Learning with Sakai
Collapsible menus powered by Ajax enable students to explore all of the course content and locate material appropriate for their current level of achievement as well as learning style. Key to this instructional strategy is just-in-time video that students can view to have lectures and demonstrations onscreen just when the student needs them. I create these videos with Camtasia Studio. Throughout my course, I make new videos and add them to the online collection. Via Sakai Podcasting, I announce the new titles to my students. Students do not need an iPod, but if they have one, their Sakai professor can be on it.
Learning Outcomes and Assessment
Sakai enables you to create a project-based course in which students form teams and work together to accomplish goals that they define within the context of the course. At the beginning of the course, the students respond to a Sakai assignment asking them to define these goals. Using the Sakai feedback protocol, the instructor works with the students to refine their goals and formulate a strategy for accomplishing them.
After the teams are formed, there are three periodic checkpoints at which each student must use the Sakai blogger to submit project logs to be reviewed by their instructor. In these blogs, each student must write about their individual contributions toward accomplishing the project's goals. Students are also encouraged to blog about problems their project encountered and tell how the team plans to solve them.
By the end of the course, each team must mount its portfolios and projects on the Web for their professor to review and grade. Each member of the team receives the grade awarded for the final project, which constitutes one third of the final grade. Individually graded, on the other hand, are the blogs, in which each team member keeps track of their individual contributions toward accomplishing the project's goals. Thus, at the end of the course, the instructor can assign final grades based on the overall quality of the final project as well as the role each student played.
