There’s a new course-management system in town.
Most Summer B online courses and all fall online courses will be hosted on Sakai, UF’s new course-management system.
Blackboard, the company that owns the software, will stop supporting WebCT Vista 8, the e-Learning system UF has used, in December 2011.
Fedro Zazueta headed up a UF committee that searched for a replacement.
The committee narrowed it down to three platforms: ANGEL, Moodle and Sakai. Sakai was chosen unanimously.
Sakai is an open-source platform, which means UF can customize it to better suit its students’ needs. It also means that although UF doesn’t need to pay for licenses, like it did with WebCT, it has to spend more money on a programming team, Zazueta said.
Sakai was cheaper than ANGEL and more expensive than Moodle, a review committee report said.
But cost wasn’t the only factor in the decision, Zazueta said. While the committee could have found other systems that were cheaper, UF was looking for a more comprehensive system that meets its needs, he said.
UF’s programming team has found ways to replicate almost all of the features that WebCT offered, some by adding plug-ins.
Sakai also offers new social-networking features not included in WebCT, Zazueta said. For example, courses with Sakai can now include wikis, blogs and RSS feeds.
Professors switching their courses to Sakai have three options.
First, they can completely re-create their classes in Sakai. Second, files can be moved over by support staff, but the professors have to set up the tools. Third, professors can allow UF’s tech staff to rebuild the course for them.
“Some people will use Sakai at a very basic level, uploading a few files and syllabus and this type of thing,” Zazueta said. “Other people will make use of the full set of features of this system. As time goes by, people who feel more comfortable with the system will use more of the new features.”
UF isn’t the only university that had to find a new system after Blackboard announced it would no longer support WebCT.
“There was a large community of Web-CT users that will have to abandon that platform,” he said.
Zazueta said he does not expect UF to change systems again in the next 10 years.
