What are significant new features in Sakai 23?

"What's New in Sakai?" Webinar

A one-hour webinar held in August 2024 demonstrated most of the new features listed below. A recording of the webinar and the accompanying digital handout are available. Note that authentication with PLU ePass credentials is required for access.

User Interface & Navigation

As in Sakai 21, the layout of the Sakai 23 user interface adapts to the screen size of the browsing device. 

Desktop Layout

Mobile Phone Layout

New User Interface

• Site access:  Site access and navigation have been moved to the left panel, utilizing collapsible tool menus. Site navigation is now consistent between desktop and mobile devices.

• Pinned sites: Pinned sites were formerly designated as ‘favorites’. Sites can be pinned to and unpinned from the site navigation panel.

• Breadcrumb links: Besides highlighting in the site navigation, the current site and current tool or page are indicated as breadcrumb links at the top of Sakai.

• Support site renamed: The former ‘Support’ site has been renamed to the ‘Help & Support’ site.

• Help tool moved: The Help tool for accessing help documentation has been moved to the top bar.

Other New Feature Highlights

Site Info

• Scheduled publishing: The act of publishing and/or unpublishing a course site can now be scheduled by the instructor.

Announcements

• Highlighted announcements: Instructors can now highlight particular announcements to emphasize their importance.

Lessons

• Copy page items from other sites: Page items from other course sites can be added to a particular lesson page.

• Question features: Question text in Lessons can now be styled with boldface and italics. Also the grading panel for questions display the date and time when students’ answers were submitted.

• Assessment feedback: Students can now access feedback within Lessons for tests and quizzes linked from a lesson page.

Assignments

• Allow extensions: Instructors can now extend due dates for students who need accommodation.

• Revised grading interface: The new grading interface has been revised both to significantly increase the area for previewing submitted work and to be more mobile friendly. The legacy grading interface is also still available.

• Student profile photos: The submission list and the new grading interface now display student profile photos for assignments that are otherwise not configured to be anonymous.

• Enhanced bulk grading: Controls for bulk grading assignments can now distinguish between students without a grade and students without a submission.

• Assignment list for students revised: The table of assignments presented to students has two new columns: one for the last modified date for assignments and another listing who had last edited the assignment.

• Trash tab improvement: The ‘Removed Date’ is now displayed for assignments that have been removed to the Trash tab.

Tests & Quizzes

• Published categorization revised: Published assessments were formerly categorized as either Active or Inactive. They now have a more intuitive set of categories: Scheduled, Active, and Closed.

• Settings view revised: Some controls and labels in the Settings view have been significantly revised in the hopes of being more intuitive.

• Student profile photos: The submission list now displays student profile photos for tests and quizzes that are otherwise not configured to be anonymous.

• Calculated Questions (BETA): This is a new question type that calculates new answers for every test and student, based on variables whose value changes each time. This new feature is an experimental or beta release.

Gradebook

• Student profile photos: Student profile photos are now displayed with student names in the Gradebook.

• Quick entry: A new ‘Quick Entry’ tab has been introduced for quickly entering grades and comments.

• Course grade summary comments: A new summary comment associated with the course grade has been introduced.

Rubrics

• Student and criteria summary stats: Most grading views for rubrics now include ‘Student Summary’ and ‘Criteria Summary’ views, which provide instructors with rubric statistics for a given activity.

• Criterion groups: For rubrics with many criteria, one or more criterion groups can be added to label and group similar criteria.

• Export as PDF: Graded and non-graded rubrics can be exported as PDF files.

• Draft mode: Rubrics can now be saved as a draft.

• Locking behavior changes: Rubrics now remain unlocked until their first use in grading student work. Also, rubrics that are locked allow for edits to the following attributes: rubric titles; criteria titles and descriptions; and rating titles and descriptions.

• Negative points: Rating values can now be negative. However, the total score for an activity cannot be less than zero.

Rich-Text Editor

• Collapsible toolbar: An expand/collapse control is now present with the standard toolbar containing the full set of the rich-text editor’s controls.

• New equation editor: The legacy equation editor from CodeCogs has been replaced with a more reliable editor from MathJax.

Discussions

• Closed topics as locked: Instructors can now configure topics to be locked and visible with a specified closed date. Formerly, all topics with expired closed dates would no longer be visible to students.

• Authored stats revised: The statistics reported for authored posts now distinguish between new posts and replies to other posts.

Attendance

• Grading categories: If sending grades to a Gradebook configured to use categories, the Attendance tool now provides an option to select the appropriate category.

External Tools

• McGraw Hill: The former “McGraw Hill Campus” integration added through the Site Info tool is replaced by a learning app called “McGraw Hill LTIA” added through the Lessons tool.

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Need support? Contact sakai@plu.edu or call 253-535-7525.