Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning, University of Wyoming

As of Sakai version 2.8, August 2011, these instructions need revision. Last Update:  4 January 2012, by R. Hill

Instructions for Standard Teaching Tasks in WyoSakai

The Sakai Environment and the Instructor Role

Your Sakai course comes with minimal default tools, provided as links on the left-hand bar; delete any that you do not want to use.  For this and other administrative functions, click the "Site Editor" link.  With its "Edit Tools" option at the top, you can add and delete course tools.   Please note that some of the Sakai tools are either unavailable or unusable in our UW installation, including Live Virtual Classroom, Evaluation System, and Roster.  (With regard to the latter, recall from the "Faculty Resources" documentation that your students join your WyoSakai course manually.)

This document provides an overview and pointers to more suggestions and references, but is too short for comprehensive coverage.  For assistance in a WyoSakai worksite, you can follow the Help button (blue question mark), or the "Help" link at the bottom for guidance on using the course tools.  Those instructors who prefer a self-contained introduction that exploits modest technical skills will benefit from the online guide Putting Sakai to Work.
 

Starting Up and Student Access

A WyoSakai site is normally obtained through the Course Request form, whereby we create a site to your specifications. Confident and experienced instructors can find and use (in "My Workspace") the Site Setup tool. The "New" link takes you through much the same process that we use. In the blank field for authorizer's username, enter "ectltech," please. This notifies us so that we can add the course to our list for the term. We will also add the "ectltech" account to your new site as "Tech Support." You can copy from an old course, select your own tools, and so forth.

Regardless of how your site is created, you control whether students and others can become members with the "Can join" checkbox, in Site Editor --> Manage Access.  After students join, you change their status from "guest" to "student" to allow full participation.

Workspace (more details on WyoSakai Workspace and Written Materials)

You (and other pariticpants) have your own Workspace, a full worksite, when you are a WyoSakai user, instructor or student.  Faculty may choose to keep their teaching materials in the Resources of their own Workspace rather than the Resources of their course sites, especially if materials are shared among courses.

Providing Written Materials (more details on WyoSakai Workspace and Written Materials)

Syllabus

A syllabus can be written onsite, uploaded (which makes it an attachment), or linked with a URL, using the "Syllabus" tool.  You can save a document written with this tool in Draft form.  Contents will be saved, but students will not see it until you post. You can trigger e-mail notification of posting and changes.

Resources:  Files and Documents of Various Types

Under "Resources," you can set up folders and files of materials in any form that the students can handle-- plain text, MS Word, HTML, PowerPoint, PDF, and other document types.  You can also include plain text entered into an edit window, or HTML, or a URL link to an external website. 

Users can click on the "Upload/Download Multiple Resources" option to set up a file browser connection (WebDav) directly to their local computers, in effect setting up a Sakai drive that enables drag-and-drop file transfer.

Every Resource element-- file and folder-- has its own URL that can be used as a link, which can be obtained from the "Edit Details" screen.  Instructors may want to try using Web Content to display folders and files to students, and hiding the Resources itself.   This gives students a nicer folder-style interface and shows the descriptions.  Resources that are viewable by the public may be accessed through the appropriate URL sent to outsiders, as long as the resource is marked "public."

External Website Materials

The "Web Content" tool provides links to external (or internal) web pages.

Lessons

Gives a modular presentation of materials as units, with subordinate pages and scheduling. (Similar to WebCT Content Module.)

Citations

Add citations for your students in standard formats.  Under Resources, use the "Citation List" option.

Search

The Search tool scans Resources (most common file formats, including MS Office), Mail, Annoncements, Wiki, and Chat.

E-Mail and Other Communication

To Add a Short Announcement to the Homepage: In the "Announcements" tool, choose "Add" to get a new blank announcement, fill out the Title and Body edit fields , and "Post."

E-Mail Archive:  Maintains a record of all messages sent to the entire worksite membership.  Each worksite is provided with its own e-mail address for blanket distribution.  (The short version given is equivalent to the long version.)  These are to be used in external e-mail clients such as Outlook, Evolution, and Thunderbird, not for e-mail originating in the course. 

Mailtool:  For external (UWYO e-mail accounts).  Choose groups or individuals (and, optionally, add other e-addresses).  Currently deprecated; use Messages tool instead.

Messages:  For internal (course site) messages; optionally, messages can be sent externally.  Choose recipients from the drop-down list, by role, group, or individual name.

Dropbox: For student-instructor pairwise exchange of non-graded material, like a journal.

Polls:  For a single question, type it in; be sure to add options for possible responses.

Student Records

Gradebook:  Maintains manually-added and automatically-added (Tests & Quizzes, Assignments) gradeable items.  See WyoSakai Grading for more details.

Student and Collaborative Work

Groups and Sections

Groups are defined via the "Manage Groups" link of the Site Editor, Sections in the "Sections" tool.  Students may belong to more than one group, and groups may cross sections (if sections are defined).  Groups and sections may be used to govern these tools (used at UW):

Discussions

To carry on threaded discussions, which are like bulletin board topics in that they host asynchronous communication, where students post messages when convenient, add the Forums (more formal, connected to Gradebook) or Discussion Forums (more casual, includes search) tool.  The Forums tool has several levels, perhaps more than you expect:  To allow your students to contribute, you must create a forum, a topic within it, and a thread within that.

