March 1, 2006

Owned by Lisa Wilson
Last updated: Nov 01, 2006Version comment
4 min read

VetMed Developers Meeting

Scott - Boot camp update and interaction with other Sakai personnel. New team member Philip attended.

Chris - Will finalize schedule info w/Scott and confirm Ilios curriculum content with Jan
Talked to Walter Boyce (participant in spring pilot) about possible concerns about online tools changing the teaching process, e.g., verbal announcements in class vs in Announcements. Some faculty may feel pressured to use Sakai rather than continuing with their existing teaching methods.
CALF and VM staff to continue to assure faculty that the intent is not "force" but to provide tools if desired.

Keith/Chris - Talked about supplemental db tables in Ilios for additional course information including syllabus info like maps, etc. Worst case scenario would be to convert to pdf and put in Resources so the information is available.

Beau - Troubleshooting VM implementation on new box - possibly available to team this afternoon as issues are resolved.
MyVM is unavailable - "page not found" experienced by other team members. Beau would like to be informed asap about outages to diagnose problems w/this server/app. Possible firewall issue?
Production for Spring 2006 will be on the new server - for Fall 2006 on multiple servers.

Keith - Working on session topics match up to offerings in Ilios. Figuring out the table structure for the 4 joins required.

Rick/Dave - Captivate & content migration: Nancy Olsen determined that MW will not meet VM deadline - the MW Phase 1 involves having scripts drafted & edited by April, so Rick & Dave will record help for VM themselves. Estimate of 10-12 short Captivate demos - spec'd for podcasting; scripting and will record next week. Completion estimate: within 2 weeks.
Movies will seat from media server and be linked; will migrate later to planned common document location. Will note duration of each clip for faculty info.

Beau - re: content migration. Files are stored in memory (system RAM) until the upload is completed which is why there is a 20 MB limit. This is an issue that needs to be solved due to file size issues of VM content.

The content entry model is of students (or student committee?) entering content for faculty on regular basis as
well as quick material uploads of individual courses. VM team is considering a faculty drop box which students premitted to do the work will have access to; possibly with auto-notification to these students when faculty upload content. Need to examine this concept in depth to determine best work flow (i.e., a global shared location, per course tool?) Beau to provide options/scenarios to discuss w/Rick and Dave.

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CERE Implementation Meeting

Updates: Beau getting new production machine configured; Keith extending Ilios to contain add'l course info like meeting times, etc.; Chris stated that course notations of essential vs. required vs. optional storage needed in the database. Rick and Dave will have 10-12 sakai help video files available in 2 weeks. Clips will be as brief as possible for download purposes and to minimize impact on faculty time.

This meeting will focus on rquirements for 2 pilot courses and student needs for spring quarter.

  • Links from MyUCDavis to point to CERE (for the pilot courses) rather than iWeb.
  • Email to be sent out to these classes to notify students about the pilot and CERE.
  • Faculty will try out Announcements tool by sending email notification via Sakai.
  • Students will be accessing CERE only for these classes.
  • Course home page in iWeb will be a single link to CERE and other links in iWeb to the courses will go directly to Sakai.
  • Erin, and other dept admins, will be part of the pilot as well since they also email students via a class.

Sites are up for spring pilots and bulk enrollment is done.

Erin has needs for early notification for course information changes, e.g., location, schedule changes. Students signing up for electives are affected by class changes. Issue is how to notify the correct group of students (in CERE.)

Jan - what are the essential things students need to know?

  • Urgent current issues notification by email, but other information will be noted in Announcements for the course.
  • In the VM Sakai instance, students can audit all courses - should they be able to self-join?

Discussion of multi-term displays for students and faculty (auto-joined courses):
How do you distinguish btwn Fall --> Winter esp. for multi-quarter courses? Term indicators? By color, by text designation? Uncouple once student has completed the course, but allow student to be able to rejoin?
How far in advance do we set up future courses for joining, prior to their actual enrollment in the course?

Suggestion: Inform students that changes are possible to courses prior to their enrollment (flux)
Potential issue for unjoining students - gradebook issues?
Possible solution: Global hide when course is over?

Re: Content Migration - This is a good opportunity for faculty to sort through their content and limit what content they want on their new sakai sites. Significant, but small percentage of faculty who never go to their online sites. CALF will send out printed website snapshot to faculty and request designation of what materials are wanted on the new sites. Default is no content.

Email notification to faculty (cc: course leader) with deadline for response re: course materials (for fall.)
Notifications to instructors outside the school as well.

Course worksites generated require enrollment prior to being displayed (current business rule) to avoid mass generation of online sites with no content; may need to change policy to allow early release and allow students to join. There is a need for project sites outside the automated load, e.g., residency courses.

Faculty to copy within sakai for future site updates. May require simple training session.