What is Grad Tools?
The Rackham School of Graduate Studies at University of Michigan has assembled a special set of tools in the CTools environment to help Rackham doctoral students as they work toward their degrees. These tools are known collectively as Grad Tools. The unique feature of Grad Tools is the Dissertation Checklist, which presents the process for completing the doctoral degree in one personalized view.
The Dissertation Checklist in a student’s Grad Tools site automatically inherits the required and recommended steps from the Graduate School. The student, as well as the student’s program coordinator and/or committee members, may also add steps.
In addition to the Dissertation Checklist, Grad Tools provides several tools common to CTools, including a schedule, discussion feature, a place to store forms and documents, and more.
Getting Started
University of Michigan Rackham doctoral students can create and access their student Grad Tools sites from this page. If you don’t yet have a Grad Tools site, see the Student Grad Tools Help Guide for instructions on how to set one up.
University of Michigan staff can access their department Grad Tools site from this page. Log in using your U-M uniqname and Kerberos password. If a Grad Tools tab does not appear at the top of your screen, please e-mail gradtools@umich.edu or see the Department Grad Tools Help Guide for more information.
Other institutions interested in using Grad Tools can review the demonstration movie, poster, and other the materials on this site for more information. If you would like to discuss using Grad Tools on your campus, contact us at gradtools@umich.edu.
Grad Tools was developed by a team from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and CTools, and its source code is distributed under the Sakai Project and the Educational Community License. Development is ongoing within the Sakai community. Online discussions of the project are hosted in Confluence under Sakai Discussion Group: Grad Tools. A free Confluence account is required to post messages to the discussion.
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