SmartSite oversight group adds online forum for questions, ideas, comments

The campus has created two new online resources to help faculty, staff and students expand their use of SmartSite.

One is a Web site for the two-month-old SmartSite Oversight Committee, and the second is a community forum where SmartSite users can pose questions, suggestions and comments for the committee's consideration.

Professors Susan Keen and Caroline Bledsoe, co-chairs of the committee, announced the new resources in a June 11 letter to faculty. The letter also highlights the committee's recommendations for the future development of SmartSite, which became the main campus system for teaching, researching and collaborating online a year ago.

The site contains their advice, the committee's charge, membership, contacts, and other information.

People can use the forum (created with tools available in SmartSite) to ask questions or share comments and ideas about anything involving SmartSite. The site is similar to the campus budget forum (also powered by SmartSite) at budget.ucdavis.edu.

To join the SmartSite forum, visit the Oversight Committee's Web site for details.

Since last summer, faculty have created more than 1,600 course sites--plus a similar number of project sites for research groups, academic intranets, student projects, discussion forums, and other collaborative uses, Bledsoe and Keen say in the letter.

"As you prepare for the upcoming academic year," they write, "we encourage you to join the growing SmartSite community, if you haven't already."