New lessons in course management: a group of universities have banded together to offer a...

In mid-July, just one week before college and university leaders were to launch into their summer season of conferences, a nonprofit group known as The Sakai Project (www.sakaiproject.org) introduced software for higher education providers to use for course management. Sakai's project leaders timed the announcement right.

Sakai's goal of providing open source software that may someday save academic computing departments significant amounts of money was the subject of casual commentary during the week that followed. Hallway conversations at the annual conference of the S