Why Pilot with Sakai

This list was compiled by CS that was shared with the ET Student Partners to keep us all on the same page when answering questions from the FMFP faculty.

Well, Sakai offers:

• Flexibility for the future
• More LMS Tools than current MyUCDavis CMS System

• Support from the technology experts associated with institutions within the consortium who will
  • Create user-friendly tools
  • Ensure speedy bug fixing while in development
  • Guarantee continued tool development and growing functionalities

• SAKAI will offer a cleaner and more adjustable interface
  • GUI will be more user friendly. Cleaner and intuitive to the campus faculty
  • Down the left side are different tool options that faculty can customize themselves

• SAKAI Quiz and Test builder and Gradebook
  • Currently, MyUCDavis Quizbuilder and Gradebook is insufficient for faculty use.
  • The SAKAI Quizzes and Test is a much more flexible robust and modern tool than MyUCDavis Quizbuilder.
  • The SAKAI Gradebook will be robust as well. We are working hard on this right now.

• Faculty will have more control of the real estate of opening pages and subsequent pages whereas this could not be done with MyUCDavis. Further, a full course website can go on a SAKAI server.
• Faculty can establish collaborative as well as independent learning groups within their classes
• SAKAI is also a research tool. Faculty can create collaborative groups that are not connected to classes, thus allowing collaborative research between colleagues at UC Davis and elsewhere around the world.
• Eventually, all elements with SAKAI will communicate with one another so that an assignment to a course syllabus could automatically be added to an enrolled students Online Calendar.
• You are part of the team that will build the SAKAI-LMS tools for UC Davis.
• MyUCDavis is a product that was developed during the last decade and is now becoming dated technology
  • Faculty today need to catch up with the technology the current students are accustom to using best example of this is the WIKI SAKAI does not miss the opportunity to integrate technologies like this and other tools (lesson builder as another example)
• More than 100 Universities across the globe have embraced SAKAI and the originators of SAKAI are four of the leaders in academic technology in this country
  • MIT
  • Stanford
  • University of Michigan
  • Indiana University
• Being involved with SAKAI now, will help other faculty in the future. You will shape the tool development from a UC Davis faculty perspective. Additionally, the more pilot faculty there are early on, the more they can assist fellow colleagues in becoming familiar with the SAKAI -LMS tools when implementation takes place.
• As pilot faculty you have the opportunity to make a difference at ground level and help structure the LMS tools as SAKAI develops. Current UC Davis faculty needs can be represented in the code that is developed as a result of their involvement in beta testing now.
• UC Davis WILL implement the SAKAI course/learning management system in the not too distant future (roughly one and a half years from now). MyUCDavis CMS will no longer be supported at that time. Although, it will allow for double-coverage on MyUCDavis and Sakai for a year until SAKAI is fully implemented. If there is a hold it at all will be in the challenges of working with sections. However, in SAKAI sections will be able to be created by Banner, or in a project based way.
• You are helping us through our learning curve so we can serve all faculty better in the future to develop a strong system. Through your contributions, MYUC Davis SAKAI-LMS will be fully functional, with "solid" tools that suit the needs of faculty on this campus.