The Naval Postgraduate School adoption of Sakai

In early 2009, the Naval Postgraduate School began an 18-month migration away from its commercial learning management system onto the open source Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment. By leveraging an open source LMS solution and eventually adopting the open source portal technology LifeRay as well NPS was able to lower operational costs by 45% while improving the level of service to its faculty and staff. Further, NPS was able to expand into strategic partnerships with other DoD and Higher Education Institutions by hosting course and training sites for other institutions, further lowering operational cost through cost sharing partnerships. This presentation will focus on the criteria used to select an open source solution, provide lessons learned on the process, and share insight on how open source solutions can potentially lead to partnerships outside your institution.