MyUCDavis's interface in 2005.

MyUCDavis, or 'MyUCD' for short, integrates several UC Davis Web applications and online services into one convenient location. Most students use this service to check their classes and grades (e.g.,midterms), to view instructors' announcements, to check when and where finals are, and to check SISWEB pass times. Some students use the service to create to-do lists, calendars, and other helpful study aids. Geckomail is integrated into MyUCDavis.

Roughly 40% of instructors use the gradebook function of MyUCDavis. (cite)

MyUCDavis can do more than most people think. For some tutorials on advanced features, visit the tutorials page.

Since MyUCDavis' creation it has been frequently down and sluggish (see aggie article on a typical outage). On March 15, 2006 (finals week of Winter quarter), MyUCDavis and SISWeb were both down due to SISWEB being flooded with requests for admission information — 40,000 emails were sent out informing applicants of their admission status.

MyUCDavis usually goes down partly from midnight until 10 am each Saturday. Mostly course stuff. This is a horrible, crappy, horrible thing to do during finals, especially when some courses, like biochem, test at 8am on Saturday, and you *need* to access some files now damn it. The error message (if you don't manage to get the "We're doing system maintanence" only infuriates you more. "er ErrorThe server encountered an internal error and was unable to completecompletecomple." Thanks!

MySpace

Under the MyTools section, there is a link to MySpace. All university affiliates with a login get a certain amount of storage space to upload anything they want. UCD Undergrads get an astonishing 100mb that most don't even know about! Another virtually unknown feature is that you can share files. You are given a standard two folders, one private, one public. You can create your own subfolders if you want. Anything not in the private folder will be accessible by all. According to the security warning, This means that anyone, including someone off campus and without a Kerberos password, can view the contents of these folders. You can "Do a User Search" and look up what other people have in their public space. Try it on your friends, it's funny sometimes what people upload not knowing that public actually means public. You can even add them as a friend to save time. You can set security options, such as allowing people to read only, or even allowing people to insert their own files into yourspace.

MyUCDavis, SmartSite, and Sakai

There are plans to replace the more limited set of course management tools within MyUCDavis (e.g., GradeBook and QuizBuilder) with a more comprehensive set of tools that are available through Sakai, a "$6.8M program founded by over 100 institutions of higher education (including Michigan, Indiana, MIT, Stanford, uPortal Consortium) to develop open source collaboration and learning environment (CLE) software that can be accessed, customized, and enhanced by any participating institution."

UC Davis' instance of Sakai has been coined SmartSite and is being piloted by a number of faculty members with IET Mediaworks.

SmartSite Links

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