Sakai 11 Tips

Known Issues/Solutions

Buttons fail to function

• Issue: Some instructors report instances of buttons not working in Sakai 11. For example, when adding or editing an Assignment, you click the "Post" or "Save" button and nothing happens. Or after editing home page content, you click "Continue" and nothing happens.
• Solution: Clearing the cache resolves this issue. For a full clear of the cache, follow these steps:
  1. Log out of Sakai
  2. Clear your browser's cache - see instructions for clearing the cache in most any browser
  3. Close out of the browser completely
  4. Re-open the browser, log in again, and things should work fine!

Note: This should solve the problem so that it does not recur. However, if you use another browser or computer, you may have to clear the cache there as well. If the problem occurs more than a few times on the same computer or browser, please contact sakaihelp@durhamtech.edu.

YouTube videos are wide

• Issue: YouTube videos embedded in Lessons using "Add Multimedia" under Sakai 2.9 now appear very wide across the screen.
• Solution: To the right of the embedded video, click the edit icon. Change the "Width" to something smaller, such as 40%. (Height can remain as is, or be removed and left blank.) Click Update Item to save the change.

HTML notice

• Issue: A few instructors have reported a notice in a yellow box (as shown below) popping up in their sites. The notice may appear on the course home page, or after copying/pasting content into a text editor box somewhere in Sakai.
  
• Solution: The notice indicates that content that you've entered into Sakai (most likely, content that you copied from somewhere else and pasted in) contains some behind-the-scenes code that is problematic. In some situations, the boxes appear once and then go away forever, and all is fine. However, in some cases, they may pop up every time you visit the page. In the latter case, please contact sakaihelp@durhamtech.edu and let us know which site and where in the site the notices are appearing, and we should be able to clean things up for you.

Tips

Importing content

The process for importing content from another course has some new time-saving features:

• You no longer have to add tools before importing; the import process will automatically add them for you, based on what you choose to import.
• There is now an option to import content from the "home page" (aka "Site Information Display"). Any images on the home page will import and be visible to students (assuming the images were set up properly and visible to students in the course you are importing from!)

For details, see our updated instructions for importing course content (PDF).

Roster

• When you access the Roster, only the first 10 students display. If you scroll all the way down, more students will appear as you scroll.
• Students' email addresses are no longer listed in the Roster. Click Export at the top to download a spreadsheet that contains student email addresses.

Turnitin

• In the prior version of Sakai, Turnitin would check only one attachment per student per assignment. Therefore, instructors were advised to choose "Single file upload" when setting up Turnitin-enabled Assignments, to prevent a student from uploading more than one document. If desired, you can now allow students to submit multiple attachments on a single assignment, and all attachments will be checked by Turnitin.
• On the Assignment grading screen in Sakai, instructors will see a Turnitin column which presents information a bit differently than in the prior version. Each document submitted will show an icon. Point to the icon to see additional information.
  • For example, a yellow triangle icon can mean a couple of different things:
    1. the attachment has been submitted and is pending review (wait 15-30 minutes for results to be returned) OR
    2. an error occurred and Turnitin could not process the document (contact sakaihelp@durhamtech.edu for assistance).
• When setting up a Turnitin-enabled Assignment, if you choose an option (e.g. "Inline and Attachments") that allows students to enter comments along with their attachment(s), those comments will be checked by Turnitin -- but only if the comment text exceeds 25 words. (This is a general rule for Turnitin: any documents or text containing fewer than 25 words are not checked, and will return an "error" stating that the content could not be processed. This error is represented by a yellow triangle.)
  
   
  

New Gradebook

• Instructors can choose to use the old Gradebook (now called "Gradebook Classic") or the new, redesigned one (called simply "Gradebook"). Learn more about the two gradebooks in Sakai 11
• The new Gradebook requires horizontal scrolling to see all items. Inconveniently, the horizontal scrollbar is at the bottom, which means you have to scroll all the way down before you can scroll left to right! An easier method may be to use the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate around in the new Gradebook.

Favorite, Hide and Organize Sites

• You can now "favorite" sites that you want to display at the top of your Sakai page.
  • In the upper right, click on Sites, then click on the "gray" star to the left of a site you want displayed at the top of your Sakai page; the star will display "yellow"
  • After you click on the "X" in the upper right corner of the Sites drop-down box, in the top middle of your page, you can click on a link to "reload" your page, to see your favorites listed across the top of your page
  • Also, in Sites, at the top right of your Sakai page, you can also "un-favorite" sites, by clicking on the yellow star to the left of the course site(s)
• Previously you could hide sites from your "Sites" area that you no longer wanted to see.
  • Now you can also hide categories (such as 2016FA or 2016CE3):
    • At the top left, click one the Home button:
      • Then click on Preferences on the left menu
      • Finally, click on the Sites tab.