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Sakai

Sakai

Overview

What is Sakai?

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…

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Recent Reviews

Sakai = Success

10 out of 10
September 15, 2015
Incentivized
We use Sakai as our LMS for the university. It is used for the entire university. It helps guide the day to day student/ instructor …
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Popular Features

View all 11 features
  • Learning content (5)
    8.0
    80%
  • Course authoring (5)
    8.0
    80%
  • Progress tracking & certifications (5)
    8.0
    80%
  • Mobile friendly (5)
    7.0
    70%
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Pricing

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What is Sakai?

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…

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  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

DEMO 002 Download Course Materials from Sakai LMS

YouTube

DEMO 001 Submitting Assignments on Sakai LMS

YouTube

Demo Suku Sakai di Depan Kantor Gubernur Riau

YouTube

pompa dc sakai demo produk

YouTube

Sakai (2006): IMS Common Cartridge Demonstration

YouTube

Richmond Sakai White #2 Deba 180mm Quick Look 30P

YouTube
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Features

Learning Management

Features of LMS and LCMS systems, related to designing, administering, and consuming learning content in an educational, corporate, or on-the-job context.

7.9
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

What is Sakai?

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 and tested by community members and are then made available for others to use outside of the packaged Sakai product releases.

Sakai Video

Introducing Sakai 11

Sakai Integrations

Sakai Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(22)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Users recommend exploring Sakai thoroughly and spending time on it to discover its useful functions. They suggest attending Sakai community events and talking to other institutions using the platform to learn more about its pros and cons.

Users advise knowing the customization limitations of Sakai and coming up with creative solutions to make it suit your class or project's needs. They recommend testing Sakai with real courses and faculty before switching to ensure it meets user requirements.

Users suggest integrating Sakai with other tools like Piazza for additional functionality and comparing Sakai to other services with better support. They recommend considering alternatives and choosing the system that best suits your needs.

Overall, users emphasize the need for thorough exploration, customization, testing, and consideration of alternatives when using Sakai.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Jason Smith, DPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Sakai is being used as an LMS at Pomona College as well as the Claremont University Consortium which includes four other undergraduate colleges and one graduate institution. The business problem that it addresses is that of providing learning materials to students, creating interactive and collaborative environments for students, faculty, and staff, as well a number of additional instructional activities.
  • The Sakai product is "REAL" open source project that is part of the Apereo Foundation. It is the only LMS on the market where students, faculty, and staff can have a say on how Sakai evolves. It is a responsive and vibrant community based product.
  • Sakai is technically rock solid, scalable, and robust.
  • The possibilities of Sakai are endless with LTI (Learning Tools Integration).
  • Sakai is highly customizable, configurable, and can be automated easily where other LMS's can not, especially those hosted in the cloud.
  • Sakai has a bit of improvement to do in standardizing some of its tools.
  • There is the perception that Sakai is hard to install and administer, this needs to be worked on.
  • Built in video conference functionality would be excellent for Sakai.
  • Sakai needs to handle rich media types better.
The Sakai LMS is very well suited for any organization that requires a rock solid LMS that can be customized to meet specific needs of an organization. Sakai is a "TRUE" open source project with a genuine roadmap for the future. It is not constrained by profit motives or a vendors bottom line. Rather it is a community LMS where users actually have input; it is an innovative governance modal for enterprise software.
Learning Management (11)
92.72727272727273%
9.3
Course authoring
90%
9.0
Course catalog or library
90%
9.0
Player/Portal
90%
9.0
Learning content
100%
10.0
Mobile friendly
100%
10.0
Progress tracking & certifications
80%
8.0
Assignments
100%
10.0
Compliance management
100%
10.0
Learning administration
100%
10.0
Learning reporting & analytics
90%
9.0
Social learning
80%
8.0
  • The ability to self host and customize Sakai has led to greater efficiencies and reliability.
  • In all Sakai's cost of ownership is much less than dealing with an ASP and/or cloud solution.
  • Sakai is continuing to improve over the years. Innovation is always happening.
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 solutions. Sakai is an LMS that is here for the long run. They can not be purchased by anyone and it does not look like it will go away any time in the intermediate future. There is much stability in Sakai.
Sakai is a "real" OpenSource software and with that comes a wonderful community of developers and users that offer fantastic support across all levels. Additionally if paid commercial support is a requirement for your organization there are options such as Longsite and others. The documentation and open nature of the Sakai community is like no other, laziness and lack of initiative are the only things that would hold one back from solving a problem.
6500
Sakai is used in the context of higher education. We host courses across 5 undergraduate institutions and about 2600 courses each semester. Over the decade of use we have hosted over 65,000 course and project sites. Sakai has been very economical and the development community is the best. It is one of the few LMS projects out there that continues to evolve.
1
We have one full time person who supports Sakai at the system administration level. Also, there are about six other people who use about 5-15% of their time offering support to Sakai users. These support people are instructional technologists who must be familiar with Sakai from an advanced user perspective.
  • Provide a digital / online course management system.
  • Provide a project based platform that can be used beyond that of the semester frame time.
  • Sakai provides and works as an academic repository of sorts.
  • Because we keep instructors courses available for about 7 years, hot online, it is like an academic repository.
  • Sakai has project sites. These are fantastic collaborative workspaces.
  • We share our installation across 6 institutions and use a single logon and it works!
  • I think that it will be used to server more media type content.
  • Social networking and co-curricular things are likely to increase.
  • Hey, its an LMS, and it is the best of them.
In terms of LMS software Sakai has been around since the beginning and it plays a huge roll in where LMSs are going it to the future. When considering Sakai, don't look at the number of institutions, rather look at the quality of them and how long they have been using Sakai. When you do this you will understand just how good of a piece of Software Sakai is. Long live Sakai!
February 05, 2016

