README: Removed some references to specific institutions and Sakai Commercial Affiliates. You will find edits are between brackets [] - Neal Caidin, Sakai CLE Community Coordinator, August 21, 2013 -----------------------------------------------------------------------Announcements - Wish you could reorder them and it would "stick" - Faculty need to use the functionality of setting up an announcement to be posted in the future with a notification email. The announcement is posted but the email is not sent. It could be great if this can be fixed soon. I found that this issue was posted in Jira (https:// jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-23384) but the status is still "awaiting review". - Really wish users could change the default of "Email Notification" (95% always want email sent with every announcement) ----------------------------------------------------------------------Assignments - We also use Assignments 2, almost exclusively as a Turnitin alternative. - Tool does not meet volume requirements at [our institution]. - We use this with the added group functionality […]. - After allowing a student to resubmit an assignment-would be helpful if the status the student saw said resubmit vs returned - We are considering deprecating it and using Assignments2 instead. - We encourage use of AS2 and make it the default for new course sites. - [Our institution] still has two Assignments tools available. This is INSANE. Assignments 2 does the Gradebook integration properly (link to existing GB item or create new on on the fly). Doh! Tests & Quizzes and Forums should use this model. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Calendar - The label should be made consistent. Why Calendar in some places and Schedule in others? Identify one label, e.g. Calendar, and make that label consistent throughout CLE. Ideally, make one field available so an institution or locale can easily switch the term. - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - Has been hidden, using non-sakai platform for schedule publication. - planed for fall 2013 - Used only by a relatively small number of faculty. - Some faculty use it, I know... I can't understand why. Better to have a schedule built into course structure, linking tools. Or home page "upcoming deadlines" or something. (Note: I may be unaware of Schedule features, as I have ignored it.) - It would be nice to expand this tool to provide more functionality. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Chat Room - It's available to instructors just not used much. - Rarely used. - Local Requirements: - improve group awarness. ability to create rooms per groups. - When various users are in a room, i.e.: a chat session, if a user arrives late and tries to read something from the top (scrolling up), when a new message is posted, the tool reload and it goes all the way to the last message, making it very difficult to read old messages, and therefore to catch up with the session. - ability to export all conversation in a file (i.e: .txt) - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - Only limited rollout - on special request for very small classes. - In Basic Toolset, but not used very much by our users. - very limited use - Used by one group who offers pay-for training to [constituent group] - Some usage, not significant - It's used but use isn't significant - Used by a small number of faculty. - A bit of use... ----------------------------------------------------------------------Drop Box - Also turned on the optional feature "download all" - Local Requirements: - improve group awarness. All users are listed and mixed without considering their groups. - Allow export of files to zip format. - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - limited use - The tool is available on our system, but we have not offered training on it yet. We foresee some (low-to-moderate) usage once we get to the point of introducing it more formally to faculty. - Some people use it because they don't understand that they should use Assignments. I know there are some disciplines where this could be very useful, but I don't work with those faculty members much. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Email Archive tool - Used but not one of the more popular - I think this is a great tool, but in understanding the value of it, perhaps - Very useful in administrative sites, tools. initial training, faculty seem have a hard time because it is a new concept to them. less so for courses. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Forums - Most highly used tool - Local Requirements: - Ability to create forums per group in a simpler way (right now you need to configure it by permissions... complicated in the [User Interface]). Make it more simple: i.e. This forum is for GROUP 1 and this forum is for GROUP 2. - messages: - replayed messages should be marked - messages: - include profile image - messages: - improve the 'TO' selection box. Bigger size, clear overview of selected users... - using Jforum - Fix the GB integration!!! (link to existing GB item or create new on on the fly) ----------------------------------------------------------------------Gradebook - We use gradebook 2. Improving group awarenes functionality might make us consider going back to gradebook1. Its important at our