Teaching and Learning: Sakai Tools/Features

• Comparative Overview of Tools (doc)

Basic Toolset

Home: View recent announcements, discussions, and chat activity
Announcements: Post current, time-critical information
Assignments: Post assignments and receive submissions online
Chat Room: Participate in real-time, written conversations
Discussion: Engage in written conversations, not in real time
Drop Box: Allow private file-sharing between instructors and students
Email Archive: Maintain an archive of all email sent to the worksite's email list
Gradebook: Compute and store grades
Help: Access help documentation
Membership: Choose sites in which you would like to participate
News: Display an RSS feed from an external site
Preferences: Set your personal preferences, such as time zone, tab order
Presentation: Present slides to a live audience, who can also view slides later
Profile Tool: Let users add and make public personal information, including pictures

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.

Desired Tools / Tools in Progress

See: Feature Requests

The following tool-related ideas and suggestions came up during faculty pilots and other Sakai-related uses. They are stored here to track possible communications that should/could be developed in the future.

• What is a Wiki?
• What happens if two people edit a wiki at the same time?