Coming Soon: A New and Improved Laulima 10.7

Change is coming.

Laulima is getting an upgrade during the winter break, and we will all return in January 2017 to a nice  holiday gift -- an improved Laulima.  ITS gave some of us early keys to the sandbox (version 10.7) and so far I like what I see.  A quick review of the sandbox version includes:

• Bug fixes and user interface redesign
• Drag and drop files into Resources:  This is really nice -- I dragged a dozen files and a folder at the same time into Resources and it worked!  Amazing.
• Gradebook has extra credit feature
• Assignment's instructor comments are sent to the Gradebook, along with the grades
• You can send a file to multiple students' Dropboxes
• Forums will display a profile photo of the poster
• Lessons pages can be printed and a URL can be generated
• There's a lot more, and you will find a good list at Sakai 10 Detailed List of Features
• All indications are that the migration should be painless, so let's hope that there will be minimal issues.

Also, ITS will be shifting "Request for Assistance" support to the Help Desk.  In other words, when you send a request, the first response will not be from Yves, Sandra, or Matt.  This flow has been their original intended structure for some time and only now it's being implemented.

If you haven't heard, the UH System Academic Technologies group has formed an LMS Review Committee to review and recommend a new LMS, possibly to replace Laulima.  It has been 10 years since UH adopted Laulima (Sakai), and the group is seriously looking at all options.  The projected date of implementation is Fall 2018, so I'm glad that ITS is still upgrading and supporting Laulima until we get there.

CELTT will be scheduling hands-on training and migration sessions for Laulima 10.7 in November, December, and January.  Stay tuned!