Sakai Big Idea #3: Permissions

This is the third in our five-part series called, “Sakai 5 Big Ideas.”

You can change permissions. You have roles in your site such as Instructor role, Student role, Tech Support role, and so on.  Each role has an associated “bundle” of permissions. Whenever you see the Permissions option on a tool (Big Idea #2), you can change the permissions associated with a role.

This means you can enable students to contribute more to your course site — whether that is by creating and sharing content, adding announcements, working in groups, and more! (See Craig Carroll’s video about student-generated content.)

Further, for those who want it, there is a lot of control to tweak permissions at a very fine-grained level. Our pilot faculty really like the flexibility of permissions. (See this video of Barbara Wildemuth, Professor in SILS, discussing permissions streamlining committee collaboration).

Only 2 more ideas left to go: public vs. private content and group-aware tools!

Building Community in Medical School Courses with Sakai

[This is a guest entry from Brian Moynihan, Program Manager & Sakai Lead at UNC School of Medicine. Thanks, Brian!]

One of the things that faculty have enjoyed about using Sakai at the UNC School of Medicine is its ability to bring faculty and students together as a community.

Many features of Sakai work on the principle of bringing community together. For instance the ability to see student pictures in the roster and in the discussion forums have helped faculty learn their students’ names and connect a personality with a student’s post.

Because many tools in Sakai are group-aware, it becomes easy to email a group of people in the course or to create a forum specifically for a small group section. These tools can thus provide a friendly, dynamic way to foster group cohesion and cooperation.

In this video Dr. Kurt Gilliland and Dr. Ed Kernick, co-directors of a first year medical school course with 160 students, discuss the ways that Sakai enabled collaboration in and out of the classroom.

Big Idea #2: Tools are managed at the tool level

This is the second in our five-part series called, “Sakai 5 Big Ideas.”

Tools are managed at the tool level — and we have choices! Click on a menu item/tool, and you will see a bar display under the title that provides options for managing it. However, the fun part is that you have choices as an individual — and there are choices at the institutional level.

There is a large set of tools to choose from (see video below) and you can select as many or as few as you like. But there are also choices at the institutional level about which tools to support and how to customize Sakai.  Perhaps UNC will want to add and support “contrib” tools (like OpenSyllabus) that are not in our current list — or maybe UNC will opt to support only one of the testing tools.

Having choices is good!

New Sakai Workshops Scheduled

Drag and drop content into your Course Site

Tuesday, April 20 (12-1PM)

and

Friday, April 23 (12-1PM)

If “drag and drop” sounds like music to your ears when talking about moving content from your computer to your Course Site, join  this workshop and learn how to do it in 3 easy steps using Sakai.

[Register]

How to easily manage multiple sections/groups using only one Course Site

Thursday, April 22 (12-1PM)

and

Monday, April 26 (12-1PM)

Tired of copping enrollments from one Course Site to another?
Do you wish you could manage students from different course sections separately and easily within the same Course Site?

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, join this workshop to learn how to save time using Sakai’s Section/Group aware tools.

[Register]

You have not used Sakai before? Don’t let that stop you, novices are welcome!

To hear Sakai testimonials from UNC-CH’s faculty and learn more about UNC-CH’s Sakai pilot please visit http://www.unc.edu/sakaipilot/blog/?cat=16

Big Idea #1: My Workspace

This is the first in our five-part series called, “Sakai 5 Big Ideas.”

You have your own private workspace area where you can upload, save, create, and move files. You can also view all of your sites’ combined announcements and calendar events. (Students report that these features get two enthusiastic thumbs-up.)

To learn more, see the 3-minute screencast below (for best results, make it full-screen). You can try this today by logging into http://sakaipilot.unc.edu

How UNC Medical School Faculty Use the Calendar Tool

The UNC School of Medicine is using the Calendar Tool in unique ways. We thought you’d like to see how!

Dr. Kurt Gilliland and Dr. Ed Kernick co-directed a course of 160 first-year medical school students in the Fall 2009. The intensive face-to-face course contained the content equivalent to a full semester in a compressed 9-week period. To help everyone stay on track, the course designers and faculty used the calendar as the organizing principle of the course. Below is an example that links to additional screen shots (from a current Med School course).

Thank you, School of Medicine for your fresh ideas! We like them!

(See additional screen shots in a new window.)

Find about more from the faculty in this 3.5 minute video interview.