Timeline update: New

Based on a series of disscussions with our consultants working on Banner integration our collaboration environment based on Sakai technologies (Laulima) will tentatively be available in the 2nd week of October. Our apologies with the delay and the impact this may have on your collaboration plans.

Sakai and its possibilities for UH

ITS has been investigating options this year for the future direction for our course management system (WebCT Campus Edition 4). You can visit <http://www.hawaii.edu/infobits/s2006/> for more information about why this became necessary. As we tried to frame the issues, it became apparent that there are some related services that should be considered at the same time.

The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment has emerged as one of the most interesting approaches for us. In brief, Sakai is a community source initiative led by a group of colleges and universities around the world. UH has already been running an early version of Sakai for over a year as part of Kapiolani CC's e-Portfolio initiative, and Sakai clearly presents some new ways of thinking about course management systems in the academic environment. In addition to cost-effective e-Portfolio services, Sakai offers: the opportunity to the MyUH portal course tools with the supported e-learning environment, the ability to use a single online environment for e-learning and other kinds of UH-wide and global collaboration, and provision of an open framework for pedagogic innovation by interested faculty. While currently less mature than some of the proprietary solutions, higher education controls the future of Sakai and commercial support is available should we desire it.

Working Agenda: (Friday, April 20, 2007)
1:00 - Introduction to the Issue, Sakai and the Workshop - David Lassner
1:15 - Sakai Overview - Chuck Severance Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
2:15 - Demo of Sakai at UH - Kenwrick Chan
2:45 - What's Next? Discussion, Questions & Answers - Hae Okimoto, Kenwrick Chan, David Lassner

Webcast (of April 20th presentation)
Charles Severance slides (pdf)
Part one: presentation DSL | Lan (Quicktime)
Part two: questions and demo DSL | Lan (Quicktime)