willamette’s wise decision: a big sakai fish in a small pond

Willamette’s WISE Decision:a big Sakai fish in a small pond

Cheryl CramerDirector of User Services

Willamette UniversityJune 17, 2010

11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010 2

• College of Liberal Arts• 1900 students, 200 faculty

• College of Law• 400, 38 faculty

• Atkinson Graduate School of Business• 260, 32 faculty

• Graduate School of Education• 150, 23 faculty

311th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010

Willamette University

• Willamette Integrated Technology Services• Vice President for Technology• Stand-alone department, cooperative

relationship with library


WITS

WITS

• Face-to-face, rapid response service orientation

• User Services Group: 7• Network/Systems Administration Group: 3• Tech Services: 4.5• Administrative Computing: 3• Office/Administration: 4


Relevant Experience?

• Apache • Little, very little Tomcat • Some development (C/C++, Perl, php, not a

lot of Java)• Some experience with open source (MySQL,

Postgres, CAS, Bind, Pine)• Unix


The Path to Sakai

• Blackboard Basic• Ho Hum• Courses created on demand• Average usage: 60 faculty, 100 course sites• Increasingly difficult to customize

• Course Tools• Home-grown, single maintainer • Designed for graduate business school• Minor use in CLA


The Path to Sakai

• Objectives• Provide a more complete experience for entire

community • Lower the bar to participation• Integrate with LDAP and other University

systems• Escape financial escalation of commercial

products and potential for Blackboard as sole provider


The Path to Sakai


• Major Stakeholders:• WITS• WITS/Hatfield Advisory Committee• CLA Deans Office• Faculty

The Path to Sakai

• Contenders:• Moodle

• Easier startup• Less flexible • Smaller feature set

• Sakai• More difficult startup• Designed for collaboration• Built by people in higher ed to solve problems of

higher ed


The Path to Sakai

• Sakai Challenges:• Lack of large java project experience• Limited staff• Limited budget• Dealing with a number of tools sort of working

together• Navigating the Sakai community


The Path to WISE

• Pilot – Phase 1 – Spring Term 2007• Version 2.5• Download and run the pre-built version• WITS learning phase• Introduce Sakai to faculty in small group

sessions• SakaiCAL – Summer 2007


The Path to WISE


• Pilot – Phase 2 – Fall Term 2007• Download and build the source code• Small group of invited faculty (10)• Skinned with riff on basic sakai skin

• Pilot – Phase 3 – Spring Term 2008• Opened to all interested CLA faculty• 25 brave souls

The Path to WISE


• The Decision – April 2008• “Bye Bye Blackboard” email• May - 2 weeks of “Meet Sakai” workshops and

customization focus groups• July-August – Intro to WISE and specialized

tools workshops• Practice sites

• The Deadline – August 25, 2008

The Path to WISE


• The Sweeteners• LDAP integration• Automatic course creation• Daily enrollment updating• Official photos in the Roster tool• Library e-Reserves integration• Roles for administrative assistants, librarians,

academic listeners• Turnitin integration

The Path to WISE

• Local vs. hosted


The Path to WISE


• The search for a name…• Short and sweet• Limitations with ‘W’• Maintain a straight face

CLAW??

The Path to WISE


Obvious choices already spoken for

The Path to WISE


• The AHA moment:• Willamette Instructional Support Environment

The Path to WISE

• The skinning process• Small committee!• confluence/display/UI/Sakai+screenshots• Comparison of institution home pages and

Sakai skins• Web development office prototypes


The Path to WISE


What We Built - Production

• Apache web server – virtual host on pre-existing web server, with mod_jk

• 2 Tomcat servers in cluster• Virtual machines• 2.5 GB RAM• 15 GB HD

• MySQL replicated cluster (pre-existing)• NFS server for Sakai files; ~120GB


What We Built - Development

• Development Server (Tomcat VM) – build/development environment• currently building source from Sakai 2_6_x

maintenance branch• changes tracked and stored in local subversion

repository

• Testing Server (Tomcat VM) – release candidate, QA, user testing environment


What We Built

• Changes from OOTB Sakai• 10 non-stock modules• 1 home-made java class (Quartz job for SIS

integration)• 3 java source patches (bug fixes from JIRA)• ~50 other file modifications (properties, pom,

xml version strings, etc.)


The Rollout

• Blackboard Migration• Only requested course materials• Sakai Migration tool• CD Archive with Bfree• Student assistant

• Training, training and more training• Intro to WISE• Specialized tools workshops


The Rollout

• Small contract with Longsight• Integration with Datatel for automatic course

creation and population• Eased the intimidation factor• Load balancing and testing• Source for best practices information


The Rollout

• Identified key project site users• Deans Office:

• Online position searches• Faculty and Academic Councils

• Human Resources• Flu shot clinic signup

• Advising Signups


The Rollout• Help Desk Participation


The Rollout• Provide maximum access


Growth and Acceptance

• Fall 2008• 80 instructors• 180 course sites

• Spring 2010• 170 instructors• 400 course sites

• “My students are asking why I’m not using WISE”!