Sakai

Samantha J. Blevins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Sakai was used as a the sole learning management system at our university for the purposes of managing learning and research projects. Currently, our university is transitioning away from Sakai toward Canvas.
  • Organization of content
  • Customization of course navigation and content
  • Small learning curve compared to other systems
  • Ease of use and customization of ePortfolio
  • Tests and Quizzes
  • ePortfolio
This system no longer meets the needs of the university and developers have been abandoning the project. Adopting it now could only lead to user frustration, as adoption of another LMS platform would be inevitable.
  • Ability to customize the system to meet the needs of faculty and learners
  • Greater cost to the university as a whole than a hosted platform
  • Ability to easily design courses based on pedagogy
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.
30000
These are faculty, staff and students at our university who are still using Sakai. Our campus is now transitioning to Canvas.
50
These employees were valuable in their ability to relate to the needs of faculty, staff, and students. In addition, employees almost always went above and beyond the call of duty to support client use of Sakai.
  • building community
  • facilitating learning experiences
  • collaborating on research
  • to create an ongoing community of learners within a subject area
  • N/A
We won't be renewing. We are transitioning to Canvas.
Yes
Blackboard was replaced due to their focus on k-12 and increasing cost.
  • Price
  • Product Usability
The most important factor was the ability to become a developer school for Sakai, having direct influence on the product and being able to incorporate the needs of faculty and staff.
I was not part of this process.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
It was a very long transition, which helped get most faculty and staff on board.
No, I don't
Our university did in house support and did an excellent job.
Yes
Our developers and technical support were quick to remedy the issue or find a work around.
I don't know what Apereo is.
  • Tests/quizzes
  • posting material
  • discussion boards
  • ePortfolio
No
It was easy for me to use, and easy for most of our faculty to catch on.
Raymond J. Uzwyshyn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used Sakai now at two organizations, American Public University (APUS), an online for profit university and Texas State University, a large campus state university. At American Public University Sakai was the main online Learning Management system. It was utilized across the organization as the main tool and engine for students and faculty as the online learning system for the university. At Texas State, Sakai is used on a more selective and limited scale. Here, it is used for a smaller cohort of online classes but it is also used as a support (resource) system for hybrid courses. Sakai addresses the business problem of 'online classroom' management. Essentially, the system can build an infrastructure for faculty and students for learning. For faculty, it provides an infrastructure system for say a semester 'course' arcs and online learning infrastructures. For students, it is the main online system for receiving assignments, taking tests, dialoguing through forums with other students etc.
  • Easy to Use Basic Online Learning System: Sakai does the basics for learning online well. Outlining course lecture material uploading, linking for faculty, forums for students
  • Pragmatic Text Based System: Sakai is solid for text based assignments, both student entry and faculty presentation and overview.
  • Familiar Interface: The Interface for Sakai will be more immediately familiar to both faculty teachers and students as the model is well established in interface design.
  • Lack of Multimedia Features: Sakai is not great for video integration, either uploading or chat based video or integrating new video features into the interface and shell. It is not particularly good for say recording audio or more sophisticated multimedia integration.
  • Lack of Web 2.0 features. Sakai is not great as a Web 2.0 social media learning application. It is definitely from an early but still present model of learning management systems and has remnants of its first generation architecture.
  • Lack of User Experience Design: Sakai is basic in its user interface design. In this way it is approximately a generation back with regards to web 2.0 interface design or higher attention to 'learning' design aesthetics and integrating with online 'learning methodologies.
Sakai is a fair standard learning management system. It is very well suited to standard 'text' based asynchronous online learning modalities. It is less appropriate for 'live' online learning classes. It is not overly suitable for scenarios where the learning requires a lot of 'collaborative' group work or large classroom 'MOOC' like environments. In this way, it is more of a first generation learning management system.
