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Pilot Project Tests New Course Website

Sakai project designed to replace Blackboard

CIT's Amy Campbell and faculty member Terry Oas review the Sakai course website.

More than 400 students and faculty in about a dozen Duke courses will be part of a pilot this spring exploring the Sakai learning management system as an alternative to Blackboard.

Duke's pilot includes a range of courses representing a variety of schools and disciplines. Courses range in size from about 15 to 140 students.

"The Sakai pilot sites this spring will help us understand what faculty and students find most useful in Sakai, and will also help us figure out how to make the full transition to Sakai as smooth and painless as possible," said Samantha Earp, director of academic services for Duke's Office of Information Technology.

Duke's pilot is being conducted in collaboration with UNC-Chapel Hill, which has announced plans to transition from Blackboard to Sakai by fall 2014. A number of other schools have already adopted or are transitioning to Sakai, including Stanford, the University of Michigan and Virginia Tech, among others.

Both Blackboard and Sakai enable document sharing, discussion boards, grading, blogs, wikis, e-mail lists, group project spaces, library resource guides, online testing and web-based audio recording.

Blackboard has been in use at Duke for 10 years, with more than 1,600 course sites created each semester. The university's current license with Blackboard is up for renewal in June 2012.

While Blackboard and Sakai offer similar functionality, Sakai is an open source framework, which has no licensing costs and provides increased flexibility, said Ed Gomes Jr., associate dean for Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Office of Technology Sciences.

Gomes chaired Duke's eLearning roadmap committee, a 20-member group representing units from across the campus, that conducted a 15-month evaluation including extensive feedback from the Duke community. An overview of that committee's process is available at the eLearning roadmap site (http://elearning.duke.edu/).

"Not only does Sakai offer significant cost savings in license fees, which is especially important as Duke expands to become a global campus, but it allows Duke to develop new strategic partnerships with other academic institutions around the development of a tool that supports our needs," Gomes said.

Pilot participant Kristen Stephens, who also served on the eLearning roadmap committee, said she has found the Sakai interface intuitive as a user.

"All of these systems have common features, and more similarities than differences," said Stephens, an assistant professor in education. "Since Sakai is open source, it opens up the doors to be more customized for what faculty want to do with it."

While no learning management system can meet every need, pilot participant Terry Oas said he's hoping Sakai will provide an easier-to-use interface for key tasks such as grade calculation.

Many faculty are comfortable with the current system, but even an upgrade to the next version of Blackboard would require adjustment, said Oas, an associate professor of biochemistry.

Considering new alternatives can inspire new ways of teaching, he said.

"Until two years ago, I hadn't considered using the discussion board. Now I find it really important for all classes," he said. "The reality is that software changes and is updated. These tools can be helpful in enhancing education, and can help people save time. My main motivation for exploring alternative systems is to look for new features, and new ideas."

Classes that are not participating in the pilot will continue to be taught with whatever course website instructors currently use, such as Blackboard or WordPress.