• Teaching and Learning Group Initiatives
• Sakai Learning Capabilities (Design Lenses)
• Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award for 2016
• T&L Conference Calls and Meetings
• #Archive

• SakaiTL Hashtag on Twitter
• A Quick Guide to the Sakai Community for Beginners
• OpenEdPractices.org

To drive innovation on teaching and learning within the Apereo community. To share best practices, understandings and experiences among faculty members themselves and between faculty and other Apereo community members. To communicate the goals and issues of the teaching and learning community to contributors in Apereo projects (like Sakai, Xerte, etc.) including developers, UX (user experience), system administrators, documentation, support, and QA (quality assurance).

UPDATE (2015-2016) Add your ideas on organizing a course using the Lessons tool on this page: Lessons - Ideas on Organizing a Course.

Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award (TWSIA) - The TWSIA committee is starting work on the award for 2016. If you are interested in participating in the planning, communications, or judging of this award for 2016, please enter your name and contact information on the TWSIA 2016 page in the committee members list.

UPDATE (Dec, 2014) - A new page T&L Showcase is now available within this space. This page will serve as a repository of demonstrations or ideas discussed in the Teaching and Learning Weekly Conference Call.

UPDATE (May, 2014) - Following the completion of a "proof-of-concept" Teaching and Learning Capability Review of the Lessons/Lesson Builder tool, the group has decided to focus initially on a major User Interface (UI) redesign of the Lessons tool before identifying new capabilities to introduce which could also create more UI complexity.  We are now seeking contributions for a Lessons Enhancement Project which we hope to begin in June with the goal of having a major redesign of the Lessons UI for inclusion in Sakai 11.

UPDATE (Feb. 19, 2014) - Following productive discussions at the Apereo Camp "unconference" in January, the group has begun, in addition to continuing the work noted below, on a vision for a "next generation" LMS.  This is very early thinking which the group is surfacing as means to get broad community input and reaction to as initial ideas are forming.  There is also recognition that realization of this vision will require significant new resources and time to develop.

UPDATE (October 7, 2013) - The Teaching and Learning Group has finalized a draft approach and format for producing a Teaching and Learning Capability Review Report for Sakai and has began to work on an initial draft focused on the Lesson Builder/Lessons tool.  We are looking for more folks from the community to engage at this point, if you are interested please join our weekly call (details below) or email Former user (Deleted).  Some useful resources related to this work are at:

• Teaching and Learning Capability Review Process
• Lesson Builder/Lessons Draft Capability Review Report
• Weekly Conference Call Information and Minutes

UPDATE (August 7, 2013) - After a series of conference calls following the Open Apereo conference (see confluence page below for meeting notes), the Sakai Teaching and Learning Group has begun to develop plans to engage in a process to review the Lesson Builder/Lessons tool being developed by Rutgers University (and others) as means to identify new capabilities and new user interface designs that would enhance its use from a teaching and learning perspective.  Our hope is that this process, once matured, could become a model for work with other Sakai tools and capabilities as well as means to engage in longer-term strategic planning for the product.  An early draft process document is being worked on and everyone in the community is encouraged to contribute to this effort.  We would like to begin this work in late August or early September.

UPDATE (June 20, 2013) - The Sakai Teaching and Learning (T&L) Group held a "gathering" at the recent Open Apereo conference in San Diego to discuss the future priorities for the group and new roles it could play.  The T&L Group is holding a series of follow up planning phone conferences to continue these discussions with the goal of identifying areas of interest and focus for the coming year and groups who are interested in engaging in these areas.  All are welcome to participate in these calls.  Call schedules and notes from prior calls can be found on our Conference Call Wiki page.  Information on the groups prior work can be found below in our Archive section.

The following items relate to past activities of the Teaching and Learning group. NOTE: If any item references "Sakai 3," that was the tentative naming for a proposed release of Sakai. That label was used in 2008-2010 and is no longer current.

2011-2013 Initiatives

Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award Committee (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) - This group is leads the process to define and execute the Teaching with Sakai Innovation Awards. The group is responsible for organizing and facilitating the judging and award process, recruiting judges, and encouraging submissions.

Teaching and Learning with OAE - As of 2012, the new administrative home of the combined T&L Learning Capabilities Design Lenses group, the Portfolio Visioning group, and the newly formed Teaching and Learning with OAE group, is the Sakai OAE server oae-community.sakaiproject.org. To participate, register for an account there and join the group. Refer to the "Meeting Information" item for further details.

