Sakai and Community Source Software for Higher Education

Chuck Severance, the Chief Architect of the Sakai Foundation USA

11.00 – 12.30 pm Sakai and open source activity in higher education

1-2 pm: The application of standards across communities

About the forum

The forum uses Sakai as a model of community developed and supported software to provide a seamless course management, research and project collaboration environment in the higher education sector.  It covers the nature of the community, its governance, how it interacts with other higher education open source communities and the role of standards in successful community source development.

The seminar features presentations from Chuck Severance, the Chief Architect of the Sakai Foundation, James Dalziel from Macquarie University’s E-learning Centre Of Excellence, Neil McLean, Director IMS Australia, and Mike Rebbechi from Charles Sturt University -  a representative of the Sakai Partners in Australia.

The program consists of two sessions, with a light lunch between:

11.00 - 12.30: Session 1

• Welcome: Sally-Anne Leigh (Director of Information and Education Services, Information Services)
• Community and open source activity in higher education: James Dalziel
  (Maquarie University)
• The Sakai initiative - An example of a successful higher education collaboration: Chuck Severance (Sakai Foundation USA)
• The Sakai Foundation in Australia: Mike Rebbechi ( Charles Sturt University)

12.30 - 1.00: Lunch

1.00 - 2.00: Session 2

• Community Source in Higher Education - the application of standards across communities: Neil McLean (Director, IMS Australia)
• A community of communities - the integration of LAMS and Sakai: James Dalziel ( Maquarie University)
• Q & A Session: Chuck and the panel

About our guest speaker

Dr Charles Severance is a Software Architect at the University of Michigan Duderstadt Center working on tools for online collaboration for teaching, learning, and research. He is currently Chief Architect on the Sakai project (www.sakaiproject.org). He also is working on the NEESgrid project and the National Middleware Initiative grid portal project.

Charles is the Author of the book High Performance Computing, Second Edition, published by O'Reilly and Associates, and has taught Computer Science courses at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University .

Charles has developed several tools to assist in the production of multimedia web-based lectures. The tools are called the Sync-O-Matic 3000 and ClipBoard-2000. He has a B.S., M.S., and PhD. in Computer Science from Michigan State University . His research area is the use of parallel processors for High Performance Computing and the use of the Internet to deliver educational content.

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