Problem Statement

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 Created by Marc Brierley, last modified on Jul 14, 2006

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Problem Statement
The rationale behind the Course Management Project
The course sites in Sakai do not take advantage of the student information system's (SIS) enterprise
data to represent complex course structures. For example, there is no automated way for cross-listed
courses to be associated with one course site or, alternatively, create separate course sites for
multiple course sections.

This substandard connection between Sakai and the SIS has a negative impact on instructors using
Sakai, the staff who support them and ultimately students.

Instructors who find an improper relationship between their course and the Sakai course site become
confused and spend time trying to get Sakai to work rather than focusing on their teaching. Support
staff are forced to find ways of working around the limitations in the system, often wasting time
doing repeated manual tasks. When the problems are too great for instructors or support staff to
overcome, the course may be limited in its effectiveness or may not end up using Sakai, robbing the
benefits the system brings to students.

Some institutions will find it impossible to deploy Sakai until these problems are solved either
because these capabilities are already offered by existing systems and/or because of the increased
overhead of running Sakai without improved course management capabilities.

A successful solution would provide a seamless integration of Sakai with the SIS both from an
implementation and users point of view. Proper relationships between course structures and Sakai
sites would be easily managed by system administrators and instructors.