Sakai does not dictate one way to design or teach a class. This flexibility in the platform, coupled with the best-in-class tools developed by educators, enabled us to have an exceptionally collaborative and engaged learning experience.
The University of Michigan (http://vpcomm.umich.edu/aboutum/) was one of the founding institutions of the Sakai's Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) and the largest initial contributor of code. "There was nothing accidental in the creation of Sakai," explains Dr. John King, vice provost for academic information and the professor in the School of Information. "It grew out of a research project to build online infrastructure for support of globally-distributed communities of scientists. We realized that the future required online support for distributed communities of learners in all aspects of the learning process — teaching, research, and administration. We needed an environment we could control, so we...