Wiki Tool

A wiki is for shared editing, with changes tracked.  The Wiki home page can be edited.  That's how it's done!  Just click on the Edit link, and add your own introduction, deleting the boilerplate text if you wish.  Add other pages.  You will need to learn a little Wiki markup language if you want formatting.  The introductory document from Oxford is a good resource: 
  http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/group/info/step/wiki21.pdf
(WebLearn is their name for Sakai.)

To make your course worksite Wiki publicly viewable (from rSmart):

1. Go to your course or project site and access the Wiki tool.
2. Click the "Info" button the the top of the wiki tool.
3. Within the "Additional Page Permissions" section, select "Read" next to "Public."
4. Click Save.
5. Next, within the "Feeds" Section, select "Public View."
6. A new page will open with the wiki content in it.
7. Copy the URL from the URL field at the top of your browser window.

Blogger

For individual or class logs.  Sophisticated- each post may comprise not only text, but images, files, and links.  Distribution can be "private" (poster only), "tutor" (instructor), or "site" (entire class or site membership).  Most useful view when "Show comments" and "Show full content" are checked.  Have your students practice first.

Assignments

You may describe assignments and accept submissions online.  Please note that the "Assignments" tool is set up to either (1) post (by instructor) and submit (by student), or (2) post, submit, and grade online.  The new (2.6) "Student View" option lets you view and submit an assignment as a student.

View and grade assignments that have not been submitted (to give zeroes, for instance):
Grant yourself (the "Instructor" role) the SUBMIT permission within the
assignments tool, under the Permissions link.

Note: Do not use the non-electronic option in the Assignments tool (because it will add instructor and TAs to the list of assignments to be graded); just add any such grade records directly to the Gradebook.

Add examples and/or attachments (e.g., rubrics or models) to assignments:
When you create an assignment, you may enter a note for display during grading-- perhaps the rubric for the work-- or provide a model answer with options to keep it private to yourself, make it visible to all instructors, and/or make it editable by all instructors.

1. Go to the Assignments page.
   Create a new assignment, if necessary.
2. Click the "Edit" link beneath the assignment to which you wish to add an example or attachment.
3. From here, you can either add an attachment to the assignment (e.g., a rubric or example) or provide a model answer as described below:
   • To add an attachment,
     1. Scroll down the page to "Add Attachments" and select.
     2. Enter the path for the file you wish to attach or browse to the file and select.
     3. Click "Continue."
   • To provide a model answer
   1. Scroll down the page to "Supplement Items," located just beneath "Additional Information."
   2. Click Model Answer, Add.
   3. Type or paste the desired text into the text box
   4. From the "Show to students" dropdown menu, select when WyoSakai should display the text (e.g., before students start the assignment, after they submit it, etc.)
   5. Click "Save"
4. Click "Post" (located at the bottom of the page) to save your work.

View a note that you entered when creating the Assignment:
To view a private note during grading, first display the Submissions screen by clicking the Grade link for the appropriate assignment in the Assignment List. Then click the triangle for Assignment Notes, and the note will be displayed.

Troubleshooting Assignments

Set up a non-electronic assignment, and now can't enter grades because no student names show?

Although non-electronic assignments are not recommended in the current configuration (see above), grades can be entered (when you have a stack of graded papers) if you grant yourself (an instructor or TA) the "Submit" permisssion in Assignments.  Then you will see the list of students (including yourself) under the "Grade" link.

Accidentally delete a student assignment?

Run "Download All" within the Assignment tool. The "STUDENT_NAME_submissionText.html" file should have the original submitted text.  If that doesn't work, call us right away; we might be able to retrieve it.

Can't see the "Submit as Student" link in the Assignments tool?

1. Click the Permissions button in the menu bar.
2. When the CLE displays the Permissions screen, check the submit box for the Instructor role.
3. Click Save.
4. To confirm your change, click the Student View button. You should now see a Submit as Student link for each assignment.

Tests and Quizzes (more details in WyoSakai Tests and Quizzes)

Tests and Quizzes start with Question Pools, from which questions are selected for Core Assessments, which are then published to Active Assessments, taken by students.  Many settings are available; a set can be saved as an Assessment Type.

To Write Quiz Questions

You can add a question with standard fields, depending on the question type selected, OR "create from markup" with questions typed in simple patterns as described in the page.

Quiz Administration

Be aware that WyoSakai imposes restrictions on the administration of assessments to students, modification of published assessment, grading, and so forth.  See the more detailed document.

To Grade Non-objective Questions

For short answer and essay questions, go to the Tests & Quizzes entry for the assessment and click on "Scores" (link not visible until at least one student has submitted the exam).

Student Social Content

Send your students to the tools Profile2 and Preferences in their My Workspace site.  They can upload pictures, change their unofficial names, define avatars, publish news and comments, etc.  Changes to the names they gave when they created the account can be made through the Account tool.

Archiving a Course Worksite

Recall that course worksites are not intended to persist online past the semester.  Maintain your course materials on your own computers.  For records of dynamic activity that has occurred through the class meetings, a general technique is to copy and paste from the screen.  See "Saving Website Pages" for help.