Future directions for CHEF/SAKAI & MITC

Colleagues,

I [Tom Kirk] participated in a conference call today with Roberta Lempke (St. Olaf), Lisa Palchick (Kalamazoo), Carolyn Zinn (Kalamazoo), Jim Cubit (Lake Forest) and Nancy Millichap (MITC).

The conference call centered around the issue of the future of CHEF/SAKAI and MITC's role in supporting the software.

Lisa began the conversation by reporting her circumstances at Kzoo. They have been trying to install CHEF but have had difficulty; they don't have a lot of expertise for Java on the staff. (Nancy Millchap reported that there is little need for Java to install but as soon as modification is needed the Java becomes essential.) Lisa also reported that there is no documentation.

Lisa suggested we explore ways in which MITC could be helpful and she asked Nancy for the latest on development of SAKAI.

Nancy reported what she learned last week at the same meeting in which Janet Russell participated and in earlier sessions about SAKAI:

• SAKAI v1.0 is due by mid summer. It will largely be the CHEF architecture with the assessment tools of Coursework (Stanford's system) and OnCourse (IU's system) added. There will be little other changes.
• SAKAI v2.0 is due in summer 2005 and will have greater restructuring.
• The Educational Partnership initiative provides several benefits (prerelease software, access to development code, and representation on the SAKAI board). The cost of membership is $10,000 for larger institutions and $5,000 for those with enrollment below 3,000 students.

Subsequent to that meeting she sensed some resistance to consortial membership among the funders of SAKAI. However she has not taken the response as a "no."

Following our conference call Nancy sent the Joseph Hardin's Power Point presentation. JH is the manager of SAKAI and is based at UMich.

Roberta Lempke (St. Olaf) reported they have WebCT and will not "unplug" it this year. However they want to get away from the commercial package. They are going to be looking at other systems and Moodle is high on their list.

Jim Cubit reported that Lake Forest had started to implement CHEF from MITC, but weren't able to get it to function well what with the virus and worm problems last fall and they opted out. They are under pressure from faculty to provide some basic system.

I reported that Earlham has decided to continue in a trial mode with both CHEF and Moodle for another year.

The conclusion of the discussion is that there is a sense that institutions want to go with CHEF/SAKAI if it develops as planned and we can inject expertise in the use of Java into the organization.

As we left the conference call the following next steps were agreed upon:

1. Nancy Millichap will set up a listserv for discussion of course management software amongst the MITC institutions. Each of us are to send names of people to be added. I will send all your names.
2. Nancy Millichap will announce the formation of the listserv in the next Update from MITC.
3. We are to send Nancy ideas for bolstering the claim of NITLE/MITC consortial membership in the SAKAI Educational Partnership initiative.
4. Roberta is going to the send the group all the work that had been done in planning a conference on CMS.
5. Nancy will explore how MITC might help with the Java training.

In the course of the conversation I learned that the following institutions are in some stage of course management system use:

• Hope (Moodle)
• Lawrence (Moodle)
• Wabash (full implementation of commercial package with link to campus information system)
• Grinnell (full implementation of commercial package with link to campus information system)
• Wooster (Blackboard)
• St. Olaf (WebCT and moving)
• Lake Forest
• Kalamazoo (Let WebCT)
• Earlham (trial with Moodle and CHEF)

P.S. A CLAC survey in March 2004 lists the following MITC institutions as responding. I don't know which of these don't have CMS but it is possible that one or two don't. The survey listed 26 participants but three answered "don't have CMS." The institutions: Denison, Kenyon, Macalester, Carleton and Albion responded in addition to some of those listed above.

Tom Kirk