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Press Release

Jutta Treviranus and Ian Dolphin are joining the Sakai Board of Directors, and the has become the newest member of the Sakai Educational Partners Program

Jutta Treviranus of the University of Toronto and Ian Dolphin of the University of Hull, UK, are joining the Sakai Board of Directors, and the University of Toronto has become the newest member of the Sakai Educational Partners Program. The Sakai Project is a community source software development effort to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education.

Treviranus is an internationally known expert in the field of access technology. With her 20 years of research, development and leadership experience, she brings knowledge relating to many areas of the Sakai Project.

“Given the remarkable collaborative community that is Sakai, I see both the opportunity and the necessity to create educational delivery systems that flexibly respond to the considerable diversity of the needs and preferences of institutions, communities, educators and learners. This can be done so that usability and are enhanced for all users,” said Treviranus.

Among Treviranus’ achievements is the renowned center of expertise on barrier free access to information technology, the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto (http://atrc.utoronto.ca), which she established and now directs.

Ian Dolphin is head of e-Strategy at the University of Hull, where he is responsible for advising on Information and Communications Technology strategic direction and leading implementation initiatives for portal-based services. His current activities include a range of national and international collaborations exploring the relationship between portals, learning objects and learning environments, with the perspective of providing a seamless experience for the learner or educator.

“Ian brings a wealth of experience with educational and, importantly, scientific research team software in England,” said Joseph Hardin. “Support for distributed teams of researchers is a major focus of the Collaboration and Learning Environment software of the Sakai Project.”

The University of Toronto has joined the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP). Together, the SEPP universities use the Sakai software on their campuses, develop and contribute tools to the software, and share information about its use.

Brian Cantwell Smith, the Dean of the Faculty of Information Studies (FIS) at the University of Toronto, is tasked with transforming information practices at the University. “Under the

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direction of its new Provost and President, UofT is embarking on a major LMS strategy,” said Cantwell-Smith. “Our intended long-range goal is to use Sakai as the educational platform for its more than 65,000 students and 6,000 faculty members. A pilot group of units (including FIS) have committed themselves to adopting it immediately and demonstrating its long-term viability in the UofT context.

“In addition, the University has committed an additional $400,000 to an open source open/open access project under which Sakai participation will be coordinated. The Faculty of Information Studies is dedicating two FTEs to Sakai development, localization and deployment; we expect another UofT six will be directed to the long term LMS/Sakai strategy. In addition the ATRC will devote a team of programmers to create valuable Web services that will transform the and education delivered to meet the individual needs of each learner.”

One focus of Jutta Trevirnaus’ research and software development activities has been to advance customizable and personalizable information technology and elearning systems.

“Jutta Treviranus’ combination of deep experience in software design and development, working with open source communities, and unique contributions to accessibility make her a wonderful addition to the Sakai effort,” Joseph Hardin, Sakai Board Chair, said. “We are extremely pleased at the commitment both she and the University of Toronto are making to Sakai Project.”

She has led a large number of multi-partner research and development projects, which have resulted in innovative technologies that have advanced the field of inclusive information technology design. These include projects such as The Inclusive Learning Exchange, the Barrierfree Project, the Network for Inclusive Distance Education and the Canadian Network for Inclusive Cultural Exchange (http://www.utoronto.ca/atrc/research.html ). Treviranus has published in many areas related to information technology access, including: learning object repositories, accessible interface design, access to cultural content, adaptable e-learning systems, accessible electronic publishing, multi-modal control and modal translation.

For many years, Treviranus has worked on a number of international interoperability specifications and standards initiatives, including the W3C, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the IEEE, the Dublin Core and ISO/IEC Joint technical committee on information technology. Jutta chairs the W3C WAI Authoring Tool Accessibility Working group and the IMS Global Learning Consortium “AccessForAll” Specification Working Groups. She is also responsible for a proposed new international standard within the ISO/IEC JTC1 sub-committee for learning education and training.

Also valuable to the Sakai project is Treviranus’ experience with open source projects. The ATRC coordinates a number of successful open source projects with large active open source communities. These include ATutor (with more than 4,000 registered members, translated into more than 26 languages), and the Gnome Onscreen Keyboard (winner of the Trophées du Libre International Free Software Award, with over a million licenses).

Treviranus holds faculty appointments in the Faculty of Information Studies, the Faculty of Medicine, and the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto.

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Ian Dolphin has a background in teaching, having taught Special Educational Needs English and Information & Communication Technology in Secondary schools for fourteen years. Initially motivated by the power of emerging technologies to help educationally disadvantaged children, in 1993 Ian was seconded to a regional agency, where he helped establish a curriculum resource development unit. This unit worked collaboratively with teachers and business partners to produce curriculum-focused learning resources for secondary education.

Dolphin has served on the Programme Committee of the Pan European Portals Conference (PEPC), and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Java Architectures Special Interest Group (JA-SIG) and the Sakai Project. He is a member of the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Integrated Information Environment Committee, the Distributed e-Learning Programme, Middleware Programme and Virtual Research Environment Advisory Boards.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

The Sakai Project (www.sakaiproject.org) The Sakai Project provides open source Collaboration and Learning Environment software for educational institutions.

Joseph Hardin, [email protected] Chairman, Sakai Project Board Director of the Collaborative Technologies Lab, University of Michigan +1 734.647.9706

Ian Dolphin Sakai Project Board Member Head of eStrategy, University of Hull [email protected] +44 (1482) 466841

Jutta Treviranus University of Toronto Director, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre +1 416.978.5240 [email protected]

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