Supporting Open Source Software for Education
Customers
Times are tough, and everyone is feeling pressure to do more with less. Community colleges have always had to be uniquely sensitive to the changing economic climate and how it affects job opportunities for their students. Being capable of responding quickly to change to offer timely instruction that best serves their students’ needs, while remaining cost effective, is essential.
Cerritos College, a public comprehensive community college located in southeastern Los Angeles County, has a history of innovating to meet institutional needs. In 1993, Cerritos College became one of the first colleges to offer online courses to students. To support ongoing innovation, Cerritos built a solid technology infrastructure, including a homegrown course management system. Building its CMS allowed Cerritos a high level of flexibility and customization, and for a time, the CMS served them well. As Cerritos started to outgrow its homegrown CMS, however, M.L. Bettino, Dean of Academic Affairs at Cerritos College, began researching CMS options. Key selection criteria for the new CMS included stability and scalability, as well as a flexible and customizable platform.
Mr. Bettino reviewed both vended and open source solutions and attended an open source conference where he learned about Sakai, a course management system that is community built and supported. Inspired by what he had learned, Mr. Bettino educated Cerritos College’s board and faculty senate on Sakai, and they supported moving forward. The IT staff, however, had reservations. Despite their solid technology support structure and mindset towards innovation, the IT staff asked how they could be confident that they could successfully implement and support Sakai.
rSmart is a company dedicated to supporting higher education institutions in their use of open source software to achieve institutional strategies and goals. To do so, rSmart partners with institutions to efficiently implement and effectively support open source solutions.
“They found their answer in rSmart.”
Mr. Bettino admits that initially, he was not in favor of working with a commercial partner, but he learned the benefits of working with rSmart early in the process of implementation. As he explains, “rSmart was invaluable as we began to structure our plans for implementation. rSmart provided us with a list of tasks that would need to be completed. Then, we reviewed the list, matched skill sets to tasks, and allocated responsibilities between our staff at Cerritos and the rSmart team. rSmart’s ability to clearly delineate our path gave us a strong sense of security that we were headed on the right path from the outset.This experience gave me a level of trust in our relationship with rSmart that I have rarely experienced with a vendor or commercial partner.”
Working with rSmart, Cerritos College implemented Sakai, known on campus as TalonNet, in 2006. Shortly thereafter, a significant customization need arose. When the homegrown CMS was built, a mechanism for protecting faculty copyrights was designed into the software so that electronic textbooks developed by faculty and the Multimedia Production staff were protected. The new CMS would have to do the sameto continue to receive faculty endorsement. Mr. Bettino explains, “It was essential that we customize Sakai to offer continued copyright protection. Working with rSmart, we were able to build a solution that met faculty and institutional requirements.”
“This experience gave me a level of trust in our relationship with rSmart that I have rarely experienced with a vendor or commercial partner.”
rSmart continues to support Cerritos College in a number of ways. For example, rSmart is on hand to answer production, technical and functional questions and to address any issues that might arise. Additionally, before every update and major release of the Sakai software, rSmart completes full regression testing to confirm that no major issues will arise when Cerritos College implements the latest version of Sakai.
“Our partnership with rSmart,” Mr. Bettino explains, “allowed us to meet deadlines and control costs. The efficiencies of working with rSmart have resulted in significant cost-savings to our campus.” Mr. Bettino sees this as an opportunity for other community colleges: “What we have done here, any community college can do.
One important piece of the equation is having someone who has a vision for what Sakai can mean to the college and who has the ability to identify the individuals within the institution who will share that vision. The other important piece is partnering with rSmart for peace of mind. Any community college can do this too.”
“What we have done here, any community college can do.”
Faculty members have achieved significant success through Sakai. Kimberley J. Duff, PhD, is an associate professor in the Psychology Department at Cerritos College. With Sakai, Dr. Duff found she could manage all her course content easily in one place. Additionally, Dr. Duff values the efficiency of Sakai. For example, the new calendar system automatically posts content to several locations, whereas outside of Sakai, information has to be manually posted numerous times to reach its intended recipients. As Dr. Duff explains, “The time savings that Sakai affords me is significant. As my time is freed from course logistics, I am able to allocate more time and effort to teaching the course content.”
Angela Hoppe-Nagao is a professor of Speech Communication at Cerritos College, and she also values the “one stop shopping” of Sakai. Students can access grades, assignments and announcements, post questions and comments, and “even engage in hot debate,” Ms. Hoppe-Nagao explains. Additionally, Ms. Hoppe-Nagao is able to provide her students with substantive feedback on their work via the course site, creating a collaborative dialogue that supports student success.
Sakai’s ease of use is also of significant value to her. She explains, “I am not a technology savvy individual, but I find Sakai easy to use. When I introduce students to Sakai, I promise them that they can learn how to navigate my course site in 5 minutes, and that has consistently proved true.”
Download the Cerritos Case Study