pay $10,000 annually for three years to support Sakai. The group of early adopters includes the Foothill-de Anza Community College system (CA), which received a $600,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation Hewlett Foundation: see William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. to use and help develop Sakai software. From July to September, programmers at Michigan, Stanford, MIT, and Indiana continued to refine the code to make it ready for use on their own campuses by fall 2004. An upgraded version is expected to be available in December. Sakai is meant to work with, and then replace, legacy systems, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Hardin. Project founders also have designed it to work with commercial open source systems, such as Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux, assembled by Red Hat, was a popular, "middle-aged" Linux distribution (not as old as Slackware but older than Ubuntu) upon its discontinuation in 2004.[1] Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994. . Skeptics, though, don't expect the migration to Sakai to happen quickly. For the same reason most colleges and universities that use CMS have settled on using just one vendor, most will not want to run Sakai and a commercial software program at the same time. The staff costs to learn and support two systems will be too much. Schools will want to see that Sakai is a bug-proof, smoothly running software alternative before jumping on board. Otherwise, they will be adding to their costs, says Roy. Commercial Vendors Advance Commercial vendors certainly were not idle during the months leading up The Sakai Project's software release. The three leading commercial vendors, Blackboard, WebCT, and eCollege, announced added applications, software upgrades, and new partnerships throughout the spring. In mid-June, eCollege partnered with Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) and HP (www.hp.com) to create still another content management system. The companies are building CMS applications that will allow instructors to easily archive course materials, update them, and share them with each other. Something as basic as fixing a spelling error in a course presentation can be time consuming, says Sarah Bradford, vice president of product development for eCollege. This new content management system will automatically make corrections throughout a course. Instructors will be able to do many more high-level functions, such as search key words in shared materials to find learning objects and lessons. The content management system will be based on Microsoft's .NET software and HP server technology. Academic CIOs can expect to see even more emphasis on content management as CMS develops. The higher ed sector is now addressing what is known as the "afterlife" of a course, says Tom Warger, consultant with Edutech International (www.edutech-int.com). Now that some faculty members have used CMS--and some for a number of semesters--they are spotting weaknesses in the systems. "Someone teaching History 345 is now asking, 'How do I get access to the map I used in History 1237'" To date, system administrators have archived and stored digital teaching tools, leaving instructors to come back to them to find things and help them repurpose To change the media format; for example, to go from print to online. them. Blackboard launched its content management system in early 2004. Competitor WebCT expanded its Powerlinks network to encourage the creation and use of e-portfolios for storing learning materials and objects. Such development will be key as professors develop and share more material within their own departments and with academics at other institutions. Instructors also will need more digital content from which to build their courses, which is why partnerships with textbook companies are already in the works, and links to more Library databases will probably take shape in the months ahead. This spring, Blackboard announced its new partnerships with Thomson Higher Education, Houghton Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Company is a leading educational publisher in the United States. The company's headquarters is located in Boston's Back Bay. It publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers , and Pearson Education Pearson Education is an international publisher of textbooks and other educational material, such as multimedia learning tools. Pearson Education is part of Pearson PLC. It is headquartered in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. to provide users with textbook materials in digital format, CyberLearning Labs has worked out a similar arrangement with Pearson, so that ANGEL's users have access to the publisher's higher education imprints. Vying for Position In response to Sakai's open source initiative--and smaller ones that have been tried along the way--the commercial vendors claim to feet secure about their role in the marketplace. "We have clients that can do open source," explains Matthew Pittinsky, chair of Blackboard, "but they want applications from the commercial vendors." Commercial providers, through their own efforts, or in partnership, can finesse applications and issue upgrades more quickly than a nonprofit open source initiative The Non-Profit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) is a group, founded in 2001, coordinating the work of various other groups supporting the adoption of Open-source software in non-profit organizations. , he insists. Not surprisingly, executives from WebCT and eCollege also assuredly state that higher ed clients rely on commercial efforts for the common applications that are now part of all commercial CMS systems. "Three years ago this was an infantile market," says Brian Douglas Brian Douglas' career spans over 20 years in radio, and from coast to coast. Previous to his coming to Dial Global, where he is heard by over 1.7 million listeners daily, Brian could be heard on such stations as KZLA-FM, 540/1260 AM, and KYSR-FM in the Los Angeles area. , director of technology and operations at UMassOnline. "All competitors were elbowing for room and we had to make our best bet as to what would work for us." In the end, it is the system that is perceived as being easy to use, easy to teach to new faculty, and flexible enough to help users create and store course materials that will be the must-buy.
Most Users Have Adopted
A Course Management Standard
Percentage of CMS users primarily relying on one system
Public Universities: 71%
Private Universities: 79%
Public 4-year Colleges: 86%
Private 4-year Colleges: 82%
Community Colleges: 86%
Note: Table made from bar graph.
More than one-third of courses aided by a course management system are
driven by just one vendor's software. Instructors are using CMS for
such simple functions as posting homework assignments, to incorporating
presentations with streaming media, bulletin board chat, test
preparation, and grade information.
