Auzmor headquartered in West Des Moines offers Auzmor Learn, a corporate LMS designed to make launching, tracking, and reporting for any type of training, in one centralized location, viewable on any device, with tools to track and encourage employee learning.
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Sakai
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Sakai is an open source learning
management system provided by the Apero Foundation. The LMS provides what it
calls Core and Expanded Features. The Core Features encompass an integrated
tool set that is tested by the Sakai community members and is then included
with each new release. The tool set can be configured by: instructors,
students, research investigators and project leaders. The other set of tools, known as “Contrib
Tools” are specific to Sakai tools and innovations that are developed…
Auzmor Learn is well suited in allowing us to create content beyond just the normal PowerPoint presentations that are normally used. The content creation piece will allow us to have more interactive training available. Auzmor will also allow us to offer self-paced training instead of or to supplement live instructor led training. We will be able to manage and track both in Auzmor, which is a plus. It is also suited to provide both internal and external training for our needs.
I've used Sakai to supplement my Public Speaking class. Public Speaking is very much a F2F type course, so I didn't use Sakai much for course content delivery. However, I did use it to post my syllabus, post my lecture slides, communicate any class announcements, and to conduct a final exam for the class. Building the final exam was very simple and I was easily able to swap out questions to vary it from term to term. Before I was a staff member and lecturer, I used Sakai as a student. My instructor used Sakai to varying degrees. I really appreciated it being the one-stop-receptacle for all-things class related. If I somehow lost an assignment instruction sheet, I could rely on it being posted there. For multimedia work it was lacking, at that time, but I know Sakai has been updated over time and I hope that part of it has improved. If I was ever frustrated by Sakai, it was because faculty used it in a piecemeal way. It's fine not to want to use the gradebook, but don't enter some grades and not others. It's wonderful to upload class documents to it; but don't do some and not others. Whatever way you're going to use Sakai, commit to it and use it well. Your students will thank you.
Assessments can now easily be uploaded in bulk using a CSV template.
Successful assessment submission(s) from a learner will trigger a notification to their respective manager/instructor/admin who assigned the training to them.
We can create a lesson through video formats, documents, embedding links, YouTube & Vimeo.
It can create and track our live training both classroom and online.
The course is publicly accessible with public weblink.
Sakai is flexible, providing a way for our customers (instructors) to customize their courses while staying in line with consistency and continuity of course design. This has allowed our courses to be far less cookie-cutter and stale. This is mostly accomplished through Sakai's LTI functionality and it's Lessons tool. This is particularly notable because not every course is the same, nor should it be. Our faculty and course developers can draw from OER resources, course text publisher assessment quiz banks and pull in content from sources from our library databases and services like YouTube.
Sakai is customizable, allowing us to pair it with our student information system to automatically create and track with student registration data - including adding new students and removing students who have elected to drop a course. The customization features also include being able to create course templates for individual schools or courses using specific tools or sequences of tools as well as a way to personalize content for students when they engage with each lesson.
Sakai is stable in the market. We have been using Sakai for almost 10 years and continue to see it improve; responding to changing trends in browser technologies, mobile platforms and accessibility requirements. Multiple programs offered over the years have been recognized by outside organizations like BestColleges.com for our programs and given high marks by students taking the courses offered in Sakai.
Sakai allows our faculty to inform it's continued evolution. We work closely with the developers, having a front seat to how things can work and function for our faculty. There have been multiple occasions where faculty ask, "Can Sakai do this?" and the answer is never "No."
There was some missing functionality that was raised to the Auzmor team, which they are very receptive of that feedback and work with you on providing a solution, work around or addressing it in a future release.
Being able to attach certain file types for training exercises was not supported.
There was some limitations on resizing some images and text boxes during course content creation.
Some of the whitelabeling and cutomization of the UI has some limitations.
From a functionality standpoint the software continues to meet the requirements we had set for the LMS we chose to implement. The addition of new features has increased the likelihood we will continue to use Auzmor Learn. As long as the usability of the software meets the needs of our learners we would not have a reason to look at other options
Sakai is a good general learning management system - it is not leading edge but rather a stable system with standard learning management system features. It can be fairly easily customized and is fairly easy to learn from both student learning and faculty administrative vantage points. New paradigms for online learning though are emergent so the current field should also be investigated with competitors.
Overall Auzmor Learn is very usable but there is always room for improvements in every program. Auzmor is very willing to continuously improve their product as well as ask me where I think they might improve or address a unique issue for me that ultimately improves the product for all Auzmor Learn users.
When faculty are preparing courses from term to term, a portion of the content is static within a specific discipline. The time it takes to import past lessons into new versions of Sakai can be an inefficient use of my time. When I want to add new content and edit from the old content, it's reliant upon me to cut and paste the content from term to term rather than simply import and edit from a backup.
I have been working with Sandeep from Auzmor and others for over a year. Any time I have a question or issue, I can block time on his calendar and have a conversation about what I'm having issues with. Everybody I talk to from Auzmor listens. I've had several ideas that I believed would improve the admin and user experience on Auzmor. They listened and many times implemented those changes. Their customer service team is the best I've worked with. They are amazing people and they all deserve a raise!
Since Sakai is open-source their documentation is often lacking and support is absolutely needed onsite. Internal documentation is more important with Sakai than other services. The Sakai community is fun, passionate, engaged, and absolutely doing their best, but it's an uphill battle against the current market and trends.
The level of support we have received from Auzmor Learn has been fantastic. The amount of training that we received during the implementation process to the level of support we continue to receive is top tier. If we ever have any issues or questions, we know that a member from Auzmor Learn will be able to help us quickly and efficiently.
As an adjunct professor, I didn't pick Sakai for the university. I have experience with Moodle, Blackboard, eCollege, iBoard and now Sakai. I would have to say that Sakai is one of my all time favorite LMSs to use as it is very easy to navigate.
Sakai makes it easy for students to monitor grades which puts their minds at ease.
Sakai makes it easy for teachers to assign and receive assignments from students.
Communication is one of the most important and one of the most taxing parts of an educational system. Sakai makes this process just a little bit easier.
