Project Sites for Advisors

About project sites for advisors

Each academic advisor has a project site on Sakai that can be used to share information and communicate with your advisees.

Project sites in Sakai look and act much like course sites, so if you already use Sakai for teaching, you'll be familiar with using your project site. If you haven't used Sakai, you should register for and complete the Intro to Sakai online workshop to learn the basics before using your project site for advising.

How do I access my advising project site?

Log in to Sakai, and click More Sites along the top. In the window that lists your sites, scroll all the way to the bottom. You’ll see your advising site at the bottom, under the Projects category. (Or, instead of clicking More Sites, you can click on Membership on the left, and look for your advising site in the list.)

What can I do with the site?

Project sites in Sakai work almost exactly like course sites. As an advisor, you have the maintain role in your advising site, which is just like the instructor role in a course site. With this role you can add tools, add content, publish the site, email site participants, etc. Tools that may be useful for advising include...

• Email – send emails to all or selected advisees
• Resources – provide documents and files advisees need
• Lessons – post info and/or helpful links
• Sign-up – allow students to choose an appointment time from a range of dates/times
• Meetings – have an online live meeting with a student

How do I make the site visible to advisees?

As with course sites, you have to "publish" your advising site before students will be able to see it.

To publish a site, click the Publish Now button in the upper left area of the site (just under the Durham Tech logo).

If for some reason you need to "unpublish" the site again, go to Site Info > Manage Access, select "Leave as Draft" and click UPDATE.

How do students access the site?

Same way you do: Log into Sakai, click “More Sites”, scroll to the bottom, and look under the “Projects” category. (Or click “Membership” instead of “More Sites”)

How are advisees added to my site?

Each day an automated process adds any new advisees that have been assigned to you in Colleague (and inactivates any that are unassigned). Note: The Advising office in Student Services is responsible for assigning advisees (and unassigning them). Changes they make in Colleague to your advising list will be reflected in your project site the next day. Your assigned advisees are “enrolled” in your advising project site with the “access” role, which is similar to the “student” role in course sites.