Sakai Upgrade! Major New Features for the Fall 2015 Term.

05/07/15

ITS is upgrading Sakai for the Fall 2015 term with many new features (including a search tool) and major improvements to existing functionality. There will be slight changes to Sakai's interface that improve usability and accessibility. 

NEW SAKAI FEATURES INCLUDE:

Announcements

• The ability to reorder announcements.

Assignments

• Any individual in a group may make submissions/changes to an assignment.
• Peer review functionality.
• Download all assignments in a flat file structure. Instructors can now select only the items they want to include in the Download All zip file.
• Send comments to Gradebook.
• Visible date feature. If visible date is set, students can see assignment but cannot submit/save yet.
• When an instructor allows resubmissions for an assignment, notification is sent to students.

Chat

• Chats can have start and end dates.

Dropbox

• Ability for instructor to send file to multiple students’ drop boxes at once.

Text Editor

• Audio recording widget.
• Wordcount now visible.

Forums

• Instructors can grade an entry in Forums and Gradebook will respect the entry type setting. For example, grades would be percentages for a percentage Gradebook.
• Show which topics contain unread messages.
• Ability to move a thread to a different topic.
• Identify site members by role, or by post count.

Gradebook

• Ability to create extra credit assignments as well as mark categories as extra credit.
• Accepts comments from the Assignments tool.

Help

• Redesigned interface.

Lessons (former called Lesson Builder)

• Improvements in the audio/video embed feature. (User can now edit the source code and add video embed code directly.)
• Multimedia and text items can have prerequisites.
• Peer rubric. 
• Student pages can be owned by a group as well as by individuals.

Messages

• Copies of messages will be sent to user’s email by default.
• Numerous other improvements.

Resources

• Ability to hide a folder while allowing access to files inside it.
• Ability to drag and drop uploads!
• Drag and drop folder upload available in Chrome 21+.

Schedule

• Allow subscriptions to non-public calendars.

Search! (new feature)

Site Management & Groups

• In Worksite Setup you can now filter by term.
• Improves layout/organization of tools in Site Info -> Edit Tools.

Syllabus tool revamped.

Tests & Quizzes

• Calculated questions.
• Multiple choice all or nothing option.
• Major audio recorder improvements. 

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