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- Announcements: Inform site participants of current items of interest
- Assignments: Create, distribute, collect, and grade online assignments
- Chat room: Carry on real-time conversations with worksite participants
- Discussion: Hold structured conversations organized into categories
- Drop Box: Share documents within private folders between instructors and students
- Email Archive: Keep track of course or project site email correspondence
- Gradebook: Manage grades and submit as final grades
- Message Center: Communicate through discussion forum topics and private messaging
- Modules: Create ordered content, such as study guides, for student review
- News: Add RSS Include up-to-date news feeds to your worksite
- Preferences: Control how often you are notified of course or project site activity
- Project Sites: Use Sakai for other purposes besides teaching (e.g., research collaboration)
- Quiz and survey: Create online assessments
- Resources: Make any kind of material available online
- Schedule: Organize and post items in a calendar format
- Section/Group: Info Manage sections of a class (lectures, labs, discussions, studio work, recitations, or any combination thereof)
- Site Info: Maintain course or project site settings
- Syllabus: Post and maintain your official course outline
- Web Content: Maintain course or project site settings
- Wiki: Create/contribute to a collaborative, editable Web site
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A Course Management System (CMS) is a group of online applications that instructors may use to improve and diversify their classes by bringing in novel online-technologies, such as GradeBook, QuizBuilder, Online Grade Submission, Surveys, Announcements, etc.
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MyUCDavis is a portal that most all university affiliates use at UC Davis. Inside the portal, there are a group of tools known as the "Coruse Management Tools," which include QuizBuilder, GradeBook, etc. The Sakai system aims to eventually will replace these course management tools with more effective and updateable tools, as well as introduce a whole host of new tools and features for your convience. To see what tools are currently available in both Sakai and the MyUCDavis course management tools, please see our Implementation Timeline provided by CS/KA
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The course management tools in MyUCDavis have become increasingly difficult to extend and scale. To address this issue, Sakai is being developed as an open-source project that lends itself well to evolving to meet the needs of its users. In fact, UC Davis will be collaborating with universities around the country, including Stanford, MIT, and Yale, to develop, test drive, and improve Sakai. Combining the resources, dedication, and expertise of the top universities in the country should ensure a smooth and successful transition to the next generation of course management tools, a constantly improving sets of utilities that universities can update and share.
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In the winter and spring of 2006, the Faculty Mentoring Faculty program hosted a Sakai pilot, where instructors from various departments tested Sakai and provided their feedback as well as feature requests. Intrigued by Sakai's features, various instructors have begun using Sakai both in and out of the classroom. As of now, programmers are working to enhance the QuizBuilder and GradeBook so they more accurately respond to professors' needsreflect the instructors needs'. In addition, the Sakai Community continues to enhance the core Sakai toolset. The timeline for these changes will allow UCD to make Sakai available for an extended pilot in the Fall 2006. Additional functionality in support of large courses with multiple sections and instructors should be available for testing by Winter Quarter 2007. More detailed information on these developments should be available mid summer 2006.
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As Sakai's GradeBook does not yet provide adequate support for larger classes with multiple sections, participation by professors of instructorsof such courses is not recomended at this time.
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