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Independent of how sites are organized (existing portal, GoogleTools, etc.), there is a need to allow users to easily create pages that can be linked to other pages. These should be as flexible as possible in terms of layout and allow a rich set of content elements to be added to a page, including: marked up text, lists, tables, media objects (video, audio, flash, applets, etc.), and embeddable tools (GoogleTools, Widgets, synoptic Sakai tools, etc.).
1.1 The CARET Use Case (note the public aspect of this is optional)
Nick, professor of History, has just arrived from another institution and wishes to teach history for the first time at Sakai University. He will teach a new masters course in the history of interplanetary travel, based on his research in the field. Because this is good way to communicate his research he would like much of the site content to be available to the world for anonymous viewing. He requests a site and it is approved. The membership of the site is auto-populated from the Registrar's system and he takes a quick look at the number of students who have already signed up and reads about their backgrounds and qualifications. While he is there he checks that this information is set to private-instructor-only although the instructions tell him this is the default and can only be changed to "public" by collecting the agreement of each student.
Nick will teach the course in 8 weeks so he chooses the topics he wants to cover in each of the 8 weeks and creates a "top level" page for each week using the "add page" button. The "top level" pages reassuringly appear. Nick returns to the first page (for week 1) "Lights in the Sky" and writes an outline of the topic. He inserts a panel with links to library resources and some "pre-canned cross-repository searches" he has tried out after consulting Library Services. He makes sure he has explained that guest users may not be able to use the pre-canned searches or view all of the references. There is a footnote explaining how to use public libraries to access the resources or how to request copies from the University Library. He also inserts two assignments, with due dates and plagiarism detection turned on, again noting that external users will not be able to submit the assignments for marking. He adds a couple of sub-pages with detailed explanations of his experiments with hyperlinks from the top page. Finally, he adds a quick poll (who has travelled to more than 5 planets in the last year?) and allows the public to respond and adds a comment 'gadget' with guest comments allowed (people who have registered with a valid email address, but who are not on the course) so he can get public reactions to his work.
He repeats this for each of his top level pages. In 3 of the pages he inserts 'Learning Units' from the NSA "how to recognise and alien" learning materials that he uploads in SCORM format. He then previews the site in 'registered student' view 'guest' view and 'public' view to check things are working as intended. When finished he makes the site public and sends an announcement to the registered students that the site is available and they can start work on the first assignment. He then calls the press office and gives them the URL for his public course and settles down to prepare the first lecture.
1.1.1 The CARET Use Case (Portfolio)
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