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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ellucian Banner

    Score5.2 out of 10
    N/AEllucian offers Banner educational ERP, including its student management system emphasizing control and reporting of process-oriented facets of education such as grading and attendance.N/A

    Sakai

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ASakai 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…N/A
    Pricing
    Ellucian BannerSakai
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Ellucian BannerSakai
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Must contact vendor for pricing information.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Ellucian BannerSakai
    Considered Both Products
    Ellucian
    No answer on this topic
    Apereo
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    80%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    82%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    80%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    78%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Ellucian BannerSakai
    Student and Faculty Administration
    Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Ellucian Banner and Sakai
    Feature
    Ellucian Banner
    8.5
    8 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Sakai
    -
    Ratings
    Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology7.98 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Registration Management8.97 Ratings00 Ratings
    District Communications, such as messaging and alerting8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
    Roster Management8.56 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform Customization8.16 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher Self-Service8.86 Ratings00 Ratings
    Student Data Security8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community Support8.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    Class Scheduling8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    State and National-level Reporting9.27 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance Support8.96 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher and Parent Mobile Application7.25 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning Management
    Comparison of Learning Management features of Ellucian Banner and Sakai
    Feature
    Ellucian Banner
    -
    Ratings
    Sakai
    7.9
    5 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Course authoring00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
    Course catalog or library00 Ratings7.04 Ratings
    Player/Portal00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
    Learning content00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
    Mobile friendly00 Ratings7.05 Ratings
    Progress tracking & certifications00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
    Assignments00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Compliance management00 Ratings7.04 Ratings
    Learning administration00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
    Learning reporting & analytics00 Ratings6.05 Ratings
    Social learning00 Ratings9.04 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Ellucian BannerSakai
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Google Classroom
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Schoology Learning
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    D2L Brightspace
    Score7.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Ellucian BannerSakai
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.4
    (21 ratings)
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.4
    (3 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.1
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ellucian BannerSakai
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Ellucian
    As a SIS, Banner Pages is the full meal deal. There are multiple modules that integrate out of the box. Because Banner is all I've ever used as a SIS, I can't contrast it with another program. I can say, it gets the job done for us. I will also say that a tremendous amount of time goes into strategizing how to get new functions to work for us and there always seems to be some catch that requires even more work. In general, the university has been hesitant to build too many modifications into Banner because they take a lot of time to maintain. Inevitably, a new update (of which there are MANY for Banner) will break stuff that isn't "vanilla." This is unfortunate because we've had some great ideas for how to make Banner better for us, but also understandable. If you're looking for a highly modular system, this isn't it. Banner has lots of components, but the components work the way they work and that's that. Also, don't expect very quick responses to bugs or glitches. If the bug is major, yes, it will be addressed. But, little function issues seem to be regularly overlooked.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Ellucian
    • I think it's great to use if you are tracking grades for certain classes, especially if you'd like to see how students do, comparing midterm to final grades. If you have the permissions, you can see both.
    • It's also good to track students individually. You can look up a certain semester, and see how they did in that particular time frame, but you can also see their cumulative gpa, or even look up their entire course history.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    • 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."
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    Cons
    Ellucian
    • One thing I miss from the previous version of Ellucian Banner, is the control + page down. I struggle with alt + page down.
    • I love the Ellucian Banner favorites; however, it is a little difficult to navigate.
    • I can honestly only think of 2 things that could be improved. I use Ellucian Banner daily.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    • The coming upgrade will address many issues, the visual presentation of sites and courses
    • The Forums (discussion) tool is not natively integrated into the Gradebook, but needs another step to connect the two.
    • The Wiki tool is awkward and not WYSIWYG. But I understand that is common with wikis in most platforms
    • The Help documentation could use some focus on student needs rather that course developer needs
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Ellucian
    We have no reason not to renew with Ellucian - we are in deep with the ecosystem, and have Ellucian providing us with information technology support. If anything, should the opportunity arise, we'd probably consider adding a different ellucian tools into the suite of applications we already have on board.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Ellucian
    You definitely have to learn it before it becomes easy to use. It's better than it was, but it's still not entirely intuitive. You can't just look at it and play around to figure out how it works
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Ellucian
    It's pretty much up all the time.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Ellucian
    Has gotten much better due to new hardware.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Ellucian
    Our department generally does not contact the support center for Banner but the IT department does. That being said, in the seven years that I have been here, I have not once needed to contact the support center; we have had no glitches on Banner's side that needed to be addressed.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Ellucian
    very satisfied, along with the IT staff and ellucian support the upgrades do very well and have minimum down time.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    No, I don't
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Ellucian
    PeopleSoft was more user-friendly. It also provided the ability to save and bookmark queries. PeopleSoft will allow users to use common names to search for queries. Overall, it seemed much more current than Banner. PeopleSoft provided enrollment data for specific sections which allowed one to spot trends of enrollment in a given class.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Ellucian
    being able to scale with hardware was easy and not cumbersome. We were allowed to user virtual machines which made things very scalable.
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Ellucian
    • There is positive ROI on the product overall. It had reduced or allowed us to focus our staff members on something which is very use and it does the job in the background.
    • The application has supported in a lot of ways in saving resources and utilizing them in very productive & efficient manner
    Incentivized
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    Apereo
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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