Teaching and Learning: User Concerns

Transition from MyUCDavis to Sakai

• How will content be moved? Automatically? Will we get CD's to back up or old site?

Tools

• How do we explain the new tools to faculty unfamiliar with them? (e.g. wiki)

  Wiki

• Can users have more than one wiki? Currently you can accomplish something like this by making the first page of your wiki a list of the various pages/sections/classes that you want to have. For example, the first page could link to your physics wiki, your biology wiki, and your personal wiki. This way you have seperate locations for each wiki's organization. You may have to be careful with naming pages, however. You can't have two pages named "assignments." You would specify a page name as "physics assignments" or "biology assignments."
• What if two people try to edit a Wiki page at the same time? If a wiki page is edited by two people at approximately the same time, the first person to submit the edit will change the wiki content. The second person attempting to edit the page will receive a message stating that the wiki page has been updated with new content.
• What if you've developed a wiki you feel is complete? Can you then convert it into a finished hard copy document, handout, or reader? In many ways this depends on the wiki you have created. If the wiki only has a few pages, you can copy the text into Microsft Word and reformat it. Alternatively, you could bring HTML code into DreamWeaver. If you have a more complicated wiki, a spidering tool may be necessary. Can anyone else provide a better solution to this request?

  Quiz Builder

• Can instructors provide feedback on quizbuilder programs?
• Can instructors add images in their quizes?
• Make sure the Quiz Builder allows for an instructors specific needs. For example, someone who teaches "Ear Learners" (those people who learned english merely by hearing it spoken) may require specific Quiz Builder functionality. What are some of these special requirements?

  Forum/Discussion

• Articulate the difference between forum/discussion messages and private message: Private messages don't allow for threading and the forum/discussion topics can be estagblished only by those with requisite permission

  Message Center

• Could spam be a problem?
• It could be confusing to students and instructors that email comes from different sources (Message Center vs. email vs. Geckomail).

  Roles

• Switching to the student's view.
• Giving TA access to your personal workspace
• Guest Access

Customization

• Resorting the buttons on the left.
• Adding MyUCDavis-style channels
• Adding dynamic content: Here is the following workaround: Removing the announcement and chat tools will remove their respective boxes off the main (default) page. In the remaining box, direct the content of this page to a URL or dreamweaver page. (NOTE: the top button tool is the one that will apppear on the front/default page.)
• Can we incorporate Breeze?

Sections

• Combining Sections

Potential FAQs

• Problem: URLs can't have spaces. Solution: Replace them with underscores.