[Using Sakai] Question about Sakai renaming tools functionality from Indiana University

[Clay Fenlason]

Georgia Tech has made POH and tool renaming open from the start. We
had the some of the same theoretical concerns that others have
enumerated, but it's been our experience that (a) the majority of
faculty don't know how to use renaming or hiding in the first place,
and (b) even the ones that do usually don't bother for the basic
tools. The feature sees relatively little use, as far as we can tell,
and we've come to think that our earlier fears were exaggerated. I'm
not aware of any support calls we had in the last year where this was
the issue. It certainly hasn't been a significant drain.

In fact, in the opinion of our instructional designers (I just asked
them) the freedom has made a positive difference in a number of cases.
There are specialized uses of tools (eg. using the blog tool as a
particular kind of journal) that seem to be aided - as a matter of
user experience - by setting the tone with a particular term that
signals its appropriate use in that course.

Beyond the POH, what we see far more of is the use of the Web Content
tool, where entirely new button labels are introduced. Confusion
occasionally results from user expectations of new tools and
functionality where it's really just a window onto some other web
location, and the names people give to their web content instances are
all over the map. Some instructors go a little overboard and the
lefthand menu can get rather cluttered, but of course that's not
really an issue with renaming tools, and certainly not an issue with
POH.

We do hear from students that they wished their instructors used Sakai
more consistently, but that complaint often has more to do with
practices (eg. putting the syllabus in Resources rather than using the
Syllabus tool, or changing permissions so that allowed operations vary
from one site to another), and we haven't tried to tease out what
portion of the complaint is owed to tool order or naming. Our general
attitude has been that the cost of restricting faculty freedom
outweighs the benefit of conforming the student experience (usually
with some hand-waving about how students adapt quickly, and each class
has its own idiosyncratic norms in the real world, anyway). This, too,
is untested, but we haven't thus far had reason to regret our choices.

~Clay

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Jeff Ziegler <ziegler at umich.edu> wrote:
> Hi Rita,
> FWIW, at UMich, we make the Page Order Helper tool available only to Project
> sites.  We felt that there was too much potential for student confusion if
> instructors were allowed to rename (and to a smaller extent, reorder) tools
> on course sites.  We already see a significant amount of support traffic
> from students who are unable to find their clearly labeled Course sites
> so imagine a dealing with a situation where there is a different name and
> location for the Assignments tool on each site of which a student is a
> participant.  Then figure that some instructors will invariably decide to
> rename all the tools on a site with names that make perfect sense to them
> but are less intuitive for the students.  If an instructor expresses a need
> to rename or reorder a tool we treat that as just another support service
> that we provide and will work with them to ensure that the renaming does not
> cause problems downstream.  In effect, rather than meet the challenge, we
> side-stepped it :-)
> There was also a bit of concern regarding the Hide function of POH.  One
> potential scenario was for an instructor posting, for example, study
> documents in Resources, and then hiding the Resources tool in the mistaken
> belief that doing this would prevent further student access to the files.
>  Unfortunately, that file would still be available if the URL to that file
> was known, e.g., preserved in an Announcement or email.
> As far as using it on a Project site, it's fairly intuitive to use so we see
> very little support traffic regarding the use of POH.
>
> Jeff
>
>
> On Apr 19, 2010, at 12:47 PM, Pavolka, Rita Kay wrote:
>
> 1)      How have students responded to the changing tool names?
>
> 2)      Has it created significant challenges for your support groups?
>
> 3)      How have those challenges been met at your school/institution?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "New != better.  Different != better.  Only better == better."
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Jeff Ziegler - CTools Support Supervisor
> CTools Implementation Group
> Digital Media Commons, Duderstadt Center
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
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