Martin R.

Managing Director

Management Consulting

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

6/24/2015

"Sakai works well for 20+ institutions that share a single instance"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

Sakai is an open source LMS, which means that there are many, many people who care about its quality and functionality -- people who work in higher education. The people who build Sakai are the people who use Sakai. (Contrast this with commercial LMS where the system is build by programmers in a back room somewhere for profit.)

That said, Sakai has a wonderful open architecture that is pedagogically neutral. Instructional designers and instructors can place whatever tools are appropriate for their teaching, and, more importantly, for their students' learning, into a course. The tool pallet for Sakai is extensive, with tools for communication, administration, collaboration, and more. Sakai excels most of all, perhaps, in its ability to build collaborative working and learning models. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

In an open source world, one has to get used to a rather broad range of opinions about what the system should look like. There may be less of a cohesive design strategy. That said, however, I've seen an awful lot of commercial products (and some open source ones as well) that have just as much, even more, lack of cohesiveness. Consider a certain commercial product that seems to enjoy acquiring (and suing) competitive products and then "integrating" them into its architecture. The design strategy of acquisition and stitching together ends up with more of a patchwork quilt than a consistent design. Sakai certainly does NOT have that problem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

We have nothing to sell -- in fact, you can't buy Sakai. You can download it for free. But if you want to discuss the ins and outs of Sakai from a Consortium of people who have been using it for ten year, contact me. I'd be glad to tell you everything about it and even invite you to consider joining our Consortium. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

Sakai has been outstanding for us. Our consortium started with just a few members who pooled our resources to host, support, and train around an open source LMS in order to save costs. Clearly we met a need, because we're up to 21 member institutions now. We're international and, in 2008, we won the Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration. We've been able to extend the Sakai architecture and tightly integrate additional tools such as systems for plagiarism detection, live video conferencing, lecture capture and playback, media storage and real-time streaming, and more. If Sakai were not the robust, well-designed platform that it is, none of that would have been possible.

(Note: to define our "company size" I'm estimating the number of employees across all of our member institutions.) Check us out at www.lampschools.org. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Terry G.

Assistant Director Online Instructional Design & Technology

E-Learning

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

6/23/2015

"How the little guy can play with the big players"

5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

Sakai allows for so much flexibility. More is given besides course sites. Project sites can retain and manage information for administrative needs and accreditation boards. Creativity can allow for designs for committees and projects way beyond the classroom.

I like that there are design options that can be explored. I especially like the conversation. Participants from all levels and all institutions can freely talk about their innovations and experiences within Sakai to learn from each other. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

There is still a need for development with the aesthetic. The real functionality can be hidden in a plain wrapper. I have to remind myself that many of its graphic limitations are limitations of any website and this is not a dedicated authoring tool, but a platform for presenting instructional and administrative content. Also, there is not complete harmony in how the tools work. Different entities develop different tools at different paces. But there is real, observable development that is exciting to watch. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

I know that many, many highly successful universities and businesses are using Sakai at every level of user participation. I know someone who was a trainer in the biggest commercial LMS who said Sakai has every functionality of the Big Guy and more with operating costs that were a fraction of participating in the commercial product. Training products are free and are becoming more and more available. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

Our campus has around 550-600 FTE. This is a small campus that needs to work with other small campuses to have a presence in the online community. We also have few resources to invest in online development. We have been able to work collaboratively with several other institutions to share resources and group governance within our experience of Sakai. This is one of the many examples of flexibility that Sakai enjoys. Our small institution could not afford to have a commercial LMS, but Sakai is available to be maximally effective for any size or configuration of implementation. We have a top-notch LMS tool with a very affordable investment in a hosting service and a collaboration with others. That is allowing us to develop new programs and to help students who need the online component to complete their education Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Adam M.

VLE (Sakai) Service Manager

Research

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

6/23/2015

"Sakai works very well for us at The University of Oxford"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

The open and non-restrictive nature of Sakai is a perfect fit for a research-led institution such as Oxford. It is easy to open us access to course sites to students who are not officially members of that degree programme. The open nature of Sakai allows cross-fertilisation of ideas between diverse disciplines and offers students the opportunity to step outside of traditional course boundaries.

