Top Rated Sakai Alternatives
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.
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.
97 out of 98 Total Reviews for Sakai
Overall Review Sentiment for Sakai
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I love the tools access on the left-hand side of the screen that allows professors to create multiple folders and upload different resources. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
When submitting assignments using the textbox, it is never automatically saved and you cannot open it in two windows at one time (even if you need to access a different class). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sakai has a lot of features and works fine for many applications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Unfortunately, the interface is very clunky and often very buggy as well. It doesn't have good support and generally it just doesn't do anything it sets out to do very well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The entire interface of Sakai/Laulima is very intuitive and straightforward. The title of each function exactly demonstrates its purpose. The drop-down menus are self-explanatory. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The interface can use some improvement on its appearance. Currently, the looking of the LMS is very simple and not even pretty. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Easy-to-use template for instructors to enter their materials. You can easily make short quizzes with multiple choices or fill in the blanks. For numerical answers, it also allows a range of values to be accepted (to account for round-off errors etc.). Assignments can also be randomized in terms of the order of the questions (to inhibit cheating in tests), and also the options for multiple choice/match the columns can be randomized. The way the software is set up, you don't need to know much about html scripting or syntax to have a full website-like functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Very slow especially for large class sizes -- the gradebooks take extremely long to load and interact with. The biggest issue with Sakai is that you cannot easily upload a gradebook from Excel to Sakai. The manual task of inputting grades is not fun at all. Also, the UI is not very intuitive -- you usually have to dig around to find a certain thing. Sakai has a tendency to bug out randomly -- the biggest losers are students while answering quizzes or tests. Also, the inefficient UI usually means that you have to go through too many clicks to accomplish simple tasks. The "back" button on Sakai is another huge bug as the software freaks out and behaves unexpectedly every time you hit back. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It has a complete and advanced online community, which collaborates to be completely useful. The community has developed a responsive user interface and is working to comply with all Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sometimes you have to wait until the money and resources are available to work on the project that you consider important. In the four years that I have been involved, the community has always found a way to find the resources needed to make updates. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sakai works for University of Hawaii by having different tabs for resources, syllabus, modules etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sakai does not allow students to open new folder into new tabs. If it is clicked to open as a new tab, the same exact tab duplicates and will not open the page that it was clicked into. Copying and pasting is very difficult and it will not offer and typo suggestions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sakai features a wide variety of built-in tools to help build out an online hub for classes. Tools like grade entry, file storage, homework assignments, and more can make a classroom website accessible for both students and teachers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
While the user-end of the website is relatively intuitive, it can sometimes be tricky to make the site do what you want it to. In general, you can make it work once you give it enough elbow grease, but it certainly isn't perfect in this regard. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Integrated calendars for students and integrated plagiarism checks help students maintain pace in completing assignments while helping instructors keep students accountable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sakai can be difficult to use when uploading a new class workspace. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The best feature is the organization of the website. I like how there is a favorites tab that has your favorites appear in the top. Also, the ability to go back to previous classes was very nice and helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The user interface was a little buggy. To organize favorites, it was difficult, but once organized, it was ready to go. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