What Do People Use?

• Resources: 100%• Roster, Syllabus, Announcements,

Gradebook, Mailtool, Sign-up• Assignments, Schedule, Forums, Blog• Chat, Wiki, Tests & Quizzes, Site Stats


What Do People Like?

• Instructor view of official photos in Roster tool

• Sign-up tool• Project sites – and the ability to add

colleague accounts• Automatic course site creation and updated

student enrollment information• Availability of site statistics


What do people like?

• Open Source

• Sustainable


What Do People Like?Miho Fujiwara (Faculty, Japanese): My students and I found that putting syllabus, handouts and other instructions in Resource were very convenient and helpful. (Those students who tend to lose handouts do not have to ask me twice any more!)

I also share our research Data with my research partners in Japan by using WISE. This is much easier than sending large data back and forth by e-mail attachment.

I used "Sign-up" function for my advising and also oral exam appointment. It was much easier for both my students and me to keep a track of an appointment.

"Drop Box" was handy for my senior students to hand in their senior presentation (PPT) and paper electrically. When they presented their PPT, all I have to do was to open my WISE site for the class and students open their files they previously sent. In the past, it took extra time for students to down load files to a classroom computer and different students brought their files in different way (e-mail attachment, H drive, Memory card, etc.). With WISE it was very straight forward.


What Do People Like?• Teresa Hudkins (Director of Admissions): Although I've used

WISE only as a member of the Academic Status Committee, I wanted to let you know how great it is! It has saved pounds of paper, and it has allowed us to sometimes meet by email rather than in person which has been a great thing for this group of busy people. So thank you, and I hope WISE will continue to be available for us in the future. It's very cool!

• Rita Moore (Dean, GSE) I must say we have appreciated the Wise resource and tools immensely in the SOE. It has helped us organize information for accreditation, the day to day of the School, and to keep everyone informed in general. Faculty have come to ask, "will that be posted on Wise?" Many thanks to you and your team!


Complaints

• Pasting from Word in the FCKeditor• The wiki interface• Creating blog entries with Blogger tool• Wanting blogs and wikis that are more

transparently public• Making WebDAV work• “I should be able to figure it out all by

myself”


Problems in Paradise?

• Mostly from people trying to figure it out all by themselves!

• “My site disappeared”• “I don’t have a tab for my site”• One “stop the presses” issue in

3 years


What We Learned

• Work with others, ask questions• Mike Osterman – Whitman College• Mary McMahon, Jezmynne Dene, everyone at

Claremont Colleges• Sakai conferences, obviously• Write to the list serve and hear back from the

programmers


What We Learned

• Set a maintenance window, advertise heavily and use it

• Take care with patching vs. repair• Limit rebuilding over course of academic

year• Build a central repository of

emails/questions


What We Learned

• The value of being able to track memory utilization over time• Insight into heap in times of trouble• Ability to tune threshholds over time• Connect cacti (network graphing solution) to

SNMP interface built into Java Virtual Machine


What We Learned


• Business school still using two applications• Generating local help documentation• Working behind-the-scenes with the

database• Small pool of help if something goes wrong


On-going Issues

Open Issues


• Do we open up project site creation to all?• How do we handle course archive/deletion?• Can we make sections work?• Leveraging SIS integration code to populate

other types of sites• How do we effectively reach and help

students?• Coming need for portfolios


[email protected]

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http://wise.willamette.edu/portal/site/LAW-Test-01-08_FA: demonstration of building encapsulated web site

E-Reserves – Link toolBill Kelm Gameplan site

http://wise.willamette.edu/portal/site/LAW-Test-01-08_FA


http://wise.willamette.edu/portal/site/LAW-Test-01-08_FA: demonstration of building encapsulated web site

Web Classes and Projects: WebCAP> Collaborative Project, Learning and Class environment: CPLACE> Class and Project Space: CAPSpace> Collaborative Classes and Projects: CCAP> Collaborative University Environment: CUE> Collaborative Learning in a University Environment: CLUE> Collaborative Learning and Sharing Space: CLASS> Share Time and Resources: STAR>E-Reserves – Link toolBill Kelm Gameplan siteAssigning admin assistantsreviewed wise-admin email to Kephart’s message on 8/8/08

http://wise.willamette.edu/portal/site/LAW-Test-01-08_FA

willamette’s wise decision: a big sakai fish in a small pond

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