Spring Break
Wikis, polls and blogs new features on replacement for WebCT
Kaitlyn Kilmetis
Issue date: 9/9/08 Section: News
Across campus, buzz has been steadily spreading about a new service provided by the university called Sakai. From a link on the university homepage to a Web address listed in various course syllabi, Sakai has surely entered the university's consciousness.
Michael Korcuska, executive director of the Sakai Foundation, said Sakai is a course-management system, the primary purpose of which is to support collaboration in the university community.
Sakai was created through a partnership between University of Michigan, Stanford, Massachusettes Institute of Technology and Indiana University in 2004. Today Sakai operates in 200 universities has over a million users worldwide.
Janet DeVry, manager of instructional services, said the university joined educational institutions across the globe using Sakai because WebCT, the university's former course management system, was purchased by its biggest competitor, Blackboard.
Devry said support for WebCT was diminishing because of decreased capabilities, which caused the university to seek another learning-mechanism system. Although WebCT will still be available through spring 2010, the university is in the process of transitioning from WebCT to Sakai.
Mathieu Plourde, an instructional designer at IT User Services, said Sakai is superior to WebCT.
"One of the biggest differences between WebCT and Sakai is that Sakai has a lot of tools," Plorde said. "WebCT is very streamline. Sakai is a much more powerful platform than WebCT."
He said WebCT remains the same, but Sakai can continually change.
"We are working with whole Sakai community to make the product better and that's something that wasn't there with WebCT because we were using basically the same version of WebCT for four years," Plorde said.
Although the switch from WebCT to Sakai may seem strange to users at first, Sakai is a more advanced system, Korcusca said.
"Things may look a little different but you can do everything you can do on WebCT on Sakai, and so much more," he said. "Part of the reason to use Sakai is not just to use the product but to join an open-source community and a collaboration of universities working to propel the system. "
Michael Korcuska, executive director of the Sakai Foundation, said Sakai is a course-management system, the primary purpose of which is to support collaboration in the university community.
Sakai was created through a partnership between University of Michigan, Stanford, Massachusettes Institute of Technology and Indiana University in 2004. Today Sakai operates in 200 universities has over a million users worldwide.
Janet DeVry, manager of instructional services, said the university joined educational institutions across the globe using Sakai because WebCT, the university's former course management system, was purchased by its biggest competitor, Blackboard.
Devry said support for WebCT was diminishing because of decreased capabilities, which caused the university to seek another learning-mechanism system. Although WebCT will still be available through spring 2010, the university is in the process of transitioning from WebCT to Sakai.
Mathieu Plourde, an instructional designer at IT User Services, said Sakai is superior to WebCT.
"One of the biggest differences between WebCT and Sakai is that Sakai has a lot of tools," Plorde said. "WebCT is very streamline. Sakai is a much more powerful platform than WebCT."
He said WebCT remains the same, but Sakai can continually change.
"We are working with whole Sakai community to make the product better and that's something that wasn't there with WebCT because we were using basically the same version of WebCT for four years," Plorde said.
Although the switch from WebCT to Sakai may seem strange to users at first, Sakai is a more advanced system, Korcusca said.
"Things may look a little different but you can do everything you can do on WebCT on Sakai, and so much more," he said. "Part of the reason to use Sakai is not just to use the product but to join an open-source community and a collaboration of universities working to propel the system. "
Be the first to comment on this story