[oae-urg] Question visual customization of sites in OAE

[N. Matthijs]

Hi Alison,

Whether or not you should be encouraging these student services
and groups to put (part of) their web presence in OAE is a question
that probably only Berkeley can really answer, and depends on
whether you think the current system capabilities are functional
and friendly enough for these people to use it.

OAE has definitely been built with this in mind, and the near-future
work like content authoring improvements will make this a much
better experience. I know that Cambridge has for example added
a new world type that is called "Websites".

In terms of customizing the shell of an OAE world, this can be done
to a certain extent today. A world can have a sakai:customStyle
property which is a reference to a CSS file, which will then be pulled
in and used when loading the world. This CSS file could override
the main CSS so you can change the appearance of the world. I
believe NYU is using this feature for branding worlds.

Unfortunately, we do not have a theme picker yet, which would allow
people to switch between different institutionally defined themes
on the fly. However, this is definitely a goal for the project in the
future.

Hope that helps,
Nicolaas

> Hi folks,
>
> At Berkeley we have been discussing various use cases around the different
> types of content that could potentially be put in our instance of OAE,
> CalCentral. Currently we are just piloting with 2 departments, but will be
> expanding soon.
>
> We are hoping to make CalCentral the "one stop shop" for students which
> combines their LMS with what might be thought of as traditionally
> "portal"-like services and information: course planning & registration,
> progress toward graduation, grades, finances, campus services, student
> groups, career opportunities, etc.
>
> One question we have is how much we should encourage these various student
> services & groups to put information in CalCentral. In particular, should
> we encourage them to put part (or even all) of their web presence there?
> Perhaps they could have a static external "marketing" website that doesn't
> change much, but in CalCentral they have more dynamic content or content
> geared more towards students and the tasks they want to perform.
>
> An issue we see with creating an entire website in the OAE is that there
> isn't a way to customize the presentation of at least the "shell" of a
> page to make it look more like a website. We can imagine these users
> wanting to customize everything between the black top nav bar and the
> footer, changing the font, colors and even navigation or structure of that
> page. Another use case where this type of customization could be helpful
> is a student portfolio.
>
> Do we foresee the ability to customize an OAE group/site in this way being
> on the roadmap in the future?
>
> Do others think "website"-like content might be part of their OAE
> instance?
>
> Thanks much for your input!
> Allison
>
> Allison Bloodworth
> Senior User Experience Designer
> Educational Technology Services
> University of California, Berkeley
> abloodworth at berkeley.edu
> 510-289-6627
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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