institution that we offer the ability to have different gradebook structures for each group. - IU uses a forked version of this tool - Has been hidden. Final grades are shown to students in self-admin platform, not in Sakai (to avoid questions/confusion about grading). - We offer both gradebooks and GB2 is much more heavily used than GB - Our campus has a LOT of suggestions for improvement here. If other Sakai schools do, too, it might be worth seeing if we can organize some collaborative development on it. - Many faculty need a good bit of help to get started with this tool. Once they understand it they generally like it. Some humanities faculty would like to be able to enter letter grades. - Again, we use both GB & GB2 and it's confusing. VERY confusing. I'm confused and I've been supporting these tools for years. If you set GB up using points, I don't think there's any way to see an overview of how many points you've got. Add that column to Items view, please. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Lessons - we are testing this tool, however we are hesitant to start using it because links/content do not copy over from site to site. - We've not yet piloted this tool, but I have a vested interest in exploring its use at our university. - But we will use from this summer after we upgrade Sakai 2.8 - Some planned use for Fall 2013 - But growing. We've encouraged more and more use. It's powerful and use is expanding in our online and blended programs. - We're running 2.8 now. We will use Lessons post-upgrade to 2.9. We've been burned by nonproduction stuff in the past, so we waited until Lessons was blessed as core. - We are testing it and will use it soon. - Pilot is ramping up in fall - Just introduced this tool 2 days ago - Will be using this when we upgrade to 2.9 this weekend. - Not yet, there's a small but growing group of users. We plan on trying to promote it more this summer. - Not yet. - We are piloting it this semester with plans to make it avilable to all in Fall 2013. - Greatly expanded usage during the past 6 months - A LOT!!!!! - Is Lesson Builder the Rutgers tool? We have Lessons - Melete -- but will likely try to phase it out in favor of Lesson Builder after we upgrade to 2.9. A fairly low percentage of courses use Lessons. - We could not function without this tool. Would like to see it improved -- not changed drastically or made complex, but cleaned up a bit and better integrated with Sakai. - I think this tool is super-dee-duper, as is Chuck Hedrick. I'm worried about staff for upkeep and improvements. Formatting options should be easier (pick a theme instead of writing CSS). ----------------------------------------------------------------------MailSender - Is this what we call "Mail?" - Is this the same as "Messages"? If so, Messages is highly used. ----------------------------------------------------------------------News - Some sites use this tool but not many. but not actively used It's available to instructors just not used much. Also use News Feed aggregator Used but not one of the more popular tools. Yes - but used very little very very limited use We have it but I'm not sure how much use it gets. Rarely used It should be easier to make a feed appear on Home page. ----------------------------------------------------------------------OSP - not actively used - Seems like a lot of work to get this up and running. - Did a pilot, simply too complex to give to instructors and too difficult organizationally to configure OSP by experts for all at the university. - We are working on a small pilot right now. There is a clear need to structure and improve documentation. Not intuitive at all. - [Our institution] is not using OSP for any new portfolios (only legacy support) - Still considering turning this function on. - We support quite a few clients at universities all over the world that use the OSP tools. - Currently no, but this may be changing to significant within the next 6 months. - but we need a better portfolio. is important more possibilities - We do not offer this. It is far too complicated for an end user. - It is doubtful we will ever use this tool, due to its complexity. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Podcasts - some sites use this tool but not many not actively used But those that do use it use it with intention and love it. Used but not one of the more popular tools. Yes - but used very little very very limited use We have it but it doesn't get a lot of use. Nobody I support uses it. I think podcasts are kinda yesterday. Some use but not 'significant' ----------------------------------------------------------------------Polls - Would benefit from some ease-of-use enhancements. Many people place options in the question field, not understanding how to add the options separately. With a little dev love, this tool could be more beneficial to more people. Also, way to display on "Home" tool? - Used occasionally, but is missing a lot of features. For example, being able to allow for non-anonymous polling, or to optionally allow non-instructors to poll. - Notify all poll or site participants after the Closing Date has passed - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - Small usage, but used heavily by the people who do use it. - very very limited use - We'll likely phase it out and