A university-wide contest held by the University Information Technology (UIT) department will challenge members of the Tufts community to come up with a name for the learning management system (LMS) that is slated to next year replace Blackboard, according to Senior Faculty Development Consultant for UIT Rebecca Sholes.
Tufts students, faculty and staff are all eligible to submit entries online by the Dec. 1 deadline, according to Sholes. The winning name will be made public in January.
The person who submits the winning name will be recognized on the LMS site, according to Sholes. The winner will also receive a prize, the nature of which remains secret for now.
The idea to organize a contest to come up with a Tufts-specific name for the new system — which will run on Sakai, an open-source LMS platform — came from the university-wide team that led the effort to select a replacement for Blackboard, according to Sholes.
The Sakai software will take Blackboard's place next fall and will act as the common LMS platform for all Tufts students.
Project Manager of LMS Implementation Andrew Valenti thinks relabeling the program with a unique name better reflects its nature and will make the program more meaningful to the Tufts community.
"If you call it ‘Sakai,' it has no meaning," Valenti said. "By having our community come up with the name, it's no longer just another name. Students and faculty will associate the name with learning and collaboration. We're developing the product to represent the unique needs of the Tufts community and thus it is no longer merely Sakai."
If multiple people enter the same name, only the first submission will be considered, according to Sholes.
There is no limit to how many names one person may propose, according to Mary Sullivan, an educational technology fellow for academic technology (AT).
"It's more about the quality of the entry, so submitting multiple names won't really increase your chances," Sullivan said.
Sullivan, an education graduate student at Tufts, is helping to spread the word about the contest by reaching out to students online and on campus. Sullivan posted an announcement on TuftsLife and designed a poster for the contest, she said.
The LMS Implementation Steering Committee, composed of faculty, administrators and Tufts Community Union President Sam Wallis, a senior, will choose the winning name, according to Sholes.
The committee's members are still being finalized and will meet for the first time in December after the final deadline for entries, Sholes said.
Sholes said that it is common for universities running the Sakai platform to rename their own versions of the platform.
"Some schools keep the name ‘Sakai,' but many change the name," Scholes said. "We thought it would be fun to have a name for it that really reflected Tufts and that would identify that this was the LMS for Tufts."
She said that the winning name, in addition to being a reflection of Tufts, should show creativity and indicate the academic intent of behind an LMS.
"The name should be something that captures the sense that it's a learning management system for teaching, learning and collaboration," Sholes said. "For example, with the name Blackboard, people think of a classroom and something for writing and for teaching on."
Additionally, Valenti said allowing the Tufts community to come up with the name will help the community develop a sense of ownership. He called the faculty and students "the real customers and stakeholders" of the new LMS.
"We're building it for them," Valenti said. "They know best how to capture the spirit of Tufts."
