Sakai 12 - Transitioning to Sakai 12: What are significant new features in Sakai 12?

What are significant new features in Sakai 12?

General Overview

Watch the following video for a brief general overview of what’s new in Sakai 12. This overview includes information about changes to the look-and-feel of Sakai, the new top navigation bar, new features in the rich-text editor, and a few name changes to note within Sakai. More details about other new features for commonly used tools are listed below under the heading, Other New Feature Highlights.

Responsive User Interface

The layout of the Sakai 12 user interface adapts to the screen size of the browsing device.

Desktop Layout

Mobile Phone Layout

Other New Feature Highlights

Rich-Text Editor (CKEditor)

• Simplified toolbar: Students and instructors can opt to display a simplified toolbar of the most commonly used editor tools by way of new Editor controls in the Preferences tool.
• Audio recorder: Students and instructors can record clips of up to 3 minutes of audio, for playback anywhere the editor is used, such as in Assignments, Forums, and Lessons.
• LaTeX mathematical equations: When MathJax is enabled in the Site Info tool, users can enter LaTeX equations with the editor.

Site Info

• Improved import content process: The “Import from Site” function of the Site Info tool can now flexibly copy content for tools that are not present in the destination or target site, and it can now copy the introductory rich-text block on the Overview page (formerly called the “Home” page). Also, an email notification will be sent to the instructor when the import process has completed.

Gradebook

• New user interface: Gradebook views have been consolidated into:
  • a new spreadsheet-like view for organizing the display of grades and for entering grades and
  • a new settings panel for setting up the gradebook.
• Extra credit: Extra credit is now supported in Gradebook.
• Grade statistics: Instructors can view a quick summary of the grade distribution for a gradebook item, including the mean, median, standard deviation, lowest score, highest score, total number of graded scores, and a bar chart illustrating the data.

Lessons

• New user interface for instructors: Some feature highlights demonstrated in this video on new Lessons features in Sakai 12 include subpage navigation in the tool menu, improved page editor controls, and the ability to partition a page into visually distinct sections.
• Interactive checklists: Instructors can now embed an interactive checklist on a Lessons page, where students can track their completion of key tasks.
• In-line questions: Instructors can add either a Multiple Choice question or a Fill in the Blank question directly to a Lessons Page. Student responses can optionally be scored and tracked in the Gradebook.

Resources

• File upload: Drag-and-drop file upload is now supported. Multiple files can be uploaded more easily than before.
• Soft-deletion: Deleted files and folders can now be recovered from a Trash bin.
• Search: Users can now search for files and folders within a site by file name or folder name.

Assignments

• Turnitin: If an instructor configures an assignment to use Turnitin for originality or plagiarism checking, students receive a notification that Turnitin will process their submission.
• Group assignments: Instructors can now enable group assignments where one student in a group submits an assignment on behalf of their group, As a norm, the instructor’s grade and feedback for a group submission is applied to all members of the group.
• Peer reviewed assignments: Instructors can also conduct peer review assignments where student submissions are reviewed and graded by their peers. Nevertheless, instructors can still review and revise the peer review grades and comments for these assignments.

Tests & Quizzes

• Question Progress: For some assessments, a new, retractable Question Progress panel is available to students as a utility for tracking which questions they have answered and which questions the student has marked to review before submitting their answers for a grade.
• Markup text: Markup text has been enhanced to now support numeric response question types, automated feedback for correct and incorrect answer types, randomization of the possible answers for multiple choice questions, and prompts for students to provide rationales for their answers.
• Exceptions to time limit and due date: Instructors can now more flexibly grant specific students different time limits or due dates for assessments depending on need.

Forums

• Anonymous posts: Instructors can create topics where the identities of contributors are anonymous.
• Profile photos: Each user’s profile photo is displayed by their respective post within a conversation.

Email Sender (formerly known as "Mailtool")

• “All” checkbox: A new checkbox will select all members of the site for sending an email. It is checked by default to make sending mail to all members easier.

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