recommend people use other, simpler web polling tools like qualtrics or survey monkey, etc. We have it but it's not used much. - The tool is available on our system, but is not included in our training yet, therefore not many people have discovered it. We do like it and are featuring it in an upcoming "simple Sakai tools" session for our faculty. - I don't use this tool much and I find the interface rather difficult. It would be nice if you could stick a Facebook-like poll on the Home page. Maybe you can...? ----------------------------------------------------------------------Resources - Right now, an role with the permission 'content.new', can upload a file to all groups, even if hes not member of other groups. No way to control that. - we did modify it though - This is one of the most used tools. It's worth looking into community enhancements. - My favorite tool. I have no complaints, which is extraordinary. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Post'em - many use this tool at our institution for attendance tracking. - For rare use-cases. Rarely used. - We have made additional grade scales available and with the functionality of dropping lowest scores in categories in 2.9, PostEm will probably be used much less frequently at [our institution]. - Nice to know it's there. - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - We plan to use it. - very limited use - Faculty in the sciences like this tool because it is so flexible. A growing number of departments use this for displaying placement iinformation to students. This has been a big time saver for them. It would be nice if the tool could be updated. - We plan to include this tool in our 2.9 upgrade in August. - Not many use this so far, but it's an excellent tool for handling special needs that Gradebook cannot meet. I love Gradebook's simplicity and don't want it changed -- to me, it's great to have this separate tool (Post 'Em) that we can turn to when needed. - Sometimes very useful. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Search - Search in [our Sakai Commercial Affiliate hosting] does not work, so it was turned off. If it were fixed, it would be widely used. - We'd like to use it more broadly, but concerned about performance hits in production. - No. Consumed too many DB connections too many times. It is now off, but may come back. - Limited use to select sites (search tool is stealthed) - Concerns about reliability and scalability we are looking forward to testing the elasticsearch integration that rSmart has done - We were getting performance hits. We also have security issues around returns of project material accidentally made public. - It does not work the way users think (want) it to work. - we haven't implemented this. - I wish we had this. Didn't know it existed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Statistics - We've defaulted all sites to have this tool. - not actively used Users have no choice but to use it. - Powerful, but sometimes unreliable. Results tend to get skewed when content is copied from one course to another. - Good tool! Used it since Site Stats. - Include more events and tools in the reports (announcement read, samigo, assignments, ...) - assuming this is Site Stats - Has been hidden because information is too detailed for Austrian privacy laws. - This is Site Stats? Huge source of frustration at the limited data available. - Would be great to work with other institutions on using the data from Site Stats to present useful dashboards to instructors for "early warning" and other learning analytics that could help students track how they're doing in a course. Also need a better way for admins to see the data across a term or all course sites, etc. - Data collected it too limited - This can be added by faculty and some who have used it find it very useful. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Syllabus - Like the discussion of changes to this tool by Columbia or NYU (?). This tool hasn't had much love in a long time! - Instructors create Syllabuses off-line. - We have our own syllabus tool. - Syllabus is published on public website according to current ECTS rules. - Not sure it's worth maintaining this tool since most of our faculty upload a doc. They could just do that in Resources. - Heavily used and it would be great if there were fewer steps in the process of uploading a syllabus. - Mostly we just upload a Word doc or PDF with this... so many issues with cut and paste formatting. I've started using the Lessons tool to construct a syllabus, some advantages. We should make sure a syllabus can always be easily printed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Test & Quizzes - We have developed an in-house quizzing tool for Sakai over the last 6 months that we hope to contribute back to the community once we get passed the beta phase. - Needs to be consistent and reliable! We're seeing more and more weirdness! - It's a rocky relationship. - Possible improvements: - ability to set the exam total weight without indicating the weight per question. Samigo should automatically distribute the total weight between all the questions. This will also control the negative point value. In that way, it would be possible to add new questions without the need for changing all other questions weight manually. Attachments in