2:55 p.m., Feb. 24, 2009----University of Delaware Information Technologies has announced that faculty and staff can now create “project” sites on Sakai@UD -- the UD-supported learning management system.

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What is a Sakai@UD project site?

Faculty members began using Sakai@UD to create course sites in September 2008. Course sites are linked to a student roster in UDSIS, which means that students who register for the course are automatically added to the course site.

Project sites are non-course sites. Faculty and staff can create project sites in Sakai@UD to accommodate a small or large number of participants. Project sites differ from course sites in a number of ways:

• Project sites are not associated with a student roster. Site organizers add participants manually and assign permission settings to each participant.
• Project sites are not associated with a semester. Sites can be used for non-course projects as long as necessary.
• Project sites employ different user roles than those for course sites, and permissions are generally less restrictive to allow for more extensive collaboration. For example, participants in project sites are automatically allowed to post material to the resources tool, while students in course sites are not permitted to do so.

Because project sites reside inside Sakai@UD, users will find it convenient to access them within the same system as their courses, without having to log in to a different system. And project sites offer the same array of tools as course sites, so users will not need to learn a new system if they already have experience using Sakai.

Why would I want to use a project site?

You might want to use a project site for one of the following scenarios:

• You are a member of a research group who needs to share common resources as well as ensure you are always working on the most recent version of your collaborative research paper.
• You teach a course with other TAs and need an area to coordinate your efforts, explore ideas and share material to use in class.
• You need to distribute agendas and archive minutes from meetings for a unit or department.
• You want to create training materials, assignments and facilitate discussions for a group not listed in UDSIS.

Project sites are secure and can be accessed from any Sakai@UD supported Web browsers. You can give access to any UD user as well as external contributors.

Is anyone using a project site now?

Annette Roskam, Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning Fellow, and Anne Morris, associate professor, School of Education, created a pilot project site for the instructors of MATH 251.

"Our Sakai project site helps our MATH 251 instructors to steadily improve the course lessons. Through the resources and forums tools, we are able to capture the best ideas from instructors on how to change the lessons to make them more effective for students," Morris said.

In addition to improving course content and learning, their project site enables them to easily schedule and coordinate meetings with their group.

"We also use our project site to reserve our conference room through the built-in calendar. It's a feature we didn't anticipate using, but it ends up saving us a lot of worries as a group," Roskam said.

How do I learn more?

To register for an upcoming Sakai@UD training class, check the Professional Development Calendar. The next "Basics of Sakai@UD--Project Sites" class is scheduled March 11, at 9:30 a.m.

The "Basics of Sakai@UD--Project Sites" training document is available from the Sakai@UD user training site.

Additional online training resources are available at this Web site.

To log in to Sakai@UD, visit the Sakai Web site.