Brock University 2008 Update

Goodbye Blackboard, Hello Sakai

<ref name="sakai">http://www.brocku.ca/ctlet/sakai/</ref> Thanks to the decision of the office of the Vice-President Academic to move to an open source Sakai-based Learning Management System (LMS), Brock University has an opportunity to build a new LMS.

This proposed new system will be based on the community-based LMS: Sakai (Wikipedia article). Brock's new Sakai-based system will be built upon a cluster (Wikipedia article) that will have all the features of a strong system that is redundant, reliable, scalable, and with sufficient capacity.

The spring of 2008 marks the beginning of a phased transition to Brock using exclusively a Sakai-based LMS for the 2009 academic year. As of July 31st 2009 WebCT will no longer be available at Brock. An implementation plan has been drafted to assure this transition can be accomplished without incidents and discontinuities.

A contest to name the new Sakai-based is currently being held. The Centre for Teaching, Learning and Educational Technologies (CTLET) and others are already beginning the process of documenting Sakai and training faculty.

iTunesU

<ref name="itunes">http://kumu.brocku.ca/itunesu/Main_Page</ref> The CTLET has recently taken the lead in implementing iTunes U at Brock University. Through Brock's iTunes U presence podcasts can be distributed publicly and semi-privately to authenticated members of the Brock University. This tool provides the necessary storage and bandwidth for large scale distribution of video and audio content as well as an interface to allow instructors, staff, and maybe students to distribute content directly without having to go through any form of gate-keeping.

Collaborative Applications for Teaching and Learning

Instructors can now request wiki spaces in the Brock University Teaching Wiki.

Teaching & Learning Guide moves online

Upcoming for September

(hopefully)

• Active Directory on campus- we're moving to single sign-on!

• Learning Commons due to open in September 2008. Increased distributed learning opportunities.

• Faculty Gradebook- marks in Sakai may actually make their way digitally to the Registrar

References

<references/> <xfeeds>http://ctlet.brocku.ca/events/taxonomy/term/15/0/feed</xfeeds>