exams are only accesible to the site where the exam is created. If that exam is exported to other sites, or shared with other instructors, none of the students from the new sites will be able to access the attachment. - When an exam has been published for just one group. Only members of that group (instructors, ta's...) can see, grade or edit that exam. - Pilot rolling out in Fall - forked version - Will be replaced by external tool TCExam. - [Don't like the design of this tool and have run into a number of problems.] We recommend Assessments and most faculty use Assessments, but a few still use T&Q. Assessments in the default tool on the toolbar. If they want to use T&Q, they have to add it to the toolbar. - This is one of our most used tools -- and we expect use to continue to grow. Making community improvements in this tool would have significant payoff to us. - Faculty who use this generally need some help but find it useful. It would be great if the 'matching' type question displayed the choices in a more logical way - side by side rather than in a long list. - Fix GB integration!!! (link to existing GB item or create new on on the fly). Also, the "Edit" button for editing assessment Parts is ridiculously hard to find (on far right of page) ----------------------------------------------------------------------Upload-Download Multiple Resources - many people try to use it but it is super clunky. Flaky with some OS. Those that do use it, use it heavily and rely on it heavily! Big fans of Cyberduck. Using Cyberduck very limited use due to extreme slowness. Other tools such as cyberduck are much more widely used. - This is useful but again a fair amount of support is involved. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Web Content Links - Ability to work with groups. - It's used -- not sure how widely... - If you choose "open in a new page" it should open in a normal web page with address bar, etc. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Wiki - It's available to instructors just not used much. Instructors usually opt to web link in other Wiki tools available - a general consensus the built in wiki isn't very user friendly. - This tool needs some dev/UI/UX love. Changing permissions is confusing to end users and the font sizes are microscopic! - Could use some additional feature, but it's there. - Improve group awarness. Being able to create a wiki for each group so that other groups from the site dont have access to other groups wikis. - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - Seldom used. Users find interface difficult to use. - Yes - but open to alternatives. Very weak tool. - very limited use. - planed for fall 2013 or next year - A small percentage of sites use the wiki. If it was more modern, I bet it would grow - A LOT. ;) - The fact that you can't export the Wiki is a major drawback. It is used by a few brave souls but not really user-friendly. It would be great to have a more 'conventional' kind of Wiki. - This tool is confusing and hard for faculty and students to use. For faculty who want to assign a wiki-like project to students, we tell them to use Student Pages in Lessons instead, which is working great. - Back in the old days, I thought we would get the ability to have multiple wikis in a site for different students, or groups, or purposes. I've taken to using Lessons tools for some of these projects. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Adobe Connect / Open Meeting Integration - We have Adobe Connect but currently not using the integration. Currently in pilot mode with limited release Possible backup implementation for BBB planned. We use WebEx. Integration for WebEx would be useful for our campus. Used in one distance learning course and there are issues with groups Adobe connect does not respect groups. Currently use Elluminate Live! ----------------------------------------------------------------------Assignments2 - We use assignments 1 Full adoption; well received by faculty & students very interested in upgrading to this tool In pilot this Summer. Intend to release campus-wide in Fall 2013. We are very happy with the original Assignments tool. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Big Blue Button - We are considering this tool. - We will soon have a webex integration (or at the very least, a link to our enterprise WebEx suite) - Release is planned for winter term 2013. - planning to - We are currently just rolling this out Fall 2013. - Some usage, not significant - We are interested in trying this tool out in the future - we have used it. I think we're moving back to Connect. Main issue is recording of sessions, which I think was getting better with BBB. ----------------------------------------------------------------------BlogWow - we are testing now for use with 2.8 - but we will use this tool from this Summer after we upgrade Sakai 2.8 - We go to 2.8 mid August, This tool may have usage after that. - It's available to instructors just not used much. - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - very limited use. Can't use in classes with more than 30-40 people due to - huge load time. - We have it and some people use it but it's less than ideal. - People who need blogs use WordPress and add a Web Content link for easy navigation by their students. - Not crazy about this tool, but we need a blog tool and some of our faculty are using it successfully. