Duke Begins Transition To Sakai

More than 5,000 faculty and students are part of the first 180 courses to use a new learning management system this fall as Duke transitions from Blackboard to Sakai.

The group includes a variety of schools and disciplines, with the highest concentrations in Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, School of Nursing and Sanford School of Public Policy. Fall 2011 courses in Sakai represent more than one-third of the courses that used Blackboard in fall 2010.

"This fall was intended as a trial period, in order to identify and resolve as many issues as possible before the majority of instructors move to Sakai in the spring," said Lynne O'Brien, director of academic technology and instructional services for Perkins Library.

Blackboard will no longer be available after June 30, 2012.

Over the summer, about 1,500 courses were copied from Blackboard into the new Sakai system for faculty planning to use Sakai this fall.

The Center for Instructional Technology is offering a full slate of workshops and training opportunities to help instructors and staff prepare for the change. Faculty and students have a range of support options, including online help documentation, scheduled seminars and one-on-one consultation.

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

However, Sakai is an open source framework, which has no licensing costs and provides increased flexibility, said Samantha Earp, director of academic services for Duke's Office of Information Technology.

The system experienced a few glitches in the first days of the semester that were quickly resolved, Earp said.

"As we move through this transition, we want faculty and students to help us shape the future of Sakai," Earp said. "There are a variety of ways Sakai users can provide feedback, both through informal channels or through formal assessments we'll be conducting later in the term." Feedback can be submitted online through the Sakai website by clicking on the "Feedback" link on the left side.

A transition advisory committee made up of faculty, staff and students, has been formed to review that feedback and make recommendations to the Sakai implementation team throughout the transition. The group met for the first time in August.

Mark Goodacre, an associate professor in religion who participated in Duke's pilot of Sakai last spring, said he found Sakai much better for organizing a large class into small groups. In his spring class, for example, he divided the 120-student class into groups, and teaching assistants found group management much easier.

"Sakai seems to do everything Blackboard could do, plus a few other things, and it's fairly intuitive to work with," he said. "I also like that Sakai allows me to make certain parts of the course publicly accessible. So you can look at the syllabus, for instance, but you can't access all the documents."

Marcia Rego, director of faculty development and assessment in the Thompson Writing Program, said the first semester might be a little confusing for students who could have classes in both systems, but she predicted Sakai would be better for Duke in the long run.

"Sakai has a lot of advantages. It's a good switch. There's a different sort of logic (in Sakai) compared to Blackboard, but once you get it, I think it'll be more effective and more user-friendly for students," said Rego, who is part of a group of faculty teaching Writing 20 in Sakai this fall. "They just open up the syllabus and everything is there: articles they need to read, assignment prompts and due dates on the calendar."Any transition to a new system entails a learning curve, said Margaret Bowers, an assistant professor in nursing who is teaching an elective on advanced management of cardiovascular diseases in Sakai this fall.

"You just have to go in with an open mind," said Bowers, who attended CIT training in Sakai this summer. "There will be a little trepidation and angst no matter what."

Bowers said she and her students like the  "Facebook-ish" customizability of Sakai: "Students can put all their assignments on one calendar in their personal space, and instructors can link directly from the syllabus to a grading rubric or readings. I think it's pretty clean and clear."

Duke chose Sakai as the successor to Blackboard for course and organizational site management following an extensive review by Duke's eLearning Roadmap Group. A number of other schools have already adopted or are transitioning to Sakai, including UNC, Stanford and the University of Michigan, among others.

IT staff expect to migrate course content from fall 2007 through summer 2011 for all current Duke faculty and instructors by Oct. 28.

Migrated content includes course resources such as PDFs, Word files, and quizzes and tests, but does not include student data (such as information posted by students in discussion boards, grades and previous student assignments). Instructors who need student data or courses from before fall 2007 can manually download that content from Blackboard course sites.

Course sites for spring 2012 can be created starting later this fall.

Visit http://sakai.duke.edu to access Sakai or learn more about the transition.  Visit the Sakai help site (http://sites.duke.edu/sakai) to learn more about using Sakai.