Sakai Update: Get ready for Spring 2012!

It’s only October, but by the end of the month, many faculty will already be thinking about teaching in the Spring. Spring (2012) is the last semester Blackboard will be available at Duke (Blackboard will be shut down in June 2012). The good news:  all Duke faculty will be able to create Sakai sites for their Spring 2012 courses by no later than early November.

Faculty will also have access to their migrated content from Blackboard going back to courses taught in Fall 2007. Faculty don’t have to wait until late October/early November to see some content in Sakai however – Blackboard course content from Spring 2011 and Fall 2010 has already been migrated. Faculty can view this content by logging in to Sakai (https://sakai.duke.edu) and looking for Sakai course sites that have been automatically created to house your Blackboard migrated content. Visit the Sakai Help Site’s Blackboard to Sakai section for more information on how to access and use your migrated content, as well as instructions on how to download and save your students’ data from Blackboard (the automatic migration process does not include archiving or moving any student information).

Since any faculty member can now see their migrated content in Sakai (for Spring 2011 and Fall 2010, at least) – we strongly recommend that faculty thinking about using Sakai for Spring 2012 login to Sakai and take a look around. During the current Fall ‘Phase 1’ implementation, several faculty noted that they found it easier to ‘start over’ with their course designs vs. modifying their old Blackboard content to try to ‘fit it’ into Sakai’s structure.

CIT offers several options for faculty who want to prepare to teach with Sakai this Spring. Our ongoing series of Sakai workshops includes a general introduction to Sakai, and several sessions focusing on specific tools, such as Assignments, Tests & Quizzes, and the Sakai Gradebook. CIT also offers weekly ‘Office Hours‘  – where faculty can simply drop by a location and meet with one or more CIT consultants to discuss their course(s). We’re also offering several of our workshops on October 10th and 11th to help faculty take advantage of Fall break.

Visit the Sakai Help Site (https://sites.duke.edu/sakai) to get more information on the Sakai project Timeline, details on how to work with Blackboard content migrated to Sakai, and search the FAQs section for help with using Sakai.