Sakai at URI |
Note: Please go to the Sakai portal page at http://sakai.uri.edu/portal/ for announcements and recent developments.
Sakai is a Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) used for teaching, research and collaboration. Systems of this type are also known as Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).
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NEWS!
11/1/11: 10/28/11 8/5/11: 6/8/11: Since Sakai was implemented, 25,018 My Workspace sites have been created; this represents 25,018 different users. 1,408 Project sites and 5,116 Course sites have also been created. 2/23/11: TurningPoint (clickers) and Sakai for Wndows 2/8/11: Distinct users from Fall'09 - Fall'10 1/17/11: 12/13/10: Sakai Database Automatically Updated! Every day at 7:30 am, 12:30 pm, 5:30 pm, and 11:30 pm, the Sakai database is updated with PeopleSoft data. The imports take approximately 35 minutes to run. |
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Sakai Upgrades Summary - January 17, 2011
1. Suppressed display of student IDs for new postings in Forums
2. Upgraded Tests & Quizzes (SAMigo) to Version 2.7
- One new feature: automatic saves of work-in-progress on exams, set for every 15 minutes. This will reduce the instances of students losing all work when they do not submit an exam correctly or on time.
- Many improvements in the Quiz module.
3. Installation of Gradebook2
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This is an alternative (second) Gradebook with many features not available in the existing Gradebook tool. Features include an improved user interface and improved uploading and downloading of spreadsheet data.
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You can use either or both gradebook tools; all grades sent to Gradebook will also appear in Gradebook2.
4. Added preliminary support for TurningPoint (clickers)
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The TurningPoint tool will be visible in Site Info > Edit Tools, but will not function until further production testing and configuration is complete. When enabled, this tool will allow clicker results to be sent to the Sakai grade book.
When are Course Sites Available?
The schedule for course availability for the following semester is:
May 1 |
for |
Fall semester |
Excel Gradebook Updater for Large-Roster Classes
We have developed an Excel spreadsheet that helps faculty remove dropped students from their Excel Gradebooks prior to uploading new data to Sakai. Please contact Brett Rutherford at brutherford@mail.uri.edu for more information.
Using FTP Sites with Sakai Courses
To facilitate file uploading to Sakai, we have tested various ways to link students in Sakai courses to external FTP sites, as well as techniques to make an FTP site appear as a "network drive" on a local computer. For further information, look for an update document on the joinable Sakai-Training site or contact Brett Rutherford, brutherford@mail.uri.edu.
Internet & Browser Requirements
A high-speed internet connection is required to work with Sakai. Do not use a dail-up connection, and do not use AOL to connect to Sakai. Mozilla Firefox, which runs on all platforms (PC, Mac, and Unix/Linux) is the preferred browser for Sakai.
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PC users may also use Internet Explorer, Versions 5.5 and up, or Netscape 7.1 and newer. Since vendor support for Netscape ended in 2008, users should consider migrating to Mozilla Firefox.
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Mac users should install and use Mozilla Firefox as their browser. At the present time, Safari is still not completely compatible with Sakai. The browser/web editor Sea Monkey is based on a copy of Firefox, and should also work correctly with Sakai.
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Other browers such as Opera and Camino, and Google Chrome are not presently supported.
To use Sakai, set your browser to permit pop-ups; contact the URI Help Desk if you need assistance with browser set-up for Sakai. Additional media players such as Apple Quicktime, Real Player, or Flash Player may be required to play content in Sakai courses. You may also require additional plugins (Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Real Player, etc.), depending on the Resources that you are using.
Remember: Do NOT open more than one browser window while being logged into the system. It is easy to log yourself out of one and get logged out of the others, losing what you were working on - assignments, tests, etc.
Additional Infomation:
From UDelaware:
http://www.udel.edu/sakai/help/content/current/sakai_iframe_myworkspace/asxg.html. See the note about browser caching at the bottom of the page!
From Sakai:
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/QA/Browser+Support
We are not quite at the point where we can establish our own FAQ site. However, Sakai and the University of Delaware both have a comprehensive FAQ site that will answer many general questions also applicable to URI's Sakai installation.
Sakai Discussion Listserv: Communicate with URI Sakai Users
Subscribe to the public Sakai listserv, sakai-uri@listserv.uri.edu, by sending an email message to listserv@listserv.uri.edu with the following command in the body of the email:
SUBscribe sakai-uri
The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) is a free and open source Courseware Management System. It features a set of software tools designed to help instructors, researchers and students collaborate online in support of their work--whether it be course instruction, research or general project collaboration.
For coursework, Sakai provides features to supplement and enhance teaching and learning. For collaboration, Sakai has tools to help organize communication and collaborative work on campus and around the world. Using a Web browser, users choose from Sakai's tools to create a site that meets their needs. To use Sakai, no knowledge of HTML is necessary.
But the product vision reaches beyond teaching and learning applications. Many Sakai deployments include as many or more project and research collaboration sites. In addition, the Open Source Portfolio e-Portfolio system is a core part of the Sakai software. Finally, the Sakaibrary project links library resources to Sakai.
Sakai is highly customizable to meet the needs of the institution, the individual instructor, and the students. Sakai's architecture is modular, allowing individual instructors to select the tools they want for their class. Sites can also be configured that are specifically designed for research collaboration or administrative work groups. And because the source code is freely available, the option to change or add features is always open.
Faculty, students and staff benefit from the rich array of tools and features that are available with the Sakai CLE. Because leading universities around the world developed these tools, they are sure to meet academic needs. For more on Sakai, go to the Sakai Website.
The University has no choice. Among the many reasons are the following:
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Blackboard Inc., a company that merged with WebCT Corporation in 2006, announced that development and support of WebCT Campus Edition 4.1, which URI is using, is being discontinued. Their new product, WebCT Vista, is not a simple replacement for WebCT 4.1, so moving to Vista would have been as much of a change as to any other competing product. Furthermore, when WebCT merged with Blackboard Inc., they announced that within two years another new product would succeed Vista and Blackboard's own system. Choosing either Vista or Blackboard would likely have required a move to a second new product within a few years.
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The vendor ceased enhancing WebCT in December 2008.
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Non-catastrophic maintenance was reduced in priority starting January 2009.
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WebCT 4.1 has incompatibilities with future versions of hardware and LINUX.
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URI's annual license price for WebCT/Blackboard will be increased from $30K to $85K.
In April 2008, the search for the WebCT 4.1 replacement began. All faculty members were invited to participate, and a core evaluation team was formed to help guide the larger community of courseware management system users through this process. An invitation to attend meetings was extended to all interested parties on campus.
After months of research and discussion by the evaluation team, Sakai and Blackboard/WebCT were chosen as the two finalists and brought to campus in September for a general presentation open to all members of the community.
On September 29th, a meeting was held to choose the WebCT4.1 replacement. The meeting was audio-recorded and posted on http://media.uri.edu/itms/Comparison_20080929.wav. The first part is
the comparison; the second part is the discussion among the attendees. For a look at the comparison of the two products, please refer to the Review of Functionality Improvements over WebCT4.1 document.
At the end of the meeting, the attendees agreed unanimously, by a show of hands, that Sakai is a better fit for URI, with concern voiced by faculty that they would need sufficient support from ITS for course migration from WebCT to Sakai and then for the ongoing use of Sakai.
