Overview

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.

Audience

Instructors who are not familiar with SmartSite.

Goal

Increase the number of course sites throughout 2007-08

Distribution Points

• New Faculty Orientation
• Mediaworks
• TRC
• Training Sessions* Departmental Presentations
• Faculty Mentoring Faculty Meetings

• More Thoughtful Teaching Events
• ET Partners
• IT Express

Copy

Cover

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:

• Reduce paper work
• Share class materials
• Collect and grade assignments
• Communicate with students
• Organize lectures
• And more!

smartsite.ucdavis.edu

Pages 2&3

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)

Pages 4-7

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.

Use SmartSite's tools to:

Improve and encourage communication

Chat

• Hold real-time, unstructured conversations
• Create an "Online Office Hours" chat room for student questions and answers.

Announcements

• Announce a change in time or location
• Post documents that have had errors corrected

Mailtool

• Send a student, group of students, class section, or your TAs, private or public messages.
• Collect all course related emails without searching your in box

Email Archive

• Contact all site participants with one email
• View and collect messages sent to your site's unique address
• Send large files to your site and provide a link to site members

Encourage collaboration among students

Wiki

• Easily change and create web pages
• Create Wikipedia-like entries for course terms and topics
• Have students collaborate on writing assignments

Promote independent and self-paced learning

Forums

• Create an unlimited number of discussion forums for your course
• Continue class discussions online
• Build an answer base; Keep useful discussions for future reference

Assignments

• Create, distribute, collect, and grade online assignments
• Assignments are private; student submissions are not visible to other users of the site
• Choose from multiple grading options, including letter grades, points, checkmarks, pass/fail, or ungraded.
• Return assignments, with or without grades, for re-submission
• Download all student submissions at once
• Release student grades with comments

Sharing resources with students, TAs and colleagues

Resources

• Share materials securely with members of your site
• Upload files word processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, and videos
• Create and post HTML (web) pages and simple text documents
• Share links to useful web sites.
• Organize your Resources items into folders
• Control which groups or types of users can access and add to different folders
• Show or hide an item at any time by setting a start and/or end time
• Post weekly readings
• Archive important documents like exams showing them to students

Web Content

• Display an important website within your worksite's menubar.
• Provide a links to your department, personal homepage, research group and other frequently referenced websites

Automating processes and reducing paperwork

Gradebook

• Calculate and store grade information and distribute it to students online
• Autocalculate course grades, with the ability to override any letter grade
• Define course letter grades based on a 100% scale
• Add, view, edit, and release point values of assignments and/or assessments to students
• Enter, view, edit, and release to students scores, grades, and comments
• Transmit scores to the Gradebook from other tools such as Assignments to create an entry and record student scores
• Export class rosters, scores and grades to Microsoft Excel (in .xls or .csv format)
• Import assignment scores from spreadsheet (.csv) files
• Let students view their own scores and grades once instructors have released them
• Submit final grades to the registrar

Organizing and Managing your course

Syllabus

• Create an official outline for your course
• Enter material directly into SmartSite
• Link to a syllabus you or your department has prepared an online
• Share your course with the general public or just to members of your course

Schedule

• Post items in a calendar format by day, week, month, year, or flat list view
• Post readings for each class on the day they are due to be read
• Set deadlines for research, group, and department projects
• Get an overview of all your course schedules in MyWorkspace
• Any Schedule item can have multiple attachments
• Print an Adobe PDF file of any view of a Schedule

Section Info

• Efficiently manage sections of a class that may consist of lectures, labs, discussions, studio work, etc.
• Work with other tools such as Announcements and Gradebook

Site Info

• View and change information about a site
• Select the tools available to the site
• Display a participants list
• Decide who has access to the site
• Publish a course site after its been developed
• Alter your site's appearance and description

For a complete list of SmartSite tools, please visit smartsite.ucdavis.edu

How do I create SmartSite... Quickly?

If you are an instructor of record and would like to create a standard course site, please take the following steps:

• Login at smartsite.ucdavis.edu
• Click "WorkSite Setup" in the menu under "MyWorkspace"
• Create a site by clicking "New"
• Select a course and the sections to be included in your site
• Click "Continue" after:
  • Viewing your course's default tool set
  • Entering a unique course email address
  • Viewing the default "Site Status" page
• Click "Create Site"

How do I add TA's to my course site?

• Click "Site Info" for your course site
• Click "Add Participants"
• Enter your TAs' email addresses
• Click "Assign all participants to the same role"
• Click "Continue" and then "Finish"

Where can I find help?

SmartSite features contextualized help. Click the "?" button in the frame of the tool you're working in and SmartSite Help will open to the correct spot. For instance, if you are creating a course site, click the "?" in "WorkSite Setup" to find detailed instructions and tutorials.

For technical assistance or questions that are not answered in the Help section, please contact:

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

smartsite.ucdavis.edu

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