May  18, 2007

To: UC Davis Faculty, Students and Staff 

Re: Fall launch of UC Davis learning management and collaboration system

Dear friends:

I am very pleased to inform you that after a successful year-long pilot, we are preparing to officially launch SmartSite, UC Davis’ new learning management and collaboration system. The launch will coincide with the beginning of fall 2007.  

SmartSite is an online environment available to all members of the campus community. Since the introduction of the pilot in 2006, instructors have used the various tools to share class materials with students, to manage and distribute grades, and to create a common space where students can contribute their ideas and share them with their classmates. SmartSite has also been used by researchers to coordinate cross-campus projects and by staff to simplify and enhance collaboration by sharing documents, posting announcements, working on drafts, coordinating committee work, tracking progress on projects, and communicating online with team members from anywhere, at any time.

By adopting SmartSite, we are introducing the rich and extensible set of tools developed through the Sakai consortium and adapted for use at UC Davis. It’s a flexible framework that over time will enable us to add a range of tools contributed by higher education people around the world. We will also integrate other emerging instructional technology and communication tools -- all of this in consultation with our community.

The upcoming 2007-08 academic year will be a year of transition. First, we will help faculty who have been using the course management tools in MyUCDavis. Those tools will remain available through 2007-08 and will run in parallel to SmartSite. They will not be retired until the start of fall 2008. Also, our programmers have developed special ‘migration’ tools to simplify the transfer of course quizzes and Web sites from MyUCDavis to SmartSite. Our expanded support team stands ready to help with those tools, or with any other aspect of this transition.

If you haven’t already logged on to SmartSite, I encourage you to set aside some time over the next couple of months to familiarize yourself with it. Request a class or project site, set up a space to support your research, try out the various tools and features, and start collaborating with colleagues and with other members of the community. You might also consider taking part in the many training and support opportunities available this spring and summer.

To learn more about these opportunities, please visit http://smartsite.ucdavis.edu. There, you will also find a description of the tools, online videos and documentation to help you get started, and examples of tasks and projects for which SmartSite has already been used.

A new phase is about to begin for UC Davis – a phase that encourages new forms of communication, learning, collaboration, and community building. I invite you to join us and experience it for yourself.

If you have questions about SmartSite, please contact our IT Express support team at smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu or (530) 754-HELP.

Regards,

Peter M. Siegel
Vice Provost and CIO
Information and Educational Technology