Talking Again about SakaiPlus

[Charles Severance]

Hi all,

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how SakaiPlus might be useful to schools that would like to explore a multi-LMS approach to teaching on their campuses. SakaiPlus can bring benefits to a campus without requiring an LMS replacement or transition because it integrates with your existing LMS as an option that can be used on a course-by-course basis.

Because Sakai is open-source, it can be run on university-owned or university-managed hardware, giving full control over the storage, expiration, and access to student learning data.

SakaiPlus was released in 2023, and I have been using it in my teaching since 2022. Here is a short promotional video on SakaiPlus that I produced in 2023:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IojIg8erE84

I created SakaiPlus to better protect student learning data. If your school uses a U.S.-based commercial hosting company for all your current and archived learner data, your concern may not be immediate. However, if the past few months have taught us anything, it is that bypassing traditional legal contracts is not as difficult as one might hope if those in power are determined.

Back in 2020, I recorded a (not very popular) video and podcast series capturing my thoughts and concerns about learner privacy. This is also when I became motivated to develop SakaiPlus. Here is a YouTube channel with the video series, along with a podcast URL that allows you to subscribe and listen through your podcast software:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13cC62jLAHo&list=PLlRFEj9H3Oj5_COWemO4hxAFpgPhqOY7e

https://podcast.learnerprivacy.org/

If you are interested, I recommend starting with Episode 1 and continuing through Episode 8. It’s a few hours of content that I think you will find interesting as a thought starter. It's four years old at this point—I did eight episodes and then stopped. :)

If any of you (especially former Sakai schools) are starting to feel uneasy about student privacy in your current LMS, please contact me. I would love to find a few schools interested in beta testing SakaiPlus as an addition to your current commercially hosted LMS.

Thanks in advance.
Charles Severance
cs...@umich.edu