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…
Lecturer, Department of Communication & Theatre at Pacific Lutheran University (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)
Chose Sakai
Before using Sakai, we used Blackboard. Ultimately, I think moving to Sakai was a financial decision (it was cheaper), but I believe it ended up being better accepted by faculty and students as well. At the time (this was several years ago), Blackboard's UI wasn't as …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Sakai
Sakai will check most of the same boxes as Canvas as far as features. Students can receive feedback, emails, comments, grade and submit assignments, etc. However, everything is going to be a bit more difficult with Sakai. Finding something will take more clicks. Sakai is more …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Administrative Assistant in Customer Service at Bais HaMedrash & Mesivta of Baltimore (Education Management, 11-50 employees)
Chose Sakai
Courses are organized into tabs. Teachers use the program to list assignments with due dates for students in each course. Students use the program to upload assignments before they are due. Teachers upload syllabi along which the students can follow the progress of the …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Instructional Designer/Technologist in Information Technology at Johnson University (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)
Chose Sakai
When considering an LMS there are multiple factors to consider, and typically those factors are not co-equal amongst all stakeholders. Some institutions select an LMS based on C-Level directive; others narrow the field based on feedback from the largest constituent user base or …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
E-Learning Developer in Information Technology at Design by Dooley (E-Learning, 201-500 employees)
Chose Sakai
Sakai and Moodle seem to be neck and neck. I much prefer a proper LMS over a WordPress LMS Plugin. Sakai was much more robust than a simple plugin solution.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Assistant Director Online Instructional Design & Technology at Kentucky Christian University (Higher Education, 51-200 employees)
Chose Sakai
We were for a year or two on WebCT, which has been acquired by Blackboard. It was hard to learn and difficult to administer. Changing to Sakai not only meant a great deal of financial savings, but it was easier to use and more responsive to institutional and consortial needs. …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Instructional Technologist in Information Technology at Pomona College (Higher Education, 201-500 employees)
Chose Sakai
Every few years we evaluate LMSs. Each time Sakai comes out ahead due to cost, customizations, and the Sakai community. We like to keep things in house because it allows us an extra amount of reliability and control that you will have to give up when running most other …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Faculty Member at The Food Business School (Higher Education, 51-200 employees)
Chose Sakai
I was not part of the selection committee, but I believe the ability to white label Sakai was very significant to the choice being made. In another institution I taught (not the one in which I used Sakai) the decision was made to go with MoodleRooms due to the need for support …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Sakai
We selected Sakai for our purposes (copyright/IP education) because students were familiar with the interface and the assessments worked just as desired. Though Canvas could serve as an ideal alternative and is used robustly here at UD, we have chosen Sakai for its familiarity …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Director, Library Digital & Collection Services in Information Technology at Texas State University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Sakai
Sakai is a fair competitor to other online learning systems (i.e. Blackboard, Canvas, Desire-to-Learn). Essentially, Sakai is simply a different flavor of similar models for online learning management systems. It is more different from Moodle and Moodle's social networking …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Instructor in Information Technology at Radford University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)
Chose Sakai
I did not personally select Sakai. However, it is fairly easy to use and customize. That being said, this product is being abandoned by developers/universities and should not be adopted by an organization.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Sakai
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Distance Learning Coordinator/Learning Technologies Specialist in Information Technology at Durham Technical Community College (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)
Chose Sakai
Our faculty found Moodle difficult to use-we tried at least two different releases of it with different vendors. It may have changed greatly since we worked with it in 2010-2012, but that was our experience.
Blackboard was what we were familiar with, but some of its tools were …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Key User Insights
Would buy again
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Delivers good value for the price
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Happy with the feature set
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Lived up to sales and marketing promises
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Implementation went as expected
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Features
Sakai
Learning Management
Comparison of Learning Management features of Sakai
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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."
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
