During the 07-08 transition year, the project needs a brochure to provide a first point of contact for instructors who are new to SmartSite.
Instructors who are not familiar with SmartSite.
Increase the number of course sites throughout 2007-08
Is your course in a class of its own?
Simplify your workload.
Create a SmartSite to meet your unique teaching, research and collaboration needs.
SmartSite can help:
smartsite.ucdavis.edu
What is SmartSite?
SmartSite is a sophisticated set of web-tools designed for higher education. It is also UC Davis' new course management and collaboration system powered by Sakai, a software development effort that brings together one hundred plus educational institutions.
Like Mozilla's Firefox web browser, SmartSite is part of an open-source community dedicated to the success of a particular piece of software. UC Davis' active participation in the Sakai Project (sakaiproject.org) insures that our campus and other members like Michigan, Cal and Stanford have an evolving set of web tools that can be tailored by each institutions' community of users.
How are other instructors using SmartSite? or How will you use SmartSite?
Faculty Profiles (Photo and Quotes on INE Pubs):
Roger MacDonald
Kristina de Korsak
Susan Keen
Milmon Harrison (Need to get Photo/Quote; use place holder if needed)
Why should I use SmartSite?
SmartSite can help simplify your workload by providing useful web-tools for your unique teaching, research and collaboration needs. And for MyUCDavis users (UC Davis' legacy course management system), another, more practical reason to begin using SmartSite is that MyUCDavis' set of course tools will be retired in 2008-09. We encourage all instructors to export their content from MyUCDavis and import it into SmartSite using a few easy, well-documented steps. Please email smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu for assistance in starting this transition.
Which tools are right for me?
One of the strengths of SmartSite is its expanding and diverse tool set. But when you are getting started, this can be a bit overwhelming. The tools you use will depend on tangibles things such as class size, course format and subject as well as intangibles like your teaching style and comfort with technology. We recommend picking one or two reasons for using a site and starting with the default tool set. You can always add or subtract tools as they are needed. Sites are scalable; so establishing how sophisticated or simple your site will be is a matter of assessing your course's particular needs.
The Announcements tool is used to inform site participants about current items of interest. Announcements can have multiple attachments, such as documents or URLs.
For courses, the Assignments tool allows instructors to create, distribute, collect, and grade online assignments. Assignments are private; student submissions are not visible to other users of the site.
The Assignments tool offers multiple grading options, including letter grades, points, checkmarks, pass/fail, or ungraded.
Assignments can also be returned, with or without grades, for re-submission. Instructors can download all submissions to an assignment to their computer at once. When instructors release grades for an assignment, students can access instructor comments and their grades.
You can use the Chat Room tool for real-time, unstructured conversations among site participants who are signed on to the site at the same time.
Instructors can easily create an "Online Office Hours" chat room for student questions and answers. Dispersed collaboration groups can use Chat as a space to have conversations across distances or catch up with conversations that they may have missed.
Each site has an automatically generated site email address, which you can view in the Email Archive feature. Email sent to the site email address is copied to all site participants and owners.
All messages sent to your site's email address are stored in the Email Archive. Each message sent to site participants will indicate if there is an attachment, and provide a link to get the attachment from the worksite itself.
Forums is a communication tool that instructors or site leaders can use to create an unlimited number of discussion forums for their course or project sites. Forums is designed to be an effective tool for both academic and collaborative work, and is integrated closely with other tools (e.g., Resources and Gradebook).
The Gradebook is a tool for instructors to calculate and store grade information and distribute it to students online. Instructors may:
Mailtool allows user to send a message to the site particpants. It provides wysiwyg editing, file attachment, the ability to select recipients by group or class section
The Site Info tool provides information about the worksite that you are currently in. If you have a role that allows it, you can use this tool to :
The syllabus is the official outline for your course. As an instructor, if you or your department has prepared an online syllabus already, you can direct the Syllabus tool to link to it. Otherwise, you can enter material to post directly to your syllabus. As you create a syllabus, you can designate that it be visible to the general public or just to members of your course. Some features of a traditional syllabus are divided between the Syllabus and Schedule tools. Some instructors use the Syllabus tool to display the department's official online syllabus, and use the Schedule as a detailed resource for students.
The Web Content tool allows site owners to choose external websites to display within their worksite's menubar. Departments, collaborations, or other groups may use the Web Content tool to provide a prominent link to their public worksite. If you want to provide many links to websites for your course or project participants, you can avoid cluttering your menubar by listing most of them in the Resources section.
Using the Resources tool, you can share many kinds of material securely with members of your site, or make them available to the public. You also have your own private Resources area in your My Workspace. You can upload files (e.g., word processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, and videos), as well as create and post HTML (web) pages and simple text documents, and share links to useful web sites.
You can organize your Resources items into folders, and you can control which groups or types of users can access and add to different folders. Also, you can show or hide an item at any time, and set a start and/or end time for its availability. Many classes post weekly readings in their Resources. These can include links to websites as well as to other kinds of documents, like Adobe PDF files. Some classes also post presentations or slides used in lectures. By setting folder Permissions, a large collaboration site can use one folder in Resources as a space to archive important documents, and allow only certain site participants to modify those documents.
For a complete list of SmartSites course tools, please visit smartsite.ucdavis.edu
Some general reasons for using SmartSite include:
How do I create a SmartSite... Quickly?
If you are an instructor of record and would like to create standard course site, please take the following steps:
How do I add TA's to my course site?
Where do I get help?
IT Express
This campus service is available to help you set up a SmartSite account and answer questions about using your SmartSite tools.
Contact IT Express:
(530) 754-HELP (754-4357)
smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu
or in-person at Shields Library
itexpress.ucdavis.edu
Is there training available?
Teaching Resource Center (TRC)
The Teaching Resources Center (TRC) has as its primary goal the improvement of instruction at UCD by enhancing teaching and learning opportunities for faculty and teaching assistants. Visit their calendar and sign up for one of the many different SmartSite training sessions and pedagogical events like the quarterly series on "More Thoughtful Teaching." Space is limited.
Contact the TRC at:
(530) 752-6050
trc@ucdavis.edu
or in-person at 17 Wellman
trc.ucdavis.edu
What about one-on-one or drop-in support?
Education Technology (ET) Partners
Student technology advisers specially trained in the applications commonly used in teaching at UC Davis (including all of the tools in SmartSite) are available for ad hoc, one-on-one consultation via drop-in or at a faculty member's office.
Contact the ET Partners program at:
(530) 754-2115
etpartners@ucdavis.edu
or in-person at Surge II
etpartners.ucdavis.edu
Interested in learning how your peers use SmartSite?
Faculty Mentoring Faculty Program (FMFP)
The FMFP provides UC Davis instructors an opportunity to mentor and to learn from other faculty interested in instructional technology and innovative teaching. Visit fmfp.ucdavis.edu to learn more about this quarter's presentations and view videos of past sessions.
Contact Andy Jones, FMFP Program Manager at:
(530) 752-3408
aojones@ucdavis.edu
fmfp.ucdavis.edu
Did you know... finding help within SmartSite is as easy as clicking "?"
Click the "?" button and go directly to the help page on the tool you're working with.
smartsite.ucdavis.edu
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