Sakai has all the tools you'd expect of an enterprise learning management system and the next release (due at the end of 2015) makes a giant leap forward by offering a fully responsive system that works equally well on a mobile phone or traditional desktop. One of the most useful features is the simple way that staff (faculty) can use the Lessons tool in conjunction with the WYSIWYG HTML editor to hand-craft fully-accessible web pages offering simple pathways through complex learning material.

Sakai is open source software which means there are no licence fees but more importantly means that Sakai can be customised to mirror the way that a particular institution operates. Sakai development follows the community source model which means that anybody who has implemented a good idea has every chance of being able to get their work into future releases of the software. This approach is both more dynamic and more democratic that insisting that all code modifications must pass through an over-worked central development team.

The Sakai user and developer community is excellent, it has weekly virtual meetings and is very good at offering support to both new and established users. Being part of the larger Apereo community is important as this provides good governance and allows the Sakai community to benefit from the experiences of other Apereo projects such as Xerte, uPortal, Apereo OAE and CAS.

Apereo is like the Apache Foundation for educational open source software and appears to be going from strength to strength. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

Sakai is quite complicated to set up which means that staff members cannot easily experiment on their own - generally the system will have to be deployed and configured by a central IT team.

The fact that it is written in Java is a double edged sword: it provides the infrastructure to allow Sakai to be used as an Enterprise system with tens of thousands of concurrent users but it does put a larger overhead on code development than (say) a system written in PHP or Python. Having said that, Sakai's excellent support of IMS LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) means it is simple to plug in external educational tools which of course can be written in any language. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

Please get in touch with The University of Oxford if you want more information. There are a number of commercial partners offering hosted instances of Sakai and even more large and small companies who are able to do small and large scale development. Some of these companies charge extremely competitive rates.

I would also say it is vital to evaluate the upcoming Sakai 11 release as it is very different indeed to the current Sakai 10 release. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

Oxford needs to deliver learning materials to its student and researcher population. This material cannot be constrained by course boundaries as it needs to be accessed by university members from other disciplines. This is simple to do is Sakai and will be even easier in the next major release - Sakai 11.

Sakai is used as a 'learning hub' - a central location from which other resources can be accessed. For example, we have spent time creating tools to allow past exam papers to be located and downloaded, to allow researchers to locate and book on 'skills training' courses and to open up learning materials to any member of the University of Oxford.

The teaching model in use at the University of Oxford is fairly non-standard and it is absolutely vital that any learning management system must complement the teaching rather than getting in the way. To address this, we have made many local modifications to Sakai at Oxford, a good many of which have made it back into the core code-based.

One of the main benefits of Sakai is the very low total cost of ownership. Compared to most of the other enterprise systems at use at the University of Oxford, Sakai is incredibly cheap. That has allowed the University to spend some of the money saved in licensing fees and so on to be spent on employing developers to further customise the code-base to allow it to fit in with the education processes in use at Oxford - this is a far better way of operating than trying to change the way the university operates to fit in with the learning management system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Quinn A.

Marketing Intern

Internet

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/22/2015

"Student User of Sakai (Netbadge)"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

I love how intuitive it is to access my grades; I also enjoy how I can view my class schedule in a block style format, so I can visualize long open spaces of time that would be best to fill in with more credits. It's also quite easy to contact my teachers and access any documents I need to complete my assignments that they have posted online. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

I dislike how when you log out of Netbadge, sometimes it says you haven't, and you have to restart your computer to log in properly and get access back into your account. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

Sakai reduces the occurrence of miscommunication between student and professor. Assignments, grades, forums, emails, and announcements are all located in the same vicinity, so there really is no excuse to have any confusion about what work is due for class or how will you did on a certain test. Sakai is a great class management tool that gives students to reach their full potential if they're willing to put the work in. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am not solving business problems, but Netbadge has allowed me to keep up with my class expectations in one easy place. Most of my assignments are posted there, as well as the required readings, all in respected folders that are easy to access. Their system makes it easy for me to access my grades, professor contact information, class schedules, and weekly announcements all within one site. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Dave E.

Instructional Designer/Technologist

Information Technology and Services

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

6/23/2015

"Growing with Sakai"

4/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

Some of the best features in Sakai as a platform involve the sense of community that intentionally attempts to bring together those who use Sakai with those who develop it. Being able to reach out and directly influence how the platform continues to grow is a direct result of the Open Source movement. Being able to speak directly to and with developers, helps to provide a much more clear outcome for what educators want from an LMS.

