Supporting Open Source Software for Education
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.”