[DG: Teaching & Learning] [DG: User Experience] [Management] Sakai Open Academic Environment confirmed as official Sakai Foundation project

[David Goodrum]

Hi Bruce,

You make an excellent point that each institution that adopts Sakai gives it it's own name. At IU we call Sakai 2 "Oncourse"; we haven't begun to think yet what we might call our future service. (Probably very few of our users even know or care that Sakai is our engine.) I am always amazed at the creativity and diversity of names as each installation finds some expression that fits their own academic culture. 

The sakaiproject.org site has consistently described the current Sakai offering as a "Collaboration and Learning Environment" (CLE).

As the steering group struggled to indicate something rather different, we had that original Sakai designation in the back of our minds. It leaves room again for that local creativity. 

2 cents - David

On Oct 29, 2010, at 9:18 AM, "Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus at gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 5:57 AM, Adam Marshall
<adam.marshall at oucs.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
I see the point but everybody knows there's a thing on the way code-named 'Sakai 3' - why bother undoing all the publicity that is already out there?

I agree totally with Bruce. Calling it "Sakai 3 - Open Academic Environment" would work for me.

And further, I find the OAE name cold, antiseptic, boring.
Notwithstanding the awkwardness I previously noted, I really hope this
is a code name that goes away.

To be clear, I have no pretense to believe that I could do any better.
But if you all do revisit this again, at Miami, the team here did
something that worked out pretty well I thought: we had a naming
contest for our Sakai implementation and then voted on the finalists.
The entire university community was free to submit suggestions, and to
vote on the final name. The result of that process was actually pretty
good: Niikha, a word that means "friend", from the Myaami language. So
it's unique, evocative, catchy.

This could have the benefit of encouraging community participation
from a wider sphere of actual users (students, faculty)*, and may
result in a better outcome. So put up "an essence of OAE" page with a
list of core principles, and maybe a few good screenshots, and ask
your future users for they'd like to call it.

Bruce

* something I think the Sakai world needs to work on going forward
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