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 tailored to 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.

And most importantly, sites are scalable; so establishing how sophisticated or simple your site will be is a matter of assessing your course's particular needs.

For the most current list of SmartSite tools, please visit smartsite.ucdavis.edu

Some general reasons for using SmartSite include:

• Communicating with students, TAs and colleagues
  • Use Chat during your office hours to answer students' questions online or to stay in contact with your TAs when they are grading papers
  • Use the Mail Tool to send communicate with your TA and course sections.

• Encouraging collaboration and communication among students
  • Create a wiki with your courses' key terms and concepts; have students collectively create detailed definitions like Wikipedia
  • Use the Forum tool to continue a discussion after your class is over

• Promoting independent and self-paced learning
  • Post example tests in the Resource tool
  • Use the Wiki tool to create a detailed bibliography of articles, books and websites on a particular subject.

• Assessment, evaluation and feedback
  • Create student groups and give them feedback on a collaborative project with the Mail tool
  • Have students complete a mid-quarter teaching evaluation in conjunction with the TRC

• Collecting, grading and returning assignments
  • View drafts a term papers with the Assignments Tool
  • Create simple assignments to track student participation

• Sharing resources with students, TAs and colleagues
  • Post your reader online with the Resources tool
  • Import and host your previously created web pages

• Automating processes and reducing paperwork
  • Keep students informed of their current grade with Gradebook
  • Send graded assignments from the Assignments tool to Gradebook

• Sharing and organizing classroom presentations
  • Post your lecture notes and Powerpoint slides in Resources
  • Use a Wiki to organize web links for your lectures

Insert

Side 1

How do I create a SmartSite... Quickly?

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

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

1. Click "Site Info" for your course site
2. Click "Add Participants"
3. Enter your TAs' email addresses
4. Click "Assign all participants to the same role"
5. Click "Continue" and then "Finish"

Side 2

Is there training available?

What about one-on-one or drop-in support?

What about my class material on MyUCDavis?

Back

Do you know...

(List of numbers and services)