Looking ahead to the new Sakai... (Part 1)

As you probably know, Sakai will be down on commencement day, May 20. This is to perform some major upgrades to Sakai as we update from Sakai 2.5 (the current version) to Sakai 2.6.

We at OIRT have been hard at work the last few weeks, doing final testing on our test servers. We are catching bugs, getting acquainted with the new system and any quirks it has, and customizing the "generic" Sakai system to look and feel like the Rutgers Sakai you have all grown accustomed to. The result, we hope, will be a smooth transition to Sakai 2.6, with few glitches, informed Sakai support staff ready to answer questions, and as little noticeable change in basic functions from the user perspective as possible.

So, what's happening? In my next few blog posts, I'll be writing about some of the changes and new features you can expect to see once Sakai 2.6 goes live. If you have any questions about any changes, feel free to leave them in the comments of the posts and I'll check back to answer.

General Changes

There are a number of changes happening behind the scenes, which users should not really notice (or in many cases even care about). I will instead focus my posts on interface changes, new features, etc. One thing I would like to mention though is that we are upgrading to the latest version of java. This should result in a faster Sakai. Some of the issues we encountered lately with Sakai being slow or unresponsive should be fixed with this upgrade.

Overall, the look of Sakai should not change too much. One difference is the button you press to get back to the home page of a tool.


Right now, this appears as a house icon:



In Sakai 2.6, we've changed this image to look more like the "refresh" button in your browser:



A big feature that has been added is the ability to view a site as a student/access user. This lets instructors see things exactly how a student in the class would see the site. No more worrying about whether or not the Announcement actually got posted, or what parts of the Gradebook and site participant list students can see! Also, for those of you who used to add yourselves to your sites as students, this should take away some of the need for that.

Another excellent feature is the ability to specify how many tabs you see across the top of your screen. If you're anything like me, over half of your screen may be wasted white space instead of convenient tabs. No longer! You can add and remove tabs just as easily as you can change the order in which they appear.

A handy feature (though rather a nuisance to test...) is a timeout warning before Sakai logs you off due to inactivity. Users will normally be logged off after 2 hours, but now Sakai will pop up a warning 5 minutes prior to logging you off, giving you the ability to remain active.

These features alone make me excited to see Sakai 2.6 go live. But that's far from all we're implementing. Improvements have been made to many tools, including Assignments, Chat, and Tests & Quizzes, to name a few.

But I'll save those for future posts.