ACETS 2005
UBC --> here
The UBC Advisory Committee on Educational Technologies in Science
Created in early 2005 by the Faculty of Science, the mandate of ACETS is "to consult and communicate with faculty and students on issues related to learning, teaching, and researching with technology."
Sakai Project
I appreciated Charles Kerns' informative sessions about the Sakai project, that universities like Stanford, Indiana, Michigan, etc. are considering. It's interesting to note that some of these universities have tried various Content Management Systems before, yet had the need to create a "better" product. Stanford, for example, used WebCT about 5 years ago, and kind of gave up on it due to the poor user interface. Their instructors were finding it too difficult to work with. Stanford also used (and might still be using) Blackboard. Furthermore, Charles indicated that some instructors at Stanford created a bunch of their own locally-developed tools. Now, they're embracing Sakai because they want more "control" over the CMS (e.g., they want to be able to customize things in the CMS).
Right now, it appears that Sakai is being used in production by only 2 schools: the University of Michigan with about 25,000 students using it, and the University of Indiana with about 4,000-5,000 students using it. By the end of this year, 2-3 more schools will probably be using it.
It's hard to say whether UBC should go ahead with a pilot at this time, given that so few schools are using it right now. (The Vista pilot was fairly time-consuming, so I'm not sure how quickly instructors will be embracing a new product.) Version 2.0 of Sakai is out in June, 2005. I think Version 2.1 (or 3) will be out in December, 2005.
Moodle
Has anyone taken a close look at Moodle? We haven't talked much about it. The Moodle site at moodle.org claims that their product is scalable to large institutions.
