CCFIT CMS Report Highlights

The following is a compilation from the CCFIT CMS Report. We will need to track progress on the groups' concerns at the time as well as their recommendations re: current tools and potential additional features.

Specific Requirements

The new course management tool system must, at a minimum supply what is currently available on MyUCDavis

Website builder

Primary Function: distribute course materials (documents, announcements, urls, etc.) to students and others.
Usage Winter Quarter 2005:

28% of active Instructors used Website Builder (n=572)
13.5% of classes used Website Builder (n=902)

Evaluation:
Strengths: Basic functioning works well and is easy to use. Excellent ease of restricting to enrolled students.
Weaknesses: very limited formatting. Hard to direct non-students to course material as there are no direct URLs to class information.

Requirements for new system:

maintain the easy to use aspect of this tool, including the ability to restrict access to enrolled students and selectively release information.
allow more flexibility with the site, allowing editing and design of the course web site.
remove the restriction that only a course has a web site.; allow student or faculty groups to set up web sites to facilitate learning.

Gradebook

Primary Function: track assignments, release scores to students, submit final grades
Usage Winter Quarter 2005:

40% of courses used a Gradebook as part of the class (n=2,662)
22% used the Gradebook to submit final grades (n=1,474)

Evaluation:
Strengths: Very full featured, very flexible, very appreciated by students
Weaknesses: Joining class sections should not be an all-or-nothing choice; should be able to view sections as joined and unjoined. Digital drop-box should allow for downloading all student assignments at once, and should allow for uploading comments back to students. It is not easy to track attendance with this tool.

Requirements for new system:

critical component.
current version has many strengths and features that make it attractive for use.
Problems: joining sections, digital drop-off and return.

Communication

Primary Function: allow faculty-to-student, faculty-to-group, and student-to-student communication through email listservs, threaded discussion boards, and chat rooms
Usage Winter Quarter 2005:

18% of Instructors accessed the Communication Tools (n=370)

*Evaluation:8
Strengths: Allows student-to-student communication, automatically generates transcript of sessions, listserv is very effective way to communicate to all enrolled students
Weaknesses: limited interface, inability to create sub-groups within a class, low effective use of bulletin boards and chat rooms

Requirements for new system:

good start
allows student-to-student and student-to-faculty communication.
interface is limited and open only to members of the campus community.
allow splitting of students into groups for discussion and facilitate group work.

Quizbuilder

Primary Function: learning assessment through online and printed quizzes. Surveys.
Cumulative Usage through Winter Quarter 2005:

242 Instructors have created items (cumulative use, through Winter 2005)
5,935 Multiple Choice questions
1,007 Paragraph questions
8,259 students have taken 62,370 online quizzes.

Evaluation:
Strengths: Item database allows creation of both online quizzes and paper exams. Detailed item statistics and analysis. Faculty can 'share' quizzes and items.
Weakness: limited to 35 users at one time. Item feedback automatically shows the student the feedback for all the answers; an instructor should be able to just release the feedback for the selected answer. Unable to edit or delete quizzes or items once a student has taken them. As the items are individual specific, not course specific, this results in a large build-up of useless items that cannot be purged. No ability to 'reset' a student's quiz attempt. Feedback indicates that gains in adopting this tool are greatly offset by the difficulties of using it.
All tools suffered because of bandwidth limitations - the slow speed that these sites are served at is a serious impediment to the process of learning how to use these tools.

General Comments
Requirements for new system:

must be better.
number of users allowed at one time must be increased beyond the current limit of 35
difficulties with editing, feedback and sharing must be solved.
should allow student self-assessment of progress in classes
should have more standard quiz features.

New Features

Library Resource Interface and Linking Module

UC Davis faculty and students appreciate the ease of access to full-text materials and digital images now possible on class websites developed using course management tools. By using Sakai's "Twin Peaks" module, a tool for creating and managing links and documents, faculty can extend access to published materials in addition to documents created by faculty themselves. Sakai's interface and linking module facilitates searching the university catalog or licensed databases, selecting a citation and linking the full-text of the item to the class web page using a persistent URL.
While the ability to acquire full-text articles and creating links to the full-text on a faculty member's course web page currently exists at UC Davis by using the California Digital Library's UCe-Links OpenURL infrastructure, the module being developed within Sakai may offer a more coordinated, easier to use, configuration. The committee recommends the early adoption of a library resource interface and linking modules such as Twin Peaks and strongly suggests that its development be coordinated with the existing CDL UCe-Links OpenURL tool for maximum flexibility and options.

E-portfolio

This module can be used simply, (e.g. students prepare a resume) or as a life-long learning tool (e.g. UC Davis medical students store and use class materials, clinical records, resumes, writing assignments to demonstrate competency), or as a research tool (e.g. researchers share data and develop experiments). There is some development of this module at the UC Davis Med School, as well as in the Sakai project. E Portfolio module would allow students to track their competency and supply evidence of their attainment of educational goals.

Integrated course calendar

Each course would be allowed a detailed calendar, showing assignments, exam dates, and project information and deadlines. This could then be integrated (uploaded) into a student calendar that collates information from all the student courses. Some of this functionality exists under Moodle. Currently there is no Sakai development in this area. It could become a UC Davis contribution.