Open Source does not mean free, and while Sakai is open source, the ROI is significant. Anyone can contribute to the improvement, betterment and effectiveness of the platform. The proximity of faculty, administrators, students, IT, and others to developers makes the platform responsive - it's really rewarding when a suggestion you make to the global community is accepted and adopted as an improvement in the platform. You feel as if you have and can make a difference in making something better for not only your own institution, but for the wider global community.

Without a doubt though, Sakai isn't just about leveraging a technology that's less expensive than the rest. As one of the projects adopted by Apereo, the community is also about connecting the technology with it's intended use - teaching and learning. Sakai is feature rich - including many tools that would cost 'extra' in other platforms - allowing faculty and course designers to develop traditional, fully online and hybrid courses at their institutions.

Of the features in Sakai, the Lessons area is the best. It brings together content and places it in context for students to access. Some faculty have even found it to be a great organizational tool for their traditional courses. Lessons brings together the ability sequence and organize instructional content in a way that 'makes sense'. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

Every product, platform or service has it's 'areas to improve', and Sakai is no different. If Sakai was perfect, it would likely cost a lot more to implement, use and maintain.

One area I can see Sakai improving is in the syntax/terminology used throughout the user interface. In some cases (as happens with some open source content) it's difficult to insure continuity and uniformity throughout a product - with so many contributors to a platform it's not always easy to make sure everyone agrees just on how a particular feature should look or function.

Another area of improvement would be in how student progress is tracked. Sakai can functionally provide feedback on page views, assessment scores and engagement in a course, but it's tough to quantify all of that into a summary that provides a quick overview of individual student progress - this is especially critical in online courses.

Another area of improvement would be in authentication - providing a second level of authentication the way many banking institutions do. Our current implementation leverages enterprise level username and password encryption technologies, but any more having a second level of authentication is not only common but in some cases expected by federal guidelines or standards for authenticating student identity. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

Do an honest comparison for ROI - regardless of what LMS you adopt. Also recognize the need to leverage a platform that helps to accomplish your overall institutional objectives. Just because Sakai is open source - it doesn't mean transitioning to it (or any other platform) will be free or cheap. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

There have been three primary problems we've been able to address with implementing Sakai:

1. Lower cost - Sakai has cost the institution as a whole, less and we've been able to get more from the platform/product than we did with another platform. We spent at least $60,000 annually for our previous LMS - for the minimum set of features - and did not have nearly enough faculty use or even want to use it. We currently spend about 1/3 of that on Sakai's annual budget and have far more faculty using Sakai in all their courses.

2. Better adoption - Sakai has been simple enough to allow just about any faculty or student to acclimate to using it. Sakai has provided us with a level of consistent course structure and flow that has made it easier for our faculty and students to deal with content and less with the technology that houses it.

3. We've been able to scale - Sakai was a critical choice for us because we were getting ready to launch several fully online programs and degrees. We've been able to do that with Sakai. With an institution of only 1200, and only 2 staff to support the online programs and degrees, it's been a testament to how adept and easy to use Sakai is. As we continue to grow and develop even more programs and courses over the coming years, I'm confident we'll strive in step with Sakai's improvements and new features w/o having to worry about sky-rocketing cost or functional ability. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Clay P.

Department Adjutant

Alternative Dispute Resolution

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/23/2015

"Sakai was, has been and continues to be a shining light fir my MACR program."

5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

I like best Sakai's user friendliness and ability to create and launch a new course - from the ground up in under a day. I also like Sakai's flexibility with design, course assignment and exam structure. Lastly, I like the student experience. Students of all ages and demographics adapt to Sakai within minutes, which ultimately contributes to their success. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

There are a few things I would add to/change about Sakai if I could. First, I would like to see more roles available for the administrator without having to use delegated access. It would be helpful to have an additional classroom roles successful as "administrator" so "instructor" isn't the role with the highest level of authority and the same as the administrator. Instructors (faculty) do not need the same authority or abilities as the administrator. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

Try it and let an experienced administrator consult with you so you don't miss anything Sakai cab do for you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

Student adaptation and fluidity are the primary benefits that each contribute to the students' success. When students focus less on the anxiety of understanding an LMS and more on learning, we all succeed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nicki H.

