Sakai is a collaboration and learning environment suitable for both teaching and learning and collaborative research using the same software. Sakai sees teaching and learning and collaborative research simply as variants on collaboration. Using the same software for both purposes serves several purposes – natural crossover of activity between teaching and research and the reduced need to run multiple servers for multiple purposes, and a reduced need for users to learn multiple software packages. Sakai supports several modes of Virtual Research collaboration – Sakai can be used as a collaborative portal for a a research effort where Sakai provides both the public facing web-site for the research organization as well as a Lotus-Notes like collaborative back-end to support the work of the organization. Sakai also supports a mode where the system is installed as a teaching and learning tool with research collaboration features are enabled – this enables research collaboration to happen and grow organically at an institution. Sakai supports the notion of federating identities from multiple organizations allowing Sakai groups to be formed with a combination of users from within and outside of the organization.
The presentation will cover the features and approach used in Sakai to support virtual research and describe particular features useful to virtual research. Sakai’s approach to library and institutional repository integration will be described as well. A case study will be presented as well as a vision for a service oriented approach to functionality which will greatly improve the flexibility of deployment of virtual research environments.