Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide [Paperback]

Michael Korcuska (Author), Alan Mark Berg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1847199402 | ISBN-13: 978-1847199409 | Edition: 1

The book takes a step-by-step, practical approach and is filled with examples and illustrations. This book is written for a wide audience that includes teachers, system administrators, and first time developers. It will also appeal to the Sakai open source community, potential community members, and education decision makers.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Korcuska is the Executive Director of the Sakai foundation and has nearly 20 years of experience in technology-enabled education and training. Prior to joining Sakai, Michael served as Chief Operating Officer for ELT, Inc., a leading compliance-training provider. He has also held leadership positions at DigitalThink (now Convergys Learning Solutions) and Cognitive Arts, an award winning custom e-learning developer. Michael got his start in technology-based learning at Stanford University's Courseware Authoring Tools Lab and Apple Computer's Multimedia Lab in the late 1980s. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University (where he studied and worked at the Institute for the Learning Sciences) and B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. He usually lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children although his writing for this book was done during a year living in Paris, France.

Alan Mark Berg BSc. MSc. PGCE, has been a lead developer at the Central Computer Services at the Universiteit van Amsterdam for the last ten years. In his famously scarce spare time, he writes computer articles (http://home.uva.nl/a.m.berg). Alan has a degree, two masters, and a teaching qualification. In previous incarnations, he was a technical writer, an Internet/Linux course writer, a product line development officer, and a teacher. He likes to get his hands dirty with the building and gluing of systems. He remains agile by playing computer games with his kids who sadly consistently beat him physically, mentally, and morally.

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing; 1 edition (June 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847199402
• ISBN-13: 978-1847199409
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,124,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The Official Guide Reaches All Sakai Audiences, September 20, 2009

By 

April Hayman "Homeschooling Mom + Instruction... (California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide (Paperback)

What I really liked about this book is that the authors, Alan Berg and Michael Korcuska, took a large subject and made it readily accessible for several types of users: developers, administrators, instructional designers and instructors. But because the book covers so much for a variety of people, the reader (meaning me) may not truly comprehend all of what is read.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, actually.

Why? Well, I'm an instructional designer and while I may get the gist of web services and plugging Sakai into a variety of external systems (Chapter 11), that particular part of the book is really meant for the IT department (or a designer with a programming background). It was a tough read, for me at least, but I stuck it out and now have a better understanding of what it takes to hook Sakai into a larger network.

Therefore, anyone using Sakai or thinking about using Sakai should read this book from front to back, regardless of your position within your organization. You'll get more out of it than you realize. I know I have and I've been using Sakai for about a year now.

Anyway, if you are an instructional designer or instructor using Sakai, you will appreciate Chapter 9: Putting Sakai to Work. The authors go over the tools and structure of Sakai but then also offer several different types of courses and how to set them up. For example, a problem based course may use the blog tool, the forums, or even the drop box whereas an introductory course would use Sections in addition to several tools to facilitate learning for a large student population. Of course, these are just ideas and suggestions but they are general enough that you get the idea of what can be accomplished with Sakai. Chapters 14 & 15 really bring this section to life and offer an idea of what it would look like in the real world.

If you are an administrator, though, you will definitely want to read Chapter 10 about the administrative workspace. It goes over the admin workspace in detail and the shows you how to set up Messages and permissions correctly. There's even a section on using Java for those admins who can code. A nice feature is an interview with (wait for it) an actual administrator, Anthony Atkins!

Chapter 3 is a great look at the "bones" of the system whereas Chapter 6 is a detailed description of the quality control that the code must go through to actually make it into a live version. Both can be overwhelming if you aren't technical but I suggest you read them anyway. At the very least it will give you an insight into why the tools are set up the way that they are.

Chapter 13 has quite a bit of code and delves into common error messages. For those in quality assurance, you'll find this particular chapter enlightening. For those of us who aren't, some of the "scary" error messages are explained in a way that makes sense.

The best part of the book, though, are the interviews (scattered throughout), Tips from the Trenches (Chapter 12) and Chapters 14 & 15 (Show Cases & Innovating Teaching and Learning with Sakai, respectively). It is one thing to talk about a program and how it works, it is something completely different to offer stories, vignettes, and real world examples to show its functionality. I think these sections are worth the price of admission considering the detailed information they offer on how award winning courses were set up in Sakai and what worked/didn't work.

That's another thing that I enjoyed about this book: the authors don't hold any punches. If something in Sakai is poorly made or done (the original blog tool, anyone?), then they share that information with you. There is also a short but amusing section on course migration in Chapter 12. Slightly amusing because course migration is a PIA at the best of times but also because I have had some experience with migrating across LMS systems and found that this section was, well, "kind" to this specific feature.

Anyway, I also particularly enjoyed Megan May's interview in Tips from the Trenches in Chapter 12. She offers some solid advice on deploying Sakai, which is something I had to learn the hard way. But, if you are trying to sell Sakai to management, read over pages 378-379 in Chapter 16 before you make your pitch. The authors offer some good pointers on why Sakai is the best alternative for a CLE (collaborative learning environment).

In summary, this is a truly large book. Large not so much in pages but in ideas and complexity of purpose. I'm afraid this review would be twice as long if I discussed every aspect of this guide. Sakai Courseware Management has this unique ability to reach out to whoever you are in whichever job you do and give you a piece of information that will make working with Sakai that much easier. It also affords a sense of wonder at the sheer amount of man hours spend producing such an elegant piece of software. All for free because they love doing it. My hat is off to you, Sakaigeress*.

* What's a Sakaigeress? Read Chapter 18: Rogues Gallery to find out!