Sakai Summer Reading List

While you are sunning on the beach, you’ll surely want to catch up on these Top 5 recommended Sakai reads:

1. UNC’s Sakai Pilot Results (6.09)
2. Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide (6.09)
3. Sakai Executive Brief (PDF; 5.09)
4. Sakai Foundation Exec. Director’s blog entry about the UNC Sakai Pilot! (6.09)
5. Oracle Academic Enterprise White Paper (1.09)

Enjoy!

Join us! LMS User Group Meeting on June 16

Take some time on Tuesday, June 16 to meet with friends, learn the latest news about the Blackboard upgrade, Sakai Pilot results, and most importantly, the “5 Minutes of Fame” presentations by your colleagues. The agenda and instructions for joining the LMS User Group are available online.

We hope to see you there!

Sakai 3 Wireframes

Want to peek into the Sakai 3 redesign efforts? You can watch it materialize before your eyes and even join in on the discussion if you are so inclined.

Initial findings: Describe your teaching style

The Sakai Action Group is in the process of examining data collected from Fall 2008 and plans to publish a summary of findings here in the coming weeks. The Final Report is expected in June/July 2009.

As part of a formative assessment, both students (n=77) and instructors (n=13) were surveyed online. One of the questions was:

• Faculty: What three adjectives best describe your teaching style?

• Students: What three adjectives best describe your instructor’s teaching style?

We encourage our interactive, enthusiastic, and wonderfully supportive instructors to apply for the nationally-recognized Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award!

Applications are due by 2/27/08.

Note: Results are illustrated using TagCrowd.

Sakai 3 Screencast

Check out this 10-minute screencast by Michael Korcuska to see a prototype of content authoring in Sakai 3!

The Sakai community is working on a major new version of Sakai. Among its many improvements, Sakai 3 will provide:

• A revamped user experience
• A powerful and easy to use content authoring capability
• Social networking features
• Improved teaching and learning workflows
• Increased scalability
• Ease of use for software developers

New features preview: Sakai 2.6

Preview: Sakai 2.6

We are currently piloting Sakai 2.5. Later this spring, Sakai 2.6 will be released. Here is a preview of the features that will be released in the rSmart CLE 2.6:

http://www.rsmart.com/news/what-expect-cle-version-26-impressive-new-tools-and-features-coming-spring

• NEW! Evaluation system
• NEW! Mneme assessment tool (alternative to Tests & Quizzes)
• NEW! BlogWow (alternative to Blogger)
• NEW! Entity picker (allows you to link between entities — like from an Announcement to a Quiz)
• Upgraded Discussion Forum tool
• Upgraded Lessons tool

Join the LMS User Group!

You are cordially invited to attend the inaugural meeting of the campus Learning Management System User Group!

LMS User Group Meeting
Tuesday, February 3
3:00 - 4:30 pm
Room 205 Undergraduate Library

The group was formed as a result of a recommendation made at the 2008 CTC Conference. The purpose of the User Group is to answer the following questions.

How can we…

• Leverage LMS training resources across campus schools, departments, and groups?
• Share campus best practices to improve online teaching & learning?
• Inform the campus about new technologies, teaching and learning pilots, LMS planning?
• See how others are using the LMS to create innovative learning experiences?

The LMS User Group will meet twice annually and will use a Sakai project site to collaborate and share information throughout the year. The agenda and information to join the site is available from http://tinyurl.com/7kxj7j.

Hope to see you there!

New semester, more sites, more participants & lessons learned

Opening the Spring 2009 semester, we have more participants who can help us to evaluate Sakai. Thank you, in advance, to everyone who is using Sakai and sharing feedback!

As of this entry, there are 29 course sites (with the same number of instructors) and 19 project sites. See “Pilot Participants” for more information.

Last semester we learned three important things:

1. Students need to know why we are evaluating Sakai and what the advantages are.
   • To address students’ needs, we have created a brief description of the very least students needs to know about using Sakai. If you have 5 minutes, you can learn a few tips to optimize your Sakai experience.

2. Getting help should be simple, painless, and quick.
   • To get help: submit an online help request and select “Sakai Support” from the drop-down menu, or call 962-HELP and ask a representative to open a ticket for you. That’s it!

3. We had relatively few technical problems with Sakai last term but there is always room for improvement!
   • We want to know what you think and how we can serve you better! You can share your feedback to your instructor/site organizer, with a Sakai Action Group member, via online surveys, or in person to Kim Eke, ITS Teaching and Learning.

Sakai 3.0 Vision Document

Sakai Foundation’s Executive Director, Michael Korcuska, shares information about Sakai future directions and opportunities for community involvement.

You can download the 10-pg PDF proposal or visit his blog for more information.

At UNC Chapel Hill, we are currently on Sakai 2.5.x.

Sakai Project Sites for Collaboration: A Demonstration

You are invited to attend a Sakai Project Site demo! Seating is limited to 20 so please register.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Saunders 322
10:30 - 11:45 am

or

Monday, January 5, 2009
Saunders 322
10:30-11:45 am

Learn how you can use Sakai Project Sites to:

• streamline committee work for academic programs or new hires,
• collect evidence for accreditation purposes,
• collaborate with editors on book chapters and manuscripts,
• track work you are conducting for grant purposes,
• manage organization communications and documents,
• conduct research with colleagues at other institutions.

If you wish to pilot Sakai for project collaboration, we ask only that you participate in the formal assessment of how well it worked for you!