While we have to see how this pans out, I'd like to make one observation: A mediocre instructor can go on being mediocre in Sakai. Learned people can see where to focus on. I have seen few open source projects getting stopped and switches happen to using commercial applications in areas of e-learning and portal – not to forget the fact that this can happen with commercial software as well.
The point is life is mostly the same even while embracing open source. It’s to be noted that the survey mentioned above reports that less than one-third of academics in the survey find the leading open source products as being viable. It is generally seen that the advantage of an open source approach is for the professor who wants to be creative with technology — and for colleges that encourage faculty members to be creative in that way.
In my experience, I find that, too often, academics do not ask for big extensions and when they do, it is virtually impossible to do with the resources that are available while doing term projects. Mostly I see academics looking at open source when budget becomes an issue. In reality, too often what we see is that costs shift away from acquiring the software and toward hiring more IT staff.
One needs to do a good selection of the commercially available products. One needs to commit support to grow along with the project and focus on improving quality of education, invest in new training methods, leverage a lot more collaborative technologies, strive to make education more affordable and enjoyable to the student community at large. In the process, for good IT, it must be paid for and reasonably supported.
Lastly, one needs to work toward improving overall IT effectiveness. I do not see any great role for open source applications (besides at the infrastructure stack) in this simple and neat vision of academic learning.
Article comments
1 - Jeremy
You've got to be kidding me...
Have you ever even been to a CS department at a major university?? This is absolutely ridiculous.
2 - Jack E. Lee
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3 - Ron Fresquez
Open source like proprietery software can play multiple roles in Higher Education. In addition to providing an alternative to proprietery solutions for IT Departments open source can generate revenue in the form of courseware and testing and certification. The use of open source will continue to become more and more pervasive and the need for open source competent professionals will continue to grow. Higher Education can continue to take a wait and see attitude or they can choose to capitalize on the opportunities that come with open source.
4 - raul vergara
in our online tutoring site, opensource plays a great deal as we are using them too. there are many opensource lms available on the net too many to be listed here. many opensource systems are on the net for years now and development in these areas are not stopping. i would say success of either proprietary or opensource system will depend largely on the support it will get from the development team and the community alike. in the opensource arena, support is not lacking either.