Sakaidelic Musings

It was announced yesterday to both the Resources WG and Pedagogy lists that the Resources Viewer aka Content Viewer is ready for QA.

After trying to get it working in 2.4 at the Conference, it's nice to finally see it in action. I think this tool shows that the whole approach to course resources is being rethought. I already know the main complaint users will have though: It's a little non-intuitive to add the descriptions and accompanying info to the items in Resources to see them displayed in the Viewer. Same goes for reordering the items.

Jim Eng mentioned that he believes the Viewer will one day become a tool for editing, as well as viewing, but I think limiting to read-only for scope reasons is not a horrible way to go.

Obviously, the Viewer still has some bugs, which are listed over on the project in JIRA. (You must have an account to see the issues.) Particularly, I'm interested in RSV-6, RSV-7 and RSV-14. I think those are the main deal breakers when it comes to including it our implementation of 2.4.

Firstly, just wanted to post a link to this entry about Blackboard: Blackboard Is Losing Customers, but What Does It Mean? Basically, its too early to tell anything yet, but its interesting nonetheless.

Now, I wanted to recap the current state of Resources in Sakai. I've actually been able to make it to two conference calls, so I feel pretty plugged in right now.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the core "Resources" tool in Sakai is a key area for improvement in user experience, and it's definitely an important issue for us at NYU. We have articulated it as something like "course material organization and presentation," and many new tools or approaches are currently in various stages of work. Here is a summary (especially useful as we approach the Newport Conference):

• regular Resources tool
• Resources Viewer aka Content Viewer
• Citations Helper
• POCS (new!)
• rWiki
• Melete
• some kind of possible JSR-170-based front end?
• a possible re-write of the Resources tool (possibly based on RSF), codename: ResourcesWOW!

So far, the things that seem the most interesting to me are Resources Viewer and Citations Helper. I was happy to hear that two of my three dealbreaker issues for Resources Viewer have been fixed, and that soon Resources Viewer will be able to handle content not strictly in Resources (like Assignments, etc.)

Also, it was interesting to hear a tiny bit about Mark Norton's POCS. It's interesting that some of these tools are defined by purely functional requirements (Resources Viewer, Citations Helper, rWiki) and others are more to satisfy a certain pedagogical approach (Melete, POCS). It's interesting (but not surprising) that I find the former more interesting.

In other news, the Resources WG will probably have a meeting in Newport on Friday, possibly sharing a half day with Fluid, but nothing is confirmed yet.