[Building Sakai] Sakai Portal 2.9 RoadMap and Sakai Course at University of Michigan

Mon Jan 24 10:00:54 PST 2011

To be honest, this whole line of inquiry feels a little backwards to me--and a little outdated in terms of the whole CLE/OAE discussion. We have new schools coming on to CLE all the time, and plenty of existing schools who have no plans to move to OAE at the moment. The presumption should be that we're going to continue to invest resources in developing CLE for the foreseeable future.

I have certainly heard the assertion from some quarters that OAE is taking needed resources that otherwise would have gone to CLE, but I don't yet see any compelling evidence showing that it is true. In my view, the larger issue with CLE development is that there hasn't been a strong coherent case articulated for major new development. Nobody is going to throw resources at CLE--or *any* project--without a clear understanding of why that investment will buy them more than any of the other investments they could be making. If you don't make the case, managers will assume that CLE is just fine the way it is and can be safely ignored. 

Chuck has done a good job proposing some reasonably ambitious plans for 2.9. It would be good to see those plans further solidified and then for somebody to do a resource gap analysis so we know how much new resource we'll need committed to get the work done. At that point, the leadership in the community, including but not limited to the Board, can help get the word out to the various resource owners and see if we can find commitment to deliver on the vision. From there, it's just lather, rinse, repeat. I see no reason why future CLE releases can't grow more ambitious for the foreseeable future, even as OAE is maturing. But that only happens *after* there is (a) a clearly articulated vision/roadmap that is attractive and compelling to the resource owners and (b) an equally clearly articulated resource gap analysis detailing what kind of commitment it will take to make the vision real.

- m

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On Jan 24, 2011, at 12:05 PM, Mathieu Plourde wrote:

> Hi Chuck,
> 
> I have some questions for you and the other folks on-list:
> 
> 1) How many more years do institutions expect to run Sakai CLE (2.x)? 
> 
> At Delaware, we are not eager to move to OAE (3.x) just yet. In fact, we're probably going to be running Sakai CLE for at least another 3 to 4 years in one shape or another (hybrid).
> 
> 2) How are we gathering and addressing requirements coming from the community?
> 
> 2.1) I tend to create Jira tickets to request new features or suggest improvements, but is the community even looking at those? (I'm not talking bug-reporting here, but process changes and new tools or features)
> 
> 2.2) Are there better ways to suggest improvements to the Sakai CLE? 
> 
> 2.3) Is it even worth suggesting improvements to Sakai CLE, or is the developer community so tied-up in OAE developing and back-porting that no extra work will be included anyway?
> 
> I'm asking these questions because we are about to create a Sakai Faculty Advisory Committee that would look at Sakai and identify pain points and potential improvements, but if we're not using the right channels or if no one is listening, then we're just going to be wasting our time.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Mathieu
> =================================
> 
> Mathieu Plourde, MBA
> Project Leader, LMS/Instructional Designer
> IT-Client Support & Services
> mathieu at udel.edu
> Office: 302-831-4060
> 
> =================================
> 
> TOP LINKS:
> 
> Technology Troubleshooting: http://www.udel.edu/help
> Sakai at UD Support and Training: http://www.udel.edu/sakai/training
> 
> =================================
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:08 PM, csev <csev at umich.edu> wrote:
> Hello all and happy new year - I just put up some slides that describe some of my rough plans for some improvements to the Sakai portal for Sakai 2.9.  We have 9 months before code freeze so I want to take advantage of that time and make some real UI improvements.   Here are some PowerPoint Slides that describe my effort around the portal for 2.9
> 
> http://www.slideshare.net/csev/sakai-29-portal-road-map-plans
> 
> At a high level, my plan is to take design elements from Sakai OAE and back-port them to Sakai CLE as well as integrate some more social features from Profile into the surrounding navigation and provide better integration for tools like Lesson builder into the portal.  he above slides give some ideas as to where this is going.
> 
> Also, I am teaching a course at University of Michigan on Open Source Software Development that will focus on Sakai (CLE and OAE) and help me firm up and then execute this portal plan.   My class will be a combination of technical people and designers.   We will do all the design work in the open and on Sakai lists and in JIRA/Confluence so the community will be as involved as it wants to be.
> 
> http://www.dr-chuck.com/si791-sak/
> 
> I am working closely with Steve Swinsberg, Chuck Hedrick, Aaron Zeckowski, Adrian Fish, Gonzalo Silverio, and others so the overall intent of my course is to add resources to the community rather than start an isolated effort.  Your participation is welcome.
> 
> The above course URL tells you how to join the course at Michigan in CTools.  The course will also use Edmodo (www.edmodo.com) as its LMS in addition to Sakai in order to expand our horizons a bit.  You can also become a member of our Edmodo site with instructions within Sakai.
> 
> Please let me know if you have any questions.
> 
> /Chuck
> 
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