  • For American Public University System, Sakai seemed an effective tool. As with any technology though, times change and with changing times comes new technological possibilities. At its implementation stage, Sakai had a positive effect in adding to the ROI and is built as a desktop online learning system. Currently, there are many competitors in the market probably worth looking at further if one wishes to push the leading edge with regards to mobile possibilities, multimedia etc.
  • Sakai was useful as a resource system in tying online library resources to the university online curriculum. It allowed for library/university curriculum connections that otherwise would not be possible. We actually won several awards with our Sakai/Online Library/Libguides online curriculum integration.
  • For an online for-profit university in the early days of online learning Sakai was a great tool. For land based universities transitioning to online learning modalities, Sakai is still a fair option in terms of hybrid learning possibilities and enabling an online resource folder for every physical class. Sakai is definitely not leading edge but more proven system stability undergoing versioning processes.
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 possibilities but not quantitatively better or worse. Having said that Sakai does not present a new 'paradigm' for online learning but essentially presents a standard 'learning management system' with a few different bells and whistles. There are areas from a newer generation of LMS systems, say EdX, Coursera, Udemy models that shine brighter in certain respects (collaboration, Web 2.0 possibilities, incorporation of video) and there are areas that other systems do better. It would be beneficial when doing a learning management system comparison to look at the pragmatic goals of your institution and learning program infrastructure and conduct a cost benefit analysis. The other larger point that should be made is that Sakai is an open source application compared to say other vendor hosted or purchased applications with the associated possibilities and challenges therein.
1800
At my previous institution, American Public University, most of the infrastructure staff used Sakai. At that time, this was approximately 1800 faculty, a department of instructional technology designers, a media department, an online library of 22 librarians, all students at the university (at that time, 125,000, circa 2013). Other business areas represented, university marketing, business analytics and core IT.
Because American Public University System was based around Sakai, there were a large amount of staff devoted to the program. These were divided into core IT and backend systems, multimedia designers, instructional designers, online librarians, technical support staff, various staff connected to backend server and database operations, system security and other IT functions required for LMS management. A smaller online program at a physical university would require decidedly less.
  • Online Learning: Teaching Classes (Main Framework)
  • Archiving Classes: Main Framework
  • Courses and Larger Undergraduate and Graduate Degree Programs
  • Sakai was used as a framework for a larger faculty MOOC (APUS)
  • Sakai was used as a shell for resources for hybrid physical/online classes (Texas State)
  • Sakai was used for large section introductory university classes (introduction to Research, Freshman experience etc)
  • Expansion of physical classes into online modalities
  • Non traditional workshops
  • Frameworks for learning symposia
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.
  • Adding Forum Comments
  • Setting up Textual Assignments
  • Submitting assignments
  • Multimedia is challenging in Sakai
  • Web 2.0 collaborative functions are challenging in Sakai
  • Mobile Learning possibilities are challenging in the Sakai interface
Sakai possesses a standard user interface. It is generally usable but not great in terms of innovation or user experience. There are opportunities for customization but the experience from the user standpoint does not provide a 'next generation' learning platform but rather one that is a little more than what one expects regarding 'distance' ed on the web. Forums are really threaded discussions not say multimedia voice threads. Sakai is a good tool for say the next level of correspondence course online. It is also good in terms of ease of use. It's clunkinesss is something one gets used to as one works with the application from student, faculty and designer levels. Having said that, Sakai cannot be considered an amazing experience in terms of 'user' experience by any stretch of the imagination. Basic standard tool.
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