Sakai Learning Capabilities Design Lenses - The design lenses have became an important touchpoint with the requirements for Sakai 3. As the Sakai 3 project moves forward, this group is working closely with the product manager and the resources dedicated to the Sakai 3 Managed Project to translate the design lenses into functional requirements that can be used in the development of Sakai 3.  This effort would likely then inform a refining of the Lenses and a 2.0 release.

Teaching with Sakai Webinar Series - At the 2011 Sakai Conference, there was substantial interest in establishing a monthly, live, synchronous, online course (or project site) demonstration by faculty at different Sakai institutions. The intent is to provide examples to interested community members and to highlight the wonderful wealth of resources in our Sakai community! This can be an exciting professional development opportunity for all of us -- and your participation is essential to our collective success.Goal: Host one presentation per month beginning in September 2011 - May 2012 -- and represent a variety of institution types, disciplines, and countries. Please visit the planning page for more information. Webinars for 2012 - 2013

2010-2011 Initiatives

There are many opportunities for members of the Sakai community to get involved in the Teaching and Learning groups, and the T&L community would be very pleased to have new engagement and perspectives.

1. Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award Committee (2010)  This group is leads the process to define and execute the Teaching with Sakai Innovation Awards. The group is responsible for organizing and facilitating the judging and award process, recruiting judges, and encouraging submissions.
2. Sakai Learning Capabilities Design Lenses - The design lenses have became an important touchpoint with the requirements for Sakai 3. As the Sakai 3 project moves forward, this group is working closely with the product manager and the resources dedicated to the Sakai 3 Managed Projectto translate the design lenses into functional requirements that can be used in the development of Sakai 3.  This effort would likely then inform a refining of the Lenses and a 2.0 release.
   
   1. Design Lenses Brainstorming Page -  Provides background information about the brainstorming and conference discussions that informed the project.
3. Distance Learning Community -The distance learning community is focused specifically on the use of Sakai in fully online courses. The group hopes to share best practices, faculty training, and support materials related to distance learning. The group will also consider options for faculty across institutions to engage in professional development (online) together.
   
   1. Sakai Distance Learning Brainstorming Page - Provides background information about the brainstorming and conference discussions that informed the project.
4. Student Engagement in the Community - Students are an important constituent of the Sakai community whose active participation in the community is not visible. This group is focused on identifying initial steps to engage students in the community in a more active and visible manner.

In support of these efforts, the T&L community is actively managing the communications both within and across the groups. Please view the following page to review and provide feedback the communications plans and priorities of the T&L community. The intent of this effort is to both increase engagement and more easily share the work of this group with those that cannot commit time to be actively involved. Please do not hesitate to provide feedback on the communications efforts. T&L Communications
 
The communications team is also in the process of refining the strategy for enhancement and use of the Open Ed Practices site. Input and plans on the use of the site are captured at Open Ed Practices Planning and Feedback.

Each of the initiative groups will hold regular meetings. Please see the calendar of T&L group events.

Older Teaching and Learning Initiatives

• Instructional Visioning - Initiative to produce "tool/technology agnostic" visions of the types of instructional practices Sakai should facilitate and support.

1. Instructional Visioning Proposal
   • UPDATE (11/12/09): We are currently documenting Learning Capabilities from a user-centric perspective in a Google Spreadsheet.
   • UPDATE (01/13/10):  We are Defining "Themes" and "Activity Workflows" for further development in the Virtual Working Session (see above), to extract guidance from the Learning Capabilities spreadsheet.
2. Instructional Visioning Efforts (past formulations of teaching and learning requirements)

• Sakai Instructional Technology Trend Report - Initiative to produce an annual report that identifies instructional technology trends which may impact on Sakai in a 2-3 year window.
• Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award (2009) - Started in 2008, this program aims to highlight examples of educational applications of Sakai which are considered innovative or transformative in nature.
• Pre-conference Teaching and Learning Workshops - Each year we work to organize a pre-conference workshop that focused on sharing teaching and learning best practices.
• Contribute to OpenEdPractices.org - A community of practice for teaching and learning with open/community-source tools.

• Virginia Tech Regional Conference 2008
• Teaching with Sakai Pre-Conference Session, Paris Conference (2008)
• A Community Gathering, Newport Beach Sakai Conference (2007)
• From 2006

This area lists past, older calls and meeting notes for archival purposes. Please visit the current meeting page for the latest schedule and details.

The Sakai Learning Capabilities v 1.0 document has been released. This document is the culmination of months of work by the Sakai Teaching & Learning Community via conference calls and virtual meetings. Discussions at the last conference were the catalyst for this work. Now we anticipate this work will be a catalyst for Sakai 3 design and development.