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Clog - The [Clog] tool does not work [our Sakai Commercial Affiliate hosting] (our database is not supported) so we do not use it. If this were fixed it would be well used by instructors. - Improve group awarness. Being able to make posts only visible to people from your group. Ability to attach files to a post. - Ability, for an administrator, to see when post from others have been post to everyone in the site, just to administrators, public... i.e. maybe by using different colors in each type of post. - We are using old Blog in 2.7, but I don't see it in the tool list, so I think that I must check Clog (which we are migrating to in the near future) - Not familiar with either of the Sakai Blog tools People who need blogs use WordPress and add a Web Content link for easy navigation by their students. - I didn't know this one existed! ----------------------------------------------------------------------Dashboard - we are hoping to add this tool when we move to 2.9 in spring 2014. Considering Planned deployment in Fall Concerns about reliability and scalability Very important for new communication strategy. Don't use it yet. We plan to include this tool in our 2.9 upgrade in August ----------------------------------------------------------------------Evaluation - we will remove it after we upgrade Sakai 2.8 this summer - It's available to instructors just not used much. - But interested in learning more... - Tried it but didn't move forward with it - We use 1.3.0 version of Evalsys, but we are stuck in it, as it seems that is not maintained anymore. Version 1.4 at oficial repositories is not usable at all (uncomplete SQL scripts and non updated code, at least a few months ago) - We use this tool heavily. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Gradebook2 - we are testing now for use with 2.8 - but we will use this after we upgrade Sakai 2.8 this summer - Extensive use. Local requirements: - Improve group awarness. Need to have DIFFERENT grading schemes for different groups. - Add a new parameter to control the minimun grade required, so that for example, a final grade wont be calculated for a student that has not achieved certain value on a gradebook item. - We are planning to use this tool beginning Fall 2013 - We are very happy with the original Gradebook tool. - see comments about GB on previous page. ----------------------------------------------------------------------JForum - Would be great to be able to provide statistics - We plan to include this tool in our 2.9 upgrade in August ----------------------------------------------------------------------Kaltura - However, we are in the midst of exploring the use of Kaltura. - because setting up kaltura server is complicated and we have 7 different schools. Each school has different video/audio server. - Did a closed pilot and are moving to an open pilot this summer. - Integration work was done by [Sakai Commercial Affiliate] Several features requested not yet delivered by Kaltura - We plan to include this tool in our 2.9 upgrade in August. - We're using this NJVid tool, which has issues... ----------------------------------------------------------------------Melete - Trying to phase out for Lessons. Had this installed from day 1 before Lessons existed. - Used but not one of the more popular tools. - Turning this off after the 2.9 upgrade this weekend. - Wish it was possible to organize files in the Melete file manager. - need more posibilities and integrations with meneme - We have it and a few courses use it. - We plan to discontinue offering this tool in our 2.9 upgrade in August. - We are currently working to move all existing content out of this tool (and in to Lessons). This tool was never a good solution and has caused more problems than it did help our users. - I'm in love with Lessons. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Mneme - [Melete is better designed than Samigo]. Main limitation with Mneme is inability to manage images in the image storage. Can't organize or delete. A test with lots of images just isn't workable in Mneme. Other than that, we encourage faculty to use this rather than Samigo. - need more posibilities and integration with melete - Actually, I'm not sure which test tool we use at [our institution] now. We call it Tests & Quizzes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Roster2 - But interested!!!! Need to know the value and differences between the two versions. should an institution adopt? - Interesting - We use Roster, but we are migrating to 2.9 and we will use Roster 2. - We have a tool called "Site Participants"... Is that this? Why ----------------------------------------------------------------------SCORM - But interested. - Looking into LTI-based solutions - Piloted this but decided not to move forward due to issues with Oracle - But this tool doesn't work perfectly. I've try it with Scenari (http://scenari-platform.org, to produce Scorm files) and when the Scenari file is deleted, it's impossible to delete the grade into the gradebook - We wanted to use it but Oracle version is not available. - planning - We plan to include this tool in our 2.9 upgrade in August. