Sakai Project Sites

The primary purpose of Durham Tech's Sakai system is to enable instructors to provide online materials, resources, and activities for curriculum, adult education, and continuing education classes.

Special sites on Sakai called project sites can be set up by request for college-sanctioned committees, project teams, task forces, departments, etc.

What is a Sakai project site?

Sakai project sites work like Sakai course sites, but are not tied to a semester or to a course roster. The same set of tools are available in project sites as in course sites.

Project sites do not have "instructors" or "students" but instead have the following roles:

• maintain role = has instructor-like privileges: can add, edit, and remove content, and can see unpublished sites
• access role = has student-like privileges: can view content and submit things like Forum posts, assignments or tests; can see only published sites

The person requesting the site holds the "maintain" and is responsible for the site's content,adding users, assigning them appropriate roles, removing them when they no longer need access, and publishing the site so others can see it.

How can I get a Sakai project site created?

A Sakai project can be created at the request of a college employee who has completed the pre-requisites to use Sakai as an instructor.

To request a Sakai project site, send an email to sakaihelp@durhamtech.edu with the following information:

• Title for the site
• Name of person responsible for the site
• A brief description of the purpose of the site and who (in general) the participants will be

It usually takes a few days for us to create your project site. We will notify you by email when it's ready.

Once it's set up, how do I access my project site?

To access your project site, log in to Sakai, click on More Sites, and look under the Projects heading. (The Projects heading is usually near the bottom of the More Sites window. You may have to scroll down to see it.)

How do I add users to my project site?

To add users to a project site, you must know their Durham Tech login ID (ex: jordanm2323). If a user does not have a Durham Tech login ID, he/she cannot be given access to the site. All employees (full and part time), all credit students, and non-credit students who have used Sakai have Durham Tech login IDs.

To add users to your project site:

1. In your project site, go to Site Info > Add Participants.
2. In the box provided, enter the login IDs of the persons you wish to add, one per line. (You can copy/paste from an Excel column, Word document, or other similar source.)
3. Click Continue.
4. Select the role you want the users to have. Typically you should choose the "access" role. (Later, you can easily give particular individuals the "maintain" role if needed.)
5. Click CONTINUE.
6. Optionally, you can select to have an automatic email sent to users letting them know you have added them to the project site. NOTE: Do this only if the project site is already "published".
7. Click Continue.
8. Click Finiah.
9. On the lower half of the screen, you will see a list of all users who have been added to the site, and you can change anyone's role if needed. (Remember to click UPDATE at the bottom after changing any roles.)

• TIP: We strongly recommend that you limit the "maintain" role to a small number of trusted users (one to three, as a rule of thumb) and to those who have completed Sakai instructor training. It's against good computer practice to give too many individuals (especially untrained ones!) the full editing and deleting capabilities that come with the "maintain" role.