Facilitating teaching and learning: From proprietary to community source

Learning Management Systems, or Virtual Learning Environments have become almost universal in institutions of Higher Education either to complement traditional classroom learning experiences in blended learning, or the only medium of interaction in virtual universities. While proprietary LMS has dominated the market since the inception of LMS, open source and community source LMS is a paradigm that holds promises in addressing pedagogical and ownership issues that face the proprietary. This paper presents a case study of an ongoing pilot for Sakai in Abu Dhabi Women's College. Data regarding user perceptions were gathered by means of two surveys targeting students and faculty involved in the project. Responses where used as score cards to evaluate the pilot.