Introducing SmartSite (06/22/06)

What is SmartSite?

• SmartSite is the new course management and online collaboration system UC Davis is introducing to faculty, students, and staff.
• The first wave of faculty members tried pilot versions in winter and spring 2006. The campus is now preparing to start rolling out the system for wider use this fall. We expect SmartSite to be available to all UC Davis courses in 2007. Vet Med and the School of Medicine are working on their own implementations.
• SmartSite will eventually replace the more limited set of course management tools now available in the MyUCDavis portal (e.g., GradeBook and QuizBuilder), but for the first two years or so, both systems will be offered in tandem. This will allow time to switch from the old system to the new.
• SmartSite is powered by Sakai, a collaborative, easily-extendable, open-source software development effort that originated at Stanford, MIT, University of Indiana, and the University of Michigan. The consortium now includes more than 100 institutions of higher education.
• Many SmartSite tools are ready to use now, and the campus community is invited to start learning what SmartSite can do.
  • Visit the informational Web site (smartsite.ucdavis.edu)
  • Attend training sessions
  • Contact our pedagogy and technology consultants
  • Request a project site (smartsite-info@ucdavis.edu)

What does SmartSite make possible?

• SmartSite provides fresh approaches to old problems, encouraging creativity, innovation, and efficiency.
  • SmartSite can be used for a number of different purposes - to keep track of courses, manage dissertations, coordinate research projects, organize student groups, etc.
  • SmartSite helps reduce the tedium of administrative chores (e.g., by automating certain tasks, organizing and keeping track of courses, distributing documents, holding virtual office hours, etc.). Over time, SmartSite will provide access to certain campus data sources such as student rosters at first, and eventually library catalogs.
  • Instructors can use SmartSite to interact and collaborate in new ways with students, colleagues, and researchers - by using discussion boards, chat rooms, virtual office hours, wikis, and more.
  • Instructors will find ways in SmartSite to teach more effectively, and to do things they couldn't do before (see http://www.fctel.uncc.edu/pedagogy/assessment/9Principles.html or http://www.msu.edu/user/coddejos/seven.htm).
  • SmartSite encourages cooperative learning (e.g., students can build publicly editable wikis, engage in critical discourse on discussion boards, and chat with their peers about an upcoming exam).
• SmartSite empowers students, faculty, staff, and researchers by providing an online architecture for collaboration.
  • SmartSite makes it easier for instructors to teach, for researchers to work together, and for students to collaborate online.
  • SmartSite presents in one location access to all kinds of information and resources -whether they are related to teaching, learning, research, and/or work.
• SmartSite is easy to adapt and offers great potential.
  • It will continue to grow, evolve and change over time, through contributions from UC Davis users and the talented Sakai open-source community.
  • It is designed to offer in one location the best of Sakai (as new tools are developed) as well locally-available instructional and collaborative applications (e.g., Breeze for online communications, meetings, and multimedia presentations; Almagest for hosting and organizing images and other resources; and podcasting).

Why this name?

• Because SmartSite introduces a new paradigm for teaching, learning and collaboration at UC Davis. At one level, it is a welcome solution to the tedium of administrative chores. But more importantly, it empowers us to innovate, to be creative, and to find fresh approaches to overcoming current limitations and problems.

"SmartSite: Teach, learn and work - together" - Our name and tag-line.

• SmartSite is a smart and useful way to teach and work.
• Innovation and collaboration make SmartSite a "smart technology" (e.g., smart classroom, smart phone, smart car, etc.).
• The name and tagline underscore the system's distinctive aspects of collaboration and support (we're here to tackle this thing together), and they introduce and emphasize the notion and benefits of an online collaborative environment.