Beyond Resources Rethinking Content Sharing and

Presentation in Sakai

Barbra Mack, Nicola Monat-Jacobs

New York University

The Vision: “Beyond Resources”

“Make Sakai a Personalized, Web-based Center for Creating, Organizing, and Sharing Content and Participating with the Academic Community.”

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The Vision: “Beyond Resources”

• What is “Beyond Resources”?

• Background and Context

• Findings• The User• The Model• Implementation Ideas• What do you think?

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What is “Beyond Resources?”

Sakai Now:• Focused on storing

resources and independent tools

• Difficult to use resources and share across multiple tools, sites, groups, and campuses.

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What is “Beyond Resources?”

Sakai of the Future:

• Gather• Organize• Manage• Share • Comment

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Background and Context

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY:• 6,926 Faculty• 50,917 Students• 8,871 Staff • 14 Schools and at least 25

Study Abroad Programs• Research 1 University - Urban

Campus• Largest Private University in

the US

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Background and Context

Library and Institutional Repositories:

Electronic subscriptions to: • 42,000+ journals• 1,000+ databases• 500,000+ e-books• Exploring Primo as

federated search solution• Enterprise file

management D-Space, Xythos, and LUNA

• Host streaming, multimedia, and departmental file servers

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Background and Context

Blackboard Usage:• 75% of all courses

(4,492)• 69% of faculty

(4,759)• 81% of students

(41,277 )• 44,917 unique users

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Background and Context

NYU Sakai Pilot: ALEX :

• 3 consecutive semesters

• 47 faculty participants

• Used in live classes• Formal direct-

feedback system• Analyzed results

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Findings

“Need more intuitive content display.”

“Improve the content display.”

“Not usable by instructor not usable by students. Can’t present content in a way to make organizational and conceptual structure clear.”

“Must change this interface and have easier, more flexible, more readable, more intuitive way for faculty to present content to students.”

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Findings

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FindingsWhat do faculty want?

make their own work readily available to others have easy access to others' work control the presentation of the materials they wish to

share; control access to the materials they wish to share organize their materials and references according to

their own schema integrate the management and presentation of materials

that are currently stored and accessed in disparate institutional systems and locations

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Findings

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Findings

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Findings

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The Users

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The Users

User Profiles

• Low adopter• Moderate adopter• High adopter

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The Users

Professor Sabowski, Anthropologist

• Nearing tenure• Captures video and audio of interviews, stores on

central video server• Has raw survey results and other self-created data

sets stores in departmental server• Uses institutional data sets, stored in central library

repositories• Wants to centralize management of all these research

materials• Needs to share data with peers• Wants to share some data in graduate seminar she

teaches

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The UsersLisa Jones, Undergraduate Student

• Liberal arts student, Junior • High use of facebook and flicker in personal life• In a study abroad program that she is required to

maintain a blog of her experience• Needs to access media and readings through

Blackboard, Library reserves and databases and in her program’s departmental server from Europe

• Must use various media (e.g., photos of travels, reference to articles, etc.) in course assignments and post to course site

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The Model

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The Model

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The Model

Wireframe Categories

• Site List Editor• References Tool• Content Pages• Sidebar Editor

• References• Content Pages• UI Improvements

References Helper

• Search your references• Add a new reference

– Tagged with course id

• See the tag cloud• See references tagged for your course id• See recently added references

We are not alone in the Universe

• Resources Working Group• Resources Viewer• Citations Helper – Citations Lists• rWiki

We are not alone in the Universe

• Zonecore aka Open Syllabus• Sakaibrary: prototype Research Guide authoring

tool• CARET File Manager

• Michael’s Content Authoring initiative• Ian Boston and Nico: Page Composer• Josh Ryan’s “thing”• More?

• Questions?• Thoughts?• Recommendations?• Fears?