by Annelie Schmittel, PhD Student Mass Communication,  University of Florida

Course management systems (CMS) have undergone steady transitions ever since the birth of the World Wide Web. These transitions certainly impacted (and still impact) many college campuses in the country. The progression towards online teaching and even the expectations of use of technology in regular classrooms only fuels the need for professors, instructors or teaching assistants to become familiar with course management systems and the tools within.

Here at the University of Florida we recently switched from Blackboard to Sakai. While Sakai may not be the most intuitive or user-friendly CMS out there, it does offer a variety of tools that can be of great benefit to instructors.

My TOP 5 Sakai tools are:

1. Site Info

When your course site is first set up, a few features are automatically included on your left-hand navigation. Site Info allows you to customize your left-hand navigation bar, both as far as content and order of navigation links. You can include tools that you will implement in your course, while at the same time eliminating tools that you will not use. This will help students and instructors in terms of organization and clarity.

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