Are you thinking of using Sakai LMS to teach online? Are you wondering what its features are and how they may help you save time? With over 20 years of experience in education, technology, and teaching online, let me share some of my experiences with Sakai LMS.
Sakai is an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) that provides an online training portal for educational institutions and teachers to manage student learning. It hosts training content, enables assessment, course management, communication, collaboration, and content development.
Now that you have an aerial view of Sakai LMS let’s dig in a little deeper and discuss why you might use it to teach online to your students.
What Is Sakai Learning Management System?
Sakai Learning Management System started as the Sakai Project in 2005 with the aim to provide open-source software for CLE (Collaboration and Learning Environment). Sakai released the most recent version (21.0) in April 2021 – the current version and 20.3 (released in April 2020) are the only active versions.
With the community source software, developed by educators, as a fully customizable tool, educators can build their courses and incorporate quizzes, tests, assignments, tutorials, and all manner of content in their lesson structure. In addition, Sakai LMS is available in 19 languages and provides educators with effective communication systems, such as discussions, chat, and email.
How Easy Is Sakai LMS to Set Up?
There are two ways to set up Sakai. The first is to have it hosted via the Sakai cloud, and the process of setting up Sakai this way entails you having to punch in your credentials and other applicable information. Once that is done, you are able to experience Sakai as a course creator and as a student.
Self-hosting Sakai will take IT knowledge because it is a Java-based, service-orientated web application. It is deployed by using Apache Tomcat while its data is stored in Oracle or MySQL and can be integrated with CAS, Kerberos, LDAP, Shibboleth, and WebAuth.
What Will Sakai LMS Cost?
Sakai is a free LMS that does not require you to pay for any licensing. However, if you wish to deploy it yourself, you may require developers and systems that will help you to get the job done, and this, of course, will vary in price.
How Hard Is It to Maintain Sakai LMS?
If you are using Sakai’s cloud-based hosting system, then there is nothing that you will need to do to maintain any aspect of it. This applies to both teachers (course creators) and students.
Maintaining Sakai if you want to deploy it yourself on your own network will result in you needing technicians in various fields of IT. These technicians will range from developers both back and front end, to database technicians, to networking technicians. The number of professionals required to maintain it will vary depending on the scale of the network and its implementation.
How Good Is Support and Training for Sakai LMS?
Due to the fact that Sakai is an open-source LMS, there is no contact support per se. However, there is The Sakai Community that offers help and advice for all aspects of the LMS.
Cloud-based support can be found using the help section found in the menu once you have logged in, while the documentation for the self-deployed version can be found here.
Furthermore, there is a Wiki space where numerous Sakai developers have come together to produce guides and tutorials that any new Sakai developer can access.
What Are The Sakai LMS Features?
|
KEY
TOOLS |
FEATURES |
|
|
COMMUNICATIONS AND COLLABORATION |
·
Create
announcements to keep your students up to date ·
Use
the calendar to scheduling events, deadlines, assessments, et ·
The
chat feature allows for instant communication ·
Send
messages with Sakai’s internal email messages ·
Use
forums to engage in topic discussions |
|
|
GRADING AND ASSESSMENT |
·
Teachers
can create and grade assignments on- or offline. In document preview,
educators can provide feedback without downloading documents. ·
Gradebook provides straightforward calculations
and grade entry. ·
Post’
Em
is a fantastic tool for non-numeric feedback on assessments. ·
Tests
& Quizzes create
and manage learning assessments with security options for graded examinations |
|
|
COURSE DEVELOPMENT AND DELIVERY |
Educators have a wide range of tools
available to build unique course content, with multiple platforms for file
sharing ·
Cloud
storage integration ·
Dropbox
tool ·
External
tools ·
News ·
Overview ·
Podcasts ·
Resources
and many more |
|
|
POWERFUL SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION |
Course
management is made easy with features such as: ·
Polls ·
Roster ·
Section
info ·
Statistics An
extensive list of user and system administrator tools creates a
well-rounded and customizable management platform |
|
|
COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTED TOOLS |
·
Attendance
to keep track of student participation ·
BlogWow upload blog entries for private or
communal viewing ·
Create
and send certification to learners on successful completion of
specific content ·
Mneme
(an alternative to Tests
& Quizzes tool) |
|
|
INTEGRATION WITH EXTERNAL APPS |
·
Barnes
& Noble ·
BigBlueButton ·
Box ·
Cengage ·
Digication ·
DynamicBooks ·
Juta
books ·
iRubric |
·
Zoom ·
Turnitin ·
Microsoft
365 ·
Examity ·
eXplorance Blue ·
iClicker ·
Opencast And
many more |
What Is The Sakai LMS Mobile App?
Project Keitai (