[Building Sakai] Resources Access via Database

[Jim Eng]

It depends on the use-case you have in mind.  Below are two examples and a short description of how you can accomplish them in sakai 2. 

Example 1: Faculty in a department have a large repository of shared resources they want to have easy access to in all course sites within the department so they can share individual resources on an as-needed basis with students in the course.  

How to accomplish example 1: Create a special repository site to which all departmental faculty belong.  Upload all the resources to the resources tool in that site.  Since about Sakai 2.1 (if I recall correctly), the resources tool has a "Show other sites" twizzle that appears in the resources tool in every site.  The faculty members of this department can find the repository site's resources in the "Show other sites" twizzle under the list of resources for each course sites.  Students will not see the repository site unless they are added to it. When a faculty member wants to share a resource from the repository with students in a particular site, they just select the "copy" command for that resource and then paste it into a folder in the course site.  At that point, the students can see the resource within the course site's resources.  This mechanism makes a copy of the resource for members of the site it has been copied into. 

Example 2:  Faculty in a department want all students in all sites to have read-only access to a large set of resources. This is similar to example 1 except that we want the students to have direct access to the whole collection of resources in the repository.

How to accomplish example 2: Create the repository site and upload the resources as in example 1, but give all students in the department read-only access to the repository site.  This will cause the site to appear in the "Show other sites" twizzle within the resources tool.  It will also allow students to get to those resources by navigating directly to the site using the tabs at the top of the page.  And students would also have access to those resources through webdav.  BTW, students could be added individually or by including them by adding their provider-id to the realm (as is done for course sites at most university).

It seems like lesson-builder will open other possibilities.  

If you have something else in mind, you might want to give more details.         

HTH.

Jim



On Jan 24, 2012, at 9:07 AM, David C. Minugh wrote:

> +1. Such a repository should have a response time equivalent to the normal Resources, not a long delay while it is read in from elsewhere. It would be really handy for department or even (e.g. humanities) faculty-wide resources, rather than creating duplicates (or are they just duplicate links?) in hundreds of sites.
> 
> On 2012-01-24 14:57, Jeff Davidson wrote:
>> 
>> In follow up to this need, we were wondering
>> if it's possible to build a repository of files within
>> a project site under Resources and then access it
>> from multiple course sites and/or project sites
>> within Sakai
>> 
>> Thanks,
>>  
>> Jeff
>>  
>> Jeff Davidson
>> Manager, Learning Management System Services
>> Innovation in Learning Center
>> University of South Alabama
>> (251) 380-2845
>> (251) 380-2713 (fax)
>>  
>> 
> 
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