Supporting Open Source Software for Education
This week rSmart welcomes West Liberty University to the Sakai Community as one of its recent rSmart Sakai CLE support customers. Located in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia between southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, West Liberty is a forward-thinking institution dedicated to providing a well rounded, educationally diverse, liberal arts focused learning experience.
Founded in 1837 as West Liberty Academy, the college strives to create graduates who become viable contributors in their communities with the necessary skills and knowledge to meet and exceed future challenges. West Liberty offers a variety of coursework and majors through its College of Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, College of Business Administration, College of Education, and College of Professional Studies.
West Liberty is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and has more than 30 programs within the five colleges that are either nationally accredited or meet the standards of national academic/professional organizations.
As part of an overall plan to maximize its budget, West Liberty University decided to switch from a propriety course management system to the open source rSmart Sakai CLE. The university went live with Sakai to its 2,500 students in May 2009 after a 4-week implementation performed by rSmart. The university also chose to use rSmart’s Application Hosting Services and Premium Support services to further reduce costs of hardware and IT resources. After the initial Sakai implementation, rSmart also integrated Sakai with the university’s Student Information System.
“We were looking to enhance the way that education occurs on campus as well as online, and Sakai provides that needed functionality for us,” said Ann Rose, Online Learning Specialist and WLU Associate Professor of Education. “We’re excited that Sakai is able to integrate with our student management system so that both student enrollments and course creations will be transparent to the students. We had neither the human nor physical resources to take on this project, so hosting our Sakai instance through rSmart provided us with an ideal solution from all standpoints, and the implementation and services have been exemplary.”