Database Administrator

Higher Education

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

7/7/2015

"Sakai Review"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

Online resources for courses and customized course/site creation per client. I like that we are able to host many different types of sites and that a student can be a part of many of these different types of class sites per term. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

Lack of integration with our present course offerings through Ellucian Colleague application. We could have it integrated with active directory, but it would be great if it worked with WebAdvisor as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

I would not implement this particular program without the Active Directory component being set up as well. It is time consuming to edit usernames, email addresses and passwords manually for 1,500+ users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

Online exams, quizzes, resources & discussions are handled through Sakai presently. We need this to reach the folks who are distanced learners or who are having trouble making the commute to campus each day of the week. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emily R.

Human Capital Manager

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

6/22/2015

"An easy, organized way to store all the information you need for your institution."

4/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

The organized structure to the design and ability to easily access different subject tabs. It is also nice to be able to have a site that contains every subject for my institution so that I don't get confused and disorganized storing all of my information in different places. I also like the visual appeal of the site, as I feel that it is aesthetically appealing and comprehensive. One of the nicest aspects is also being easily able to communicate with others in my institution. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

Only certain tabs can appear with subjects at the top of the page at a time. In addition, I feel that the dashboard was being worked on throughout the entire school year so I was unable to access it although sometimes I wished that I could. Also, it would be nice to have a search bar so that I can look up key words and find information more quickly and easily. Also, the "news" option tab does not seem to be functioning, and I get a red alert saying that the service is unavailable. Fixing glitches such as this would help make the site better as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

Use on a regular basis to stay updated! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

Keeping information stored in one place helps keep me organized and on task. I have realized that having one website that contains all of the information I need for my university classes is the best way to stay up to date on professor announcements and assignments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Hillary K.

General Manager

Performing Arts

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/22/2015

"Sakai accessible and easy to use for students and professors!"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

Sakai is very user-friendly and accessible, and allows everything to be accessed from one single source. It made my life as a student very easy to organize, as every material I needed, for multiple classes, was available through this site. I also appreciated the features I did not readily associate with my class, such as feedback and media, were available to me and my professors. As an administrator for a class, I always had an easy time setting up a Sakai site. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

I wish there was a more seamless transition between active and inactive sites, and a way to organize inactive sites that are still being used from the completely irrelevant ones. I appreciate that the material on each site remains available to the user, but wish that was a little more accessible.

Another issue I ran into was simply communication via Sakai--some would post in forums, message boards, etc., but not everyone would. I don't know how, but it would be nice to find a way to get all users on the same page about interacting through the site. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

Go in with an understanding of the primary uses your organization has for Sakai, so that you go in with a basic understanding of how/when to use it. There are many options, and it is easy to get lost in all that you don't need, so familiarize yourself with the tools and usages that are relevant to your particular organization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

Organization; access to information, scheduling, resources; a way to communicate among peers and professors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Francesca D.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/22/2015

"Consolidated School and Community Resources"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Sakai?

Everything is in one place, and I can find everything I need for my classes. CTools puts grades, announcements, assignments - everything I need - in one place. It also allows for different types of assignments: forums, discussions, and short-answer assignments are available through the site. It is also nice that it is the only place I turn in essays and papers; rather than using TurnItIn or e-mail, I can send all my essays through CTools, and then receive feedback in the same place. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Sakai?

The format of the page could be better. It isn't as intuitive as I'd like.

It also seems impossible to remove myself or turn off notifications for pages/groups that I am in. For example, I am no longer interested in healthcare and yet I continue to receive 5+ emails a day from announcements from their CTools group page. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Sakai:

It is a very useful tool to students, teachers, and those in the business world. It has made keeping on top of my coursework much easier. Without it, I think it would be very difficult to be aware of my teachers' expectations. With CTools, I get updates and announcements immediately, and I can reference syllabi whenever I need. It is also easy to view past assignments and their feedback (assuming they were turned in through the site); this is very useful in determining what I need to improve upon when completing an assignment. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Sakai solving and how is that benefiting you?

It's helped me keep track of all my schoolwork. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.