[Using Sakai] for learning material

[Marshall Feldman]

  I second Charles' idea of a generic infrastructure but want to take it 
one step further.

As Clay Fenlaso mentioned to J. M., most Sakai installations are 
centralized and integrated with other systems. These are usually 
centrally maintained, and faculty members rarely have administrative 
rights on such systems. Yet we customize our courses and use a wide 
variety of non-Sakai tools. Therefore, I'd like to see a generic 
infrastructure include something like plugins on sees in FOSS, such as 
Firefox. These can be written and installed by end users without 
administrator rights. With appropriate documentation and security, this 
could open up Sakai considerably and create the kind of rich ecology one 
sees with other FOSS tools.

     Marsh Feldman
On 11/6/2010 3:00 PM, sakai-user-request at collab.sakaiproject.org wrote:
> Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:40:43 -0400
> From: Charles Hedrick<hedrick at rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Using Sakai] for learning material
> To: Regimantas Maciulskis<regimantas.maciulskis at gmail.com>
> Cc:sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org
> Message-ID:<418F5657-8105-4812-87C9-22BAB45002AB at rutgers.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> I've written a new tool, Lesson Builder, specifically to build learning modules. The Confluence page gives some screen shots. I've done work since there to improve the UI, but the basic functionality is still reflected by the screen shots. (The biggest change is a new dialog for adding material. I only go to the resource picker for picking existing items. Uploads and URLs are entered in a jQuery dialog.) Code is in Contrib.
>
> There are two goals:
>
> * for normal courses, some faculty like to organize things by unit, putting all material, pointers to assignments, etc, in one place
> * for fully online instruction we need special facilities for online content. Some of these programs have requirements to document what people have done, and to do selective release of items
>
> Currently I support HTML  blocks (stored in my own data tables), pointers to items in resources or URLs, embedded content from resources or URLs, and pointers to assignments and tests. I've spent much of my time recently working on the UI and understanding how OBJECTs work in various browsers and players. I'm about ready to start adding pointers to discussion topics. That's the last major feature planned, aside from additional functionality in sequencing. (I'm taking a different approach than some to sequencing. Rather than pushing people through a specific sequence, I let you declare that certain items aren't available until all prerequisites have been met.)
>
> I agree with comments elsewhere that it's a problem when copying from site to site. I support copy. It preserves the structure, and resources point to resources in the new site. However pointers to assignments and quizes don't carry over. There was no practical way to make that work. I'd*really*  like to see generic infrastructure in export, import, and copy to make this work. For the moment I insert place holders telling people which links need to be updated and to what. If this isn't fixed in 2.9 for real, I'll probably do a hack to make it work.
>
>
> On Nov 2, 2010, at 5:47 AM, Regimantas Maciulskis wrote:
>
>> >  Hello,

-- 
Dr. Marshall Feldman, PhD
Director of Research and Academic Affairs
CUSR Logo
Center for Urban Studies and Research
The University of Rhode Island
email: marsh @ uri .edu (remove spaces)


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