Sakai Reviews & Product Details - Page 6

I like that I can go to CTools (the Saki website used by the University of Michigan) and have most everything I need for a class at the click of a mouse. Professors can easily communicate with students and post assignments. I also like that there is an option to receive an e-mail notification when an announcement has been added by a Professor. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The tab system at the top of the page used to navigate from class to class was a bit confusing for me at first. A bit of searching was required to find certain things uploaded by Professors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that it has all of your classes on one sight. There is no need to go to multiple sites for different classes. All of the information is right where you need it and is easily accessible. It is also really cool that you still have access to the classes you have previously took and all of the assignments associated with it. Also, Sakai offers drop box which is a really convenient way to upload papers rather than printing them out and wasting paper. Overall, I love the program and find it crucial to my time at UMich. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Honestly, there really is not much that I dislike about Sakai. Although, I do believe that a cool feature that should be available is the option to communicate with your teachers through the program rather than having to email them separately. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sakai is a solid management system for educational/instructional content. I used this platform during an internship in 2013 at a private company. I haven't used the most recent version, but the version that I did use was easy to pick up and very customizable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sakai's weaknesses were the same as the weaknesses that most LMS/CMS platforms face. Nothing in particular stood out to me while I used it during an internship in 2013. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that the website (collab) has virtually every feature possible. There is resource attachment, grading, tests/quizzes, discussion forums, etc. It is an all inclusive website so that there is only need to visit one place for almost all academic arenas. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While there is many features, none are very advanced. The test/quiz option only allows for simple fill in the blank or multiple choice. There is not an option for E-learning, especially an interactive style. Another good resource that is not available is grade calculation for students. I wish there was an excel style spreadsheet that professors can create (with the different weights each component of a class holds) and students could fill in hypothetical grades for assignments not yet completed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Customizable power combined with intuitive interface. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some options are difficult to find. User should be able to customize his/her own default settings. Lake of attendance module. Does not communicate with Jenzabar, which means course shells must be created individually. This wastes time and creates innacuracies in roll sheets when students drop/add courses. Assignment resubmissions are complicated. If students miss deadlines, Sakai does not easily let give teachers the ability to accept late work. Vericite interface needs a lot of work. More options for users, like search sensitivity, quotation exclusion, and bibliography exclusion. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I use it for college and the best part about it is that all of my classes have pages on the site so all of the assignments, grades, and announcements are centralized into one place. It's easy to use and has a nice design to the site as well. Another great aspect is that it saves all of the classes that I've taken from previous semesters. So I get to see the content of my classes from before. This is great because as a premed student I need to look back on classes I've taken to study for the MCAT. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't know if this is a problem for my college or for Sakai itself, but during high usage times such as midterms or finals, the site runs pretty slowly which is frustrating. Also, I've written assignments on the site and they don't save where I've left off. So, I can't come back to an assignment, I have to write something in one go. One time my whole essay got deleted and I had to start all over which was a hassle but a save option would be nice on the site. Something I've noticed that would have been useful on the site was a calendar for each class. Therefore, I would be able to see when assignments are due and when tests take place. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

it has a very organized format and it's easy to locate grades, resources, etc. i also liked that it took relatively little time for grades to show once the professors inputted them. i took several courses online using Sakai and had a very easy time adjusting to the website because of its simplicity. i also liked the format of the discussion boards and the forums because of the ability to change the format and font among other things. it was easy to navigate through the discussion boards because everything was dated and in chronological order. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

sometimes there were too many tabs i.e. gradebook and gradebook 2 - what is the difference? this made it somewhat confusing at times because i would be looking for my grades under both tabs. also i thought that there really was no need for both the discussion board and a forum section. im not really sure what the difference between the two were...i utilized the discussion board all the time whereas i only used the forum once or twice in my four years of using Sakai. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As a student, I like the ability to keep track of my work, the ease with which I can navigate different classes, the opportunity to discuss various topics with my classmates, etc. As an instructor, I love the multiple options, such as Gradebook and Gradebook 2, depending on how much power I want when it comes to grades and weights. I also love the opportunity for bulk download when it comes to large classes (has saved me HOURS in grading), as well as the multiple opportunities for giving students feedback in various ways. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes, Sakai would load slowly when switching between students, and it would often offer me a comparable "saved" version of feedback that was the exact same version as what I had just written. It took extra time to click cancel and save instead of just saving it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is very flexible and easy to learn and use. We have a third party maintaining our use so we do not have to maintain it internally - since we don't have the technical staff to support it. I appreciate the addition of new tools as necessary (Lessons). One of the main reasons we purchased Sakai was because of its integration with Turning Technologies. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Blog and Wiki tools leave a lot be be desired. There are much better third party tools, which is probably why they lack functionality. The same function (save) has a different name across different tools. Understandable for open source, but aggravating (for those of us who do training) nonetheless. The gradebook is definitely antiquated and it is next to impossible to import grades from another system (Peason's MyXXXlab products). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CTools is the LMS at the University of Michigan and was built on Sakai's open source infrastructure. What I liked best was being able to see all my assignments and class documents online as well as the ability to submit papers through the site. Some features like the chatrooms for classes was also a nice idea, though I did not see this utilized often, and when I did the participation in them varied. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CTools was not great from a usability standpoint. It was often pretty slow and the interface seems a bit outdated and clunky, despite the update the university made a couple years ago. I also didn't find it to be the most intuitive of interfaces. It was often hard to find where certain settings were located, and the flow of using it was not particularly smooth.

How useful it is is also very dependent upon the teachers using it. Some professors took time to figure Ctools out and use it to its full potential, while others used it very sparsely, or not at all.

Furthermore, and this may be more do to my university rather than the tool itself, it seemed as though system maintenance occured at the worst possible times, often around midterms and finals when users were heavily dependent on it to complete essays or access study material. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.