Five-minute Fixes to Improve Sakai Course Design

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Last updated: Jun 22, 2010Version comment
2 min read

Presenters

Abstract

Support calls from students and instructors are an extremely important source of information. By analyzing help desk issues, a course builder will often discover that design, not the technology, is the culprit. Using support call details, course developers can revise courses and develop best practices to prevent further support calls. Spending just a few minutes improving a course at the beginning of the term can save hours of user frustration and confusion. Many good design techniques are basic though new course builders are likely to miss them. A few of them include: 

  • Building the course homepage to direct students to important features and "must-do's" when they first enter the site
  • Ensuring that the site has a voice of its instructors 
  • Building (and deploying in Melete or Resources) templates that standardize the look and feel of instructional material
  • Standardizing on uploaded media types to prevent the need for multiple media players and to minimize end-user access issues.

In this session, the presenters will share lessons learned from two years of help desk experience that has resulted in course design changes yielding significantly fewer support calls. Actual courses from a variety of subjects and levels will be shared. Time will be reserved for questions and answers. 

Presentation Video Recording

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7718762

Slides

 Sakai10_Slide_Five-minute_Fixes.pptx

Other Resources

FCK Editor Templates

OHSU's FCK Editor Templates File

Notes:

CSS Tweaks for Pre-2.7 Forums

CSS file snippet - Add this code to your tool.css file for your Sakai skin to improve the role/group settings area in Forums.

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