Let me step back and make several separate points. At the risk of trying to speak for a committee, here's my view of the intention of this direction. The focus of the FCET was on 'interoperabilty' by which they primarily meant something like 'if I find or already have a tool that works just the way I want it to, I want to have it work with Moodle.' They were also making a value statement about the big vision of and for Sakai and disliked what seemed to be having to choose between software platforms when what they really wanted to see was a direction that was one notch higher. Third, they wanted to be sure that UCLA was going to stay in synch with what their UC sister campuses and with what other peers (institutions and colleagues) were doing today and would be developing into the future. They rejected the notion that choosing Moodle was walking over a draw-bridge onto a Moodle-only island. The communities to whom we will be able to contribute is a tough question at this point in the process. At the moment, we have a lot to do just to implement our first tier of shared service and getting all the existing functionality working at least as well as it does in our current installations.
Yes, I would hope that we and others can work on practical bridging strategies between Moodle and Sakai and other open-source and proprietary platforms. A lot of good work is being done already to support that vision. We look forward to contributing to that work as we have the expertise and resources to make a contribution.
- 865 reads
