[Building Sakai] question

[Mark J. Norton]

 >  Can you describe what exactly is a course in Sakai?

A "course" is a kind of "site" in Sakai.  Sites are a collection of 
people and tool instances.  That said, you need to be bit careful about 
the terminology.  Better to say that a Sakai site is being used to 
represent a university course.  Exactly what a course is varies among 
the institutions that use Sakai.  Variously, sites are used to represent 
a course, a section, a cohort, etc.  There is also support to set up a 
hierarchical relationship (to some degree).

 >  for example, if I'm in my third year of college in engineering, and 
taking physics and math classes, does the course stand for physics and 
math courses?

This is an example of why you need to be careful.  Is a class the same 
as a course?  If you have have multiple classes (or sections) of 
"Calculus I", you might have a single Sakai site for it, or separate 
sites for each class/section.  They might have different instructors, 
for example, and thus require separate Sakai sites.

 >  they are math and physics lessons?

Usually not.  Lessons are delivered by a Sakai tool, such as the 
Assignment Tool, Melete, or LessonBuilder.  This is done in the context 
of a Sakai course site.

 >  Also can 2 courses have one exam at the same time?

Yes.  Typically, each course would have it's own site and the exam would 
be set up in each of them.  The exam can be the same, different, or 
almost the same - depending on how you set up the exam.

Sakai also has a service called Course Management that lets you further 
define these sorts of things.  Have a look at 
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CM/Course+Management+API to 
see a diagram of the different kinds of objects related to courses.  
This API allows course management to be handled and defined outside of 
Sakai.  It is something of an advanced feature and can be complicated to 
set up, however.

Hope this helps,
Mark Norton


On 5/8/2012 5:21 AM, Baynaa_sk wrote:
> Can you describe what exactly is a course in Sakai? for example, if I'm in my
> third year of college in engineering, and taking physics and math classes,
> does the course stand for physics and math courses? or they are math and
> physics lessons? Also can 2 courses have one exam at the same time? Thanks
> for your help.