Courses Documentation and Support for Faculty
Overview
Courses (powered by Sakai) is an open-source, learning management system that offers faculty a feature-rich, online environment to support teaching and learning. The system includes basic features such as a syllabus, announcements., and content sharing (Resources). It also offers advanced features such as sequenced lesson pages (Lessons), online testing (Tests & Quizzes), assignments, discussion forums, and more.
Quick Links:
- Faculty Top 10 Checklist for a New Term
- Course Creation Schedule
- Recorded Training Sessions
- Live Training Sessions
- Pepperdine Libraries: Library Resources for Faculty
Faculty Guides
Getting Started
- Access Courses (powered by Sakai).
- Navigate your site tabs and tools inside Courses.
- Publish your class site so students can see and access it.
- Add your syllabus to inform students of the class learning objectives.
- Add a file, folder, or web link to Resources to share class materials with participants.
- Add or remove tools to engage students in learning activities.
- Reorder your site tabs to list your most current class sites first and hide older sites.
- Utilize the CKEditor's Accessibility Checker to inspect accessibility issues on your site.
View the full Getting Started guide.
Course Management
- Add class rosters to combine multiple course sections into one site.
- Add or remove tools to engage students in learning activities.
- Manage participants within your course sites.
- Create groups to grant or restrict access to tools or materials.
- Import course materials from another course.
- Picture Roster to view student photos.
- Publish your class site so students can see and access it.
- Reorder, rename, or hide your tools to focus student attention.
- Hide old class sites to speed up your browsing experience.
Content Sharing
- Add an image to engage students in your course site.
- Add a calendar event to keep students informed of tasks and due dates.
- Add a file, folder, or web link to Resources to share documents.
- Add a news feed (RSS) to your tool menu.
- Add a podcast.
- Add a syllabus to inform students of the class learning objectives.
- Add a web link to your tool menu.
- Customize the Home page to direct students on how to use the site.
Communications
- Announcements to keep participants informed of important notices.
- Blogs to promote student reflection and journaling.
- Chat Room to facilitate synchronous text messaging.
- Email Archive to create an email distribution list for your site.
- Discussions (Previously called "Forums") to encourage asynchronous discussion.
- Messages to send emails to participants.
- Zoom to meet online with shared whiteboard, audio, video, and more.
Collaboration
- Zoom to meet online with shared whiteboard, audio, video, and more.
- Dropbox to securely share documents student-to-professor.
- Forums to encourage asynchronous discussion.
- Google Workspace for live document editing, document sharing, and much more.
- Project Site to create a shared space for a research or group team.
- Wiki for collaborative knowledge-building and collaboration.
Assessments
- Assignments to collect and grade paper submissions online.
- Gradebook to securely share academic progress with students.
- Rubrics to score students along a standardized grading system.
- Attendance to track and grade student attendance.
- Polls to anonymously get the pulse on class attitudes and beliefs.
- Statistics to review participant activity with your class tools and materials.
- Tests & Quizzes to administer online assessments.
- Turnitin Assignments to help students maintain academic integrity.
Advanced Topics
- Use the Lessons tool to structure and organize your content.
- Issue certificates of completion to students for achieving milestones.
- Embed content into the Lessons tool to streamline student learning.
- Question types available for assessments in the Tests & Quizzes tool.
- Ask audio-based questions on exams within the Tests & Quizzes tool.
- Calibrate Assessment Settings for assessments in the Tests & Quizzes tool.
Additional support
Within Courses (powered by Sakai) you will find access to "Help" at the bottom of the left menu or clicking the "Help" button at the top right of any tool. Search the built-in help to find basic how-to steps for any of the tools within Courses.
Also within Courses, you can now access the "Pepperdine Help" tab at the bottom of
Courses. This resource offers walk-throughs for common tasks within the learning
management system.
Faculty, staff, and students can also contact IT Tech Central for immediate support at 310.506.4357 (HELP) or 866.767.8623 toll-free in USA.