5 Things You Didn’t Know About Sakai

Whether you’re new to Sakai or a seasoned pro, there’s always something new to learn.  Here are five things you can do with Sakai that might be new to you.

1. Question pools in Tests & Quizzes

Do you use the Tests & Quizzes tool for many of your courses?  If so, you might find the question pools feature helpful.  Question pools allow you to build a repository of quiz questions that you can use to automatically populate quizzes.  Pools can be accessed across all of your sites, or even shared with colleagues in your department.  See how to create question pools here.

2. Bulk upload files to Resources and Dropbox

If you’re building a new site, you might have many files you wish to upload to the Resources area.  Rather than creating folders in Sakai and uploading the files to each folder, you can drag and drop your files to Resources by first setting up WebDAV.  WebDAV also works with the Drop Box tool.  Simply refer to the instructions under Upload-Download Multiple Resources while the Drop Box tool is selected.  See how to setup WebDAV here.

3. Bulk download and upload files in Assignments

When you have many student submissions to grade in the Assignments tool, rather than clicking through each one, you can download all of the assignment to your computer.  Sakai will create a structure for you to keep track of the submissions, comments, and grades for each student.  Once you have completed grading and feedback, the submissions, comments, and grades can be re-uploaded to the Assignments tool in your course site.  See how to bulk download and upload files in Assignments here.

4. Receive notifications when students submit their work

Many tools in Sakai have the ability to send notifications when new content is added to the site, either by the student or the instructor.  Tools that have this ability are Resources, Assignments, Drop Box, Forums (under Watch), Syllabus, Test & Quizzes, and Announcements.  While notifications are not yet available in Tests & Quizzes for student submissions, this feature has been requested and may be available in the new version of the tool coming in 2016.

5. Selectively release content

In both the Resources and Lessons tools, instructors and site owners have the ability to set dates for content visibility, or hiding content from view.  Selectively releasing content allows instructors to scaffold students’ learning experiences.  See how to selectively release content with Resources.  See how to selectively release content with Lessons.

4 thoughts on “5 Things You Didn’t Know About Sakai

  1. Lucas Matos

    Hello Jolie Tingen,

    This information was very useful, especially in my case I’m starting.

    Thank you for sharing.

  2. Joe Klunder

    Do you have any idea if a Dropbox paid account will be needed to accommodate to the bulk upload of files?

  3. Louise Woodcock

    The Tests & Quizzes tool is so useful and thanks for highlighting these uses here as I will be able to put this to use for my own teaching.

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