Forum .LRN Q&A: 4 Colleges Collaborate on Open-Source Courseware

The following e-mail was forwarded on to me, and I thought that the OpenACS/.LRN community might be interested in this.

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Today’s issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features the article, “4 Colleges Collaborate on Open-Source Courseware” by Andrea L. Foster. The Web site for the Sakai Project is http://www.sakaiproject.org/sakaiproject/

See http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2004/01/2004012204n.htm

Here is the text of the article:

4 Colleges Collaborate on Open-Source Courseware
by Andrea L. Foster

In what may be a big threat to commercial providers of course-management systems, four universities have announced a $6.8-million collaborative venture to create open-source courseware tools and related software for higher-education institutions.

The universities developing the system, called the Sakai Project, are the Indiana University system, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which will lead the effort.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has given $2.4-million for the project. Each of the four institutions is providing services worth about $1.1-million over two years.

Sakai is expected to offer open-source code for colleges to modify and share freely, and to provide course-management systems that can be tailored to an institution's needs. Such systems are Web-based software programs that include online versions of class rosters, course outlines, assignments, discussions, quizzes, and grade books.

Colleges will be able to gain access to Sakai software through an enhanced version of uPortal, a Web-based application made up of open-source-software parts created by several hundred universities. Sakai also will make use of the Open Knowledge Initiative, another collaborative effort among universities to support educational software.

Sakai, named for a Japanese chef, includes a "tool-portability profile" that will describe the specifications for writing and using software that is Sakai-compatible. The profile will be especially useful for colleges that want to integrate open-source educational tools with commercial e-learning products, said Jeffrey W. Merriman, a senior strategist in academic computing at MIT and a member of the Sakai board.

Another member of the Sakai board cited a different benefit. "By committing to work with each other and devote our resources to the common good, we are assuring that the collective value is returned to our own institutions, to our partners' institutions, and to the community," said Lois Brooks, director of academic computing at Stanford.

"We're pretty psyched about it," said Joseph Hardin, chairman of the Sakai board and director of the Collaborative Technologies Laboratory at Michigan. "We think there's a lot of opportunity for innovation in pedagogy."

According to the Campus Computing Project, which conducts annual national studies of computing in higher education, about 80 percent of colleges have committed themselves to a commercial vendor for their course-management systems, with the leading providers being Blackboard and WebCT.

Kenneth C. Green, director of the Campus Computing Project, said Sakai could encourage higher-education institutions to abandon commercial contracts in favor of its open-source offerings.

"It has the potential to gain traction," he said, adding that Sakai's selling points for colleges are quality software, potential cost savings, and the encouragement of a collaborative culture among higher-education institutions.

Others, however, are skeptical of Sakai's ability to threaten the courseware market of Blackboard or WebCT.

"Open source is great and it's free, but who do you go to when it's not working right?" asked Trace Urdan, an equity analyst at ThinkEquity, in San Francisco. "There is value to the sales process. It isn't simply how you get the customer to buy the product. There's education, and support, and accountability."

Matthew S. Pittinsky, Blackboard's chairman, acknowledged that his company could face competition, saying that Sakai is partly "duplicative and wasteful of resources." But he also said Blackboard is interested in a partnership with Sakai.

"It will take some time before this project has anything tangible to show," said Mr. Pittinsky. Meanwhile, he said, Blackboard has captured 40 percent to 42 percent of the market for course-management systems, and has agreements with publishers and other companies that make it easier for colleges to coordinate their courseware with other e-learning products.

He also suggested that it may not be cost-effective for colleges to choose Sakai over Blackboard, since Blackboard has more clients that can absorb research and development costs.

"Do you want to be part of a small-developer community, or do you want to join a large-developer community where the costs are spread out more?" Mr. Pittinsky asked.

The timing of the Sakai announcement could hit Blackboard hard because, according to recent news reports, the company is poised to go public. However, Mr. Pittinsky would not confirm or deny that speculation.

Officials at WebCT were not available for comment.

Mr. Hardin said the project would provide opportunities for commercial vendors, like Red Hat, that offer support for open-source systems. Blackboard and WebCT have not discussed a Sakai partnership with the project coordinators, said Mr. Hardin.

The Sakai software isn't scheduled for release until June or July. But as many as 13 universities -- including Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, and Yale Universities, and the University of California at Berkeley -- have already expressed interest in early access to the system, which would allow them to offer recommendations about its next generation, said Mr. Hardin.

The interested colleges include some that have built their own course-management systems and others that have hired commercial vendors to build them.

During the past year, many colleges have been frustrated with commercial courseware, complaining about the rising costs of licensing software and their inability to make adjustments to it to suit their institutions' instructional or administrative needs. Furthermore, some colleges have discovered more bugs than they expected in the software.

As I understand it, Sakai has sent out announcements in the form of an RFP inviting "affiliate members". For $10K per year membership one gets the privilege of participating in meetings and early access to code. Is that open source?

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded OKI, and the partners and I believe even the people are many of the same that were working on OKI.  I've also heard that the original OKI funding period is coming to an end.  My guess is that this effort is the substitute.

One thing we can learn from the OKI experience.  It got A LOT of market share.  Even at times when there was no code out there, there was a huge OKI hype.  Everyone was asking about OKI.  For some reason - maybe the combination of schools or the press from the Andrew W. Mello Foundation, what they say seems to be received with excitement.