2020 has been a whirlwind, so we’re excited to share some positive BIG NEWS:
We’re upgrading to Sakai 20 on December 3rd!
While we will make every effort to minimize the outage, please plan for Sakai to be unavailable all day on Thursday, December 3, 2020. The upgrade will occur about a week after Fall 2020 grades are due in ConnectCarolina (Nov. 27) so should not interfere with Fall classes. Thank you for understanding that we must take the system offline to apply the upgrade.
Note on scheduling: While we had originally planned to upgrade to the next available version of Sakai (version 19) back in May of this year, we decided to postpone the upgrade to December. This was due to the University’s decision to move to remote instruction in the spring and then the early start of fall classes. We’re also skipping version 19 to bring even more new features in Sakai 20!
Coming in Sakai 20
In the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing new features coming in Sakai 20, so be sure to check back on this blog for highlights! We hope to implement all Sakai 20 features, however please note that if we encounter critical issues in our testing and debugging of the system, we may need to exclude certain features.
Here is a highlight of expected features coming in Sakai 20! See the Sakai Community’s Sakai 20 feature summary.
Rubrics
- Yes, they’re finally coming! Evaluate students based on a set guideline of criteria and have Sakai add up each student’s grade based on that rubric.
- Grading Rubrics will be available in the Gradebook, Assignments, Tests & Quizzes, and Forums
Assignments
- New Grader gives a document preview! You will no longer need to download student attachments.
- Unlock Groups associated with Group Assignments to update student membership
Gradebook
- Bulk-edit Gradebook Items
- Excuse a student from an assignment
- Apply equal weight to items in a category, regardless of point values
- Message students from a Gradebook Item
Site Info
- New Date Manager to update dates on multiple items at once! Edit dates in batch on Assignments, Tests & Quizzes, Gradebook, Lessons, and more!
- Automatically create Groups by section, based on number of groups or students
Tests & Quizzes
- New Overview page combines published assessments and draft copies
- Mark questions as extra credit
- Bulk-delete and recover assessments
These are just some Sakai 20 highlights! Check back on this blog to get sneak peeks into new features coming on December 3rd. We can’t wait for Sakai 20 and hope you’re excited!