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Signup Tool - Planning to release in August with Sakai 2.9 upgrade. - Very good tool! - Loved tool by our users. - Some minor improvments needed. - Limited pilot - Students may not self-register for courses. - very limited use - We will start using it with 2.9 (August 11 upgrade) - Campus rollout of this tool in August - It's not in use right now, but we want to introduce it. We think that it will be a very useful tool - This tool was developed at Yale and is heavily used [at our institution]. - We plan to include this tool in our 2.9 upgrade in August. - We haven't introduced this tool to our faculty yet, but see great potential for it down the road... - a few instructors use it and like it ----------------------------------------------------------------------YAFT (no comments) ----------------------------------------------------------------------LTI tools - ARES - was integrated through LTI but the project was dropped. - Turning Technologies Wikispaces Private Label Working on McGraw-Hill - no - not at this point - Panopto, Piazza, Blackboard Collaborate (soon), Courseload (previous 2 semesters in pilot mode) we plan to make greater use of LTI integrations - We use LTI to add Courseload e-textbooks to our sites (http://www.courseload.com/) We are also going to use LTI to add NBCLearn. - No. - register user by LDAP change name site type course - Not yet. but we plan to use it on Sakai 2.8 this summer - No. - no - Piloting Piazza and will be deploying Ares for online library reserve lists. - (1) Custom "Anonymous Assignment Dropbox" tool created for us by [a Sakai commercial affiliate] and hosted on Drupal site. (2) Custom "My Library" tool that we developed. It parses the site name to determine subject matter and displays the subject librarian and several resources related to that field of study for kickstarting research and access to library databases, etc. Provides photo and contact details for librarian to make the page visual. (3.) Custom "Course Syllabus" tool. Created by our business school for accreditation purposes. Upload of syllabus here are placed and stored in central institution repository. Meets requirement that all syllabi be collected and stored for accreditation and reduces burden on faculty by uploading the most current syllabus in one place without having to email updates to program managers. (4.) Contemplating the new Bb Collaborate LTI tool. However, the tool does not support user lists or the guest link functionality that exists in the separate (older) Sakai tool version. Until the LTI version respects the sites user roster and the guest link, we're holding off. We're excited that more and more vendors are adopting LTI. We are also encouraging our different schools within the university to consider LTI if they want to offer custom tools for their own users (and develop and manage them by web services they host themselves). - Elluminate Live! Bridge (Blackboard Collaborate) VoiceThread - Our own Etherpad integration Our own Mediawiki integration MH Campus Piazza - Working on a local project, developing a tool that will controll students assistance by cellphone. That tool will be integrated in Sakai using BLTI. - Yes: Echo360 - Piazza, plus 4 additional tools (local to [our institution]) - Courseload - etext delivery platform Pearson's MyLabs Plus McGraw Hill's MH Connect CourseNetworking - Cengage Content - Not currently. - Piazza Wimba VoiceTools (soon to be turned off) --After 2.9 upgrade this weekend (May 11) and before end of summer we'll also use: VoiceThread CourseSmart McGraw Hill tool iClickr - ShareStream - No - We have been testing Wordpress with LTI, but we must do some local modifications before using it, because we would like to use Clog for sites and Wordpress for personal user's blog at MyWorkspace. - CourseLoad Piazza (planned summer 2013) theCN (planned summer 2013) McGrawHill Campus (planned summer 2013) - Not aware of any yet.. - We have integrated the University of Montreal portfolio functionality known as WAD via LTI with Sakai 2.9 for [our university]. The project intends to contribute the integration code as soon as we are able. - Chalk and Wire WebWork Courseload - Piazza, McGraw-Hill Campus - Blackboard Collaborate - Are you including BLTI tools? We've integrated Blackboard Collaborate and i Tunes U with BLTI. - McGraw-Hill Campus - Panopto B & N Nook Study Piazza - No - We have Bb Collaborate set up using the Elluminate Live Bridge tool in Sakai (is that LTI?). We're trying to get our Voicethread instance set up via LTI. Also we have tested Piazza and textbook publisher integrations with LTI. However, at the moment, there are no default tools in our system that are using LTI. Feel free to follow up with [person at our institution] - Yes, We have developed our own. One of them is "Team Rooms". Used by students to reserve team rooms in the building. We are planning to integrate PIAZZA We also have integrated Turnitin and Turning Technologies - We are exploring Piazza and have added it to a few sites using the LTI. Not enough data yet. - Wimba Voice Tools - WeBWorK, Chalk & Wire, Turning Technologies (clickers), WordPress (planned) McGraw-Hill Connect (aka McGraw-Hill Campus) - yes: a number internally developed tools, question mark perception - wimba panopto barnes and noble