Sakai19 4

Welcome to Sakai 19.4

Brock University’s update to Sakai 19.4 mainly focuses on streamlining performance issues and workflows in tools such as Assignments, Gradebook, Lessons, Tests and Quizzes with the addition of a new tool: Rubrics.

Instructors, faculty and TAs will find the following new features and updates in the Sakai 19.4 upgrade planned for July 1st, 2020 from 8:00 AM to Noon.

Update Highlights

• The addition of a Rubrics tool, applicable to Assignments, Forums, and Tests and Quizzes. Rubrics will allow for grading to be input and calculated in the Rubric and applied to the assessment. Rubrics are customized and designed by instructors.
• Changes to the Tests and Quizzes interface: Tests and Quizzes look more like Assignments and Resources, with an ‘add’ tab at the top, remove column on the right side, and an Actions button to the right of the Quiz name. The tabs for Working Copies and Published copies now appear in a list similar to Assignments with “Draft’ identifying the working copy of a quiz.
• The option to enable statistics and grade distribution for student view in Gradebook.
• Excuse/Include Grades in Gradebook.
• Site Info has a cleaner interface and the addition of tabs at the top of the page to view participants and manage the overview page.
• A collection of small updates to Sakai’s component technologies. These updates will ensure Sakai is robust and ready for future challenges.

Outstanding Issues

Echo360 Embeds

During our upgrade to Sakai 19.4 on July 1st a disruption has occurred with the process of embedding video with out echo360 platform, resulting the in the 'insert' button losing functionality. We are currently working on correcting the issue with echo360 and ask your patience. If you are currently teaching or preparing for a summer course we can assist with a work around using the 'link' function in echo360. Instructions detailing this process can be found at Echo360 Links in Sakai

Cache Clearing

A few of the Sakai tools (notably the Sakai Forums) will hold onto browser cache longer than expected causing issues for users returning after the most recent Sakai update. If you encounter issues such as unexpected page re-loading, issues saving page or tools settings, or messages saying that the "browser session is out of date" try clearing your web browser's cache. Instructions are available at https://clear-my-cache.com/