Likelihood to Recommend Positive: The virtual workspace created for a work team within the same company, for the resemblance of information and communications in one place.Negative: The access for members of a non-profit organization who have external emails from the host but need the same access as an internal person since their volunteer work is part of the very core of the federation.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Virtual meetings - ease of set up and execution File sharing! We build channels for projects, and being able to invite only project members is huge! Peer-to-peer communications - being able to "ping" one of my colleagues, either text, video or call-only, on-demand, is what runs our business. Read full review 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." Read full review Cons The feature of notifications in the mobile application could be improved. Sometimes notifications of different teams are not visible and are only visible when the application is opened. It uses lots of computational resources while running and thus, slows down the system sometimes. It allows a few channels per team. The number of channels could be increased for better productivity. Read full review 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 Read full review Likelihood to Renew Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product
Read full review 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.
Read full review Usability User experience has been much better than the previous Skype for Business app. It has an easy-to-use interface with persistent chats. The search feature is very fast and useful. MS Teams has mostly focused on Collaboration and team building features which are very useful for organizational communications. Since Teams is accessible from multiple platforms like Laptop, Desktop, Mobile phones, etc it has been very convenient from a Mobility perspective.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Rare, but outages do happen
Read full review Performance Sometimes about once a week I get a message that says "Sorry, there seems to be something wrong". But it goes away in a few minutes.
Read full review Support Rating Using Microsoft Teams has resulted in much faster business communications with both co-workers and consultants. There has been little need for support with this software as the interface is very intuitive and the product is overall very well designed. We did encounter an issue with the built-in phone service, however, this was quickly resolved by the support team.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating I find everything I need for my day-to-day work.
Read full review No, I don't
Read full review Alternatives Considered Our company and IT department previously used
Skype for our communication needs.
Skype was not dependable in my opinion, because it seems each time I used it during a call and/or a meeting, I and several other team members would get disconnected more than once. This caused a great interruption of our meeting, caused team members to have to ask others to repeat themselves and caused a general lack of interest in employee attendance during meetings.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model Honestly, this tool is worth every penny. Yes, it's not free and you pay for the quality of services and the license. But the ROI and the benefits are all there. Also, the renewal, negotiation, and contract terms are all very well explained by our Microsoft account manager, and she's a charm.
Read full review Scalability It does not appear to have a limit to how many teams and employees we can have using it
Read full review Professional Services I used Skype for Business to take calls, hold conferences, and provide remote assistance to users. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is superior to Skype for Business in my opinion. My job entails a lot of screen sharing.
Read full review Return on Investment I'm not sure I can point to a specific ROI, but it has improved our ability to communicate and work more effectively together. It's also nice to have records of every interaction, photo, and document that has been shared. Less chance of something completely disappearing. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots