This month we welcome
College of the Redwoods (CR) to the Sakai community as one of the most recent rSmart Sakai CLE support customers.
College of the Redwoods is excited to be implementing a pilot of the
rSmart Sakai CLE for the fall 2009 term. A public community college, CR is
located on the coast of northern California. It serves nearly 280,000
residents, spread across a huge region of almost 10,000 square miles.
Although CR has three different campuses and several other instructional sites,
the majority of the region’s residents do not have easy access to these
facilities. In response, CR plans to expand its online courses and ultimately
offer degrees entirely online. The school hopes to increase development of
online courses threefold over the next several years.
To meet budget constraints, CR knew it had to move to an open source
environment for online delivery—and it chose Sakai, already used by more than
25 community colleges in the state. CR also recognized the need for a strong
strategic partner, with extensive knowledge of Sakai, to ensure a successful
pilot and provide ongoing support if the platform is adopted. The school chose
rSmart largely because of its long-standing involvement with the Sakai
community and its solid business reputation.
"We have a need to move very quickly and yet not jeopardize the quality of
our student and faculty experience,” says Maggie McVay Lynch, Dean of Distance
Education at CR. "From configuration discussions and ultimate
implementation to the training of our CLE administrators, rSmart’s expertise in
Sakai and care for the customer was evident. Their ability to help us
proactively make important decisions for the future has been invaluable to
getting our pilot going in record time.” 