Monday, March 2, 2009

How students can share documents with Sakai


Sakai is the Claremont College's online collaboration and learning environment. Essentially, every Sakai course site is a full-featured web site with extensive, integrated built-in online tools — discussion board, email, announcements, chatroom, gradebook, resource area for any files you would like to share including web links to external sites, calendar, wiki, and much more.

Sharing resources
Many faculty have found Sakai's Resource tool useful for sharing web links, documents, and other types of files with students. Although it is not intuitively obvious, Sakai's Resource tool can enhance communication and collaboration among students too.

How students can share documents and other files
  • In your Sakai Resources, create a new folder by clicking the "Add" Tab next to the Folder "[Class name] Resources."
  • Select the "Create Folders" link from the drop-down menu.
  • You then need to name the folder. You can name it Paper 1, Paper 2, etc. or whatever name you want, as long as it's clear to the students which which should go where.
  • If you will be adding more than one folder, you can select the "Add Another Folder" option and you will then be prompted to enter the name of the next new folder; you can do this for as many folders as you would like to add.
  • When you are finished adding folders, click the "Create Folders Now" button. Your folder(s) will appear in the "[Class name] Resources.
  • To allow your students to upload their papers into these folders, you will then need edit the folder's permission as follows:
  1. Click on the Actions drop-down menu next to the folder.
  2. From the drop-down menu, select the "Edit Folder Permissions" link for the folder.
  3. To allow your students to upload documents, the "new" box needs to be checked for the Student role.
  4. You can also decide whether the students are able to revise or delete their own documents and/or those of their classmates. When the correct boxes are selected, click on the "Save" button.
  5. Options for folder permissions include:
    new: Add new resources
    read:
    View and download resources (checked by default)
    revise.any:
    Modify any resources
    revise.own:
    Modify own resources
    delete.any:
    Remove any resources
    delete.own:
    Remove own resources
    all.groups:
    Allows participants to see all resources, even those assigned to specific groups
  6. When the correct boxes are selected, click "Save" button.
Online resources