Source: Campus Computing 2003, The Campus Computing Project
Commercial CMS Services Anion anion (ăn`ī'ən), atom or group of atoms carrying a negative charge. The charge results because there are more electrons than protons in the anion. Systems (vvvvw.superioredge.com). Current product is Anion 4.1. Avilar (www.avilar.com). Current product is WebMentor 4.0. Blackboard (www.blackboard.com). Products include The Blackboard Learning System A widely used education system from Blackboard Inc., Washington, D.C. (www.blackboard.com). Part of the company's Blackboard Academic Suite, it includes course management, content authoring, collaborative discussions, virtual classrooms, as well as testing and grading. version 6. Centrinity (www.centrinity.com). The company's product is FirstClass, now in version 7.0. CyberLearningLabs (www.cyberlearninglabs.com). Newest product is ANGEL 6.0. Desire2Learn (vvww.desire2learn.com.). Product is Desire2Learn. eCollege (vvww.ecollege.com). Products include eCollege AU+. Embanet Corporation (www.embanet.com). Offerings include course management system hosting services, support. Groove Networks Groove Networks is a software company based in Beverly, Massachusetts. Founded by Ray Ozzie, the creator of IBM's Lotus Notes application, the privately held company specializes in productivity software that allows multiple users to work collaboratively on computer files (www.groove.net). The current product is Groove Workspace 2.5. IntraLearn (www.intralearn.com). The current product is IntraLearn SME (1) (Small and Medium-sized Enterprise) See SMB. (2) (Subject Matter Expert) An individual who is well-versed in the policies and procedures of a particular department or division. 3.1.2. Ionstream Oy/Dicole (vvww.mimerdesk.orq). The MimerDesk software is now in version 2.0.1. Jenzabar (wvvw.jenzabar.com). Internet Campus Solution is now in version 1.03. SumTotal Systems (www.sumtotalsystems.com). Products include Click2 Learn and Docent. Ucompass (www.ucompass.com). The company's course management product is Educator. UNICON UNICON International Unicycle Convention and Championships (www.unicon.net). The course management product is Unicon Academus. Virtual Learning Environments (www.vlei The word "Vlei" comes from Dutch and Afrikaans and is the word used to describe certain classes of bodies of inland waters in southern Africa. The pronunciation is "Flay". The word occurs by itself as a noun or as a suffix forming the names of bodies of water (e.g. .com). The current product is Virtual-U 2.5. WebCT (vvvvw.webct.com). Products include programs WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 and WebCT Vista WebCT Vista is a teaching and learning enterprise software run and developed by Blackboard. It is principally used by universities and other education institutions as classroom management software, and as a distance education service. 3.0. Other CMS Resources Claroline Development Community (www.claroline.net). The software, currently in version 1.4.2, is distributed free. edutools (www.edutools.info). A Web site that includes product reviews of course management systems and links to relevant providers and support services support services Psychology Non-health care-related ancillary services–eg, transportation, financial aid, support groups, homemaker services, respite services, and other services . Foothill College (vvww.foothillglobalaccess.orq/etudes). Foothill College developed ETUDES software as a grass-roots academic movement. Jones Knowledge (jonesknowledge.com). The current product, Jones e-education Software Standard, is free to users. The Learning Management Corporation (thelearningmanager.com). The Learning Manager, now in version 3.2, was originally developed by the Southern Alberta Southern Alberta is a region located in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of the year 2004, the region's population was approximately 272,017[1][2]. Institute of Technology. LITE Lab, College of Natural Science, Michigan State University Michigan State University, at East Lansing; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1855. It opened in 1857 as Michigan Agricultural College, the first state agricultural college. (WWW.lon-capa.org). LON-CAPA 1.1 was developed by the Laboratory for Instructional Technology There are two types of instructional technology: those with a systems approach, and those focusing on sensory technologies. The definition of instructional technology prepared by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Definitions and Terminology in Education at Michigan State University. LRN LRN Linux.ru.net (website) LRN Laboratory Response Network LRN Location Routing Number LRN Local Routing Number LRN Learning Resource iNterchange (Microsoft) LRN Lead Round Nose Consortium (dotlrn.org). Product is .LRN 2.0, a software product based on an open architecture and guided by the consortium. Moodle (moodle.org). The Moodle 1.1 system was originally designed to support an open source, online community. The Sakai Project (www.sakaiproject.org). This joint project of four major universities is making the Sakai Public Software Release available to other institutions. Social Sciences Computing, UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX (classweb.ucla.edu). UCLA Social Sciences Computing has been using ClassWeb since 1997. The current version is 2.0. Stanford University (getcoursework.stanford.edu). CourseWork, now in version 2.5, was developed by Stanford University Academic Computing as part of the Open Knowledge Initiative. University of Michigan (chefproject.org). CHEF, now in version 1.0.7, is distributed in an open source license by its developer, UM. University of Toronto Research at the University of Toronto has been responsible for the world's first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant, artificial pancreas, chemical laser, G-suit, the first practical electron microscope, the first cloning of T-cells, (ATRC ATRC Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (Canada) ATRC Assistive Technology Resource Center ATRC Aegis Training and Readiness Center ATRC Advanced Television Research Consortium ATRC Alien Terrorist Removal Court ATRC Against the Rest Crew ) (www.atutor.ca). Current product is ATutor 1.4. Western New England College Western New England College is a private, independent, coeducational college founded in 1919. Located on a classical 215 acre suburban campus in Springfield, Massachusetts, the College serves approximately 4,000 students on its main campus and at six satellite sites within (manhattan.sourceforge.net). Manhattan Virtual Classroom is now in version 2.1. RELATED ARTICLE: Questions you should ask platform providers--but probably aren't. Through its own search for e-learning technology, the University of Texas TeleCampus staff developed a process to select new courseware platform providers. Here are the questions asked of CMS vendors. 1. Give a detailed account of your system's attributes. 2. Describe the ways in which content can be entered into, deleted, and modified within the courseware. 3. Does the courseware have a built-in HTML editor A low-level Web site authoring tool that is essentially a text editor, specialized for writing HTML code. It assists the HTML author by cataloging all HTML tags and common structures in menus and by being able to catch certain syntax errors. or wizard for use in creating course content? 4. Describe the ways in which multimedia elements may be integrated into the courseware. 5. How are interactive elements integrated into the courseware? What are the abilities and limitations of the courseware regarding interactive elements? 6. Describe the courseware content organizational structure  This article has no lead section.To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, one should be written. . 7. Does the platform have the capability of linking or branching within the courseware? 8. What components of the course, if any, may be modified while the course is being offered? Can faculty members make the modifications? 9. Describe the course navigation abilities and flexibility. 10. Describe the student assessment and evaluation attributes of the platform. Is branching away from test responses available (the ability to give feedback)? Can evaluation elements be timed or dated? 11. Describe the student-tracking abilities of the courseware. 12. Is there a gradebook within the courseware? Describe the attributes of the gradebook. Will the gradebook link to evaluation elements within the courseware? Can the faculty member add scores from external evaluation elements? Can the gradebook design be modified while the course is being offered to students? 13. Describe the method by which your system can be tied into a student information system. Specifically address your proposed method to automate the registration (granting of access) of students into courses via a batch process. 14. Describe the different forms of course access (administrative, faculty, student, etc.). Is there a limitation to the number of each form of access per course? Can access be defined for each individual? (For example, can a faculty member determine which elements of faculty access will be allowed for a teaching assistant?) 15. Does your system provide Web-based conferencing? Does that conferencing support both synchronous chat and asynchronous Refers to events that are not synchronized, or coordinated, in time. The following are considered asynchronous operations. The interval between transmitting A and B is not the same as between B and C. The ability to initiate a transmission at either end. threaded discussions? Is that chat logged to an accessible file? 16. Are glossary and references functions available? If so, are they searchable? 17. Can portions of a course be made available to potential students for review? (For example, can the syllabus be made available outside the secured course?) 18. What is your corporate strategy and commitment to staying current with emerging technologies and standards? 19. How would you address training and technical support for staff? 20. What type of technical support will be available to faculty and students? If a help desk or other technical support e-mail or phone number is available, what are the days and times of availability? 21. Are faculty and student tutorials available? If so, describe. 22. Describe the communication system and processes that will be put in place to facilitate the working relationship between your company and our institution. 23. Describe in what ways your system allows for automation of student access to courses. How "open" is your system in terms of integrating back-office processes with our Student Information System? 24. What is the process to resolve technical problems? 25. What would be the minimum required user configuration (processor, browser, and version, etc.) for course access? 26. Will course development be possible on PC and Macintosh computers? Will courses be available to students using Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems? 27. How will you handle modifications/upgrades of the courseware platform? How frequent are modifications/upgrades? 28. Describe your course hosting options and models (e.g., licensed to end-user, vendor-hosted, etc.). If hosting will be outsourced to another company, please name that company and describe the relationship between the two companies. 29. How will the hosting system handle backup and recovery? What will be the frequency of backup? 30. Do you maintain a development environment separate from your production environment? Describe the differences between the management, security, and hosting of courses being developed and 2courses being offered to students. 31. Provide data on server downtime during the recent 12 months. 32. How would you handle the issues of course conversion from the current platform (if necessary)? 33. Please address our need for documentation and online help regarding the courseware. 34. Please present a time frame for implementation, staff training, server setup and conversion of existing courses. 35. Please provide the names of three to five academic clients. Describe the length of your relationship and the number of courses each client is offering on the platform. Please be sure one of the clients is your most active academic client. By Darcy Hardy, assistant vice chancellor vice chancellor n. Abbr. VC 1. A deputy or an assistant chancellor in a university. 2. A deputy to or a substitute for a head of state or an official bearing the title chancellor. 3. for Academic Affairs and Director of UT TeleCampus The UT TeleCampus (UTTC), launched in 1998, works with all 15 University of Texas System institutions to build and deliver collaborative online courses, degree programs and support services. Students may complete most online degree programs or courses entirely from a distance. for the University of Texas System, and Lori McNabb, curriculum coordinator, UT TeleCampus |
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