The Sakai Open Academic Environment (OAE) provides a unique collaboration system for university campuses: a social network that helps students discuss class materials, pursue research, communicate with faculty, and discover the risks and benefits of sharing personal information—all in a private, rather than public, forum. This example-driven guide will get you up to speed on various methods used to deploy, customize, and manage OAE, whether you’re an IT specialist in an educational institution, or an academic or instructional technologist.

Learn how to work with OAE’s source code to modify key areas such as profiles, courses, permissions, and content. You’ll soon adapt this network to support the culture and needs of your campus.

• Create research projects and online companions for lecture courses
• Learn about the range of OAE’s public and privacy settings
• Customize OAE’s look and feel, including the welcome screen, drop-down menus, and sign-up pages
• Connect to a local LDAP to work with accounts and authentication
• Install widgets to extend and customize OAE’s core functionality
• Integrate OAE with a web server and backend database
• Get a checklist for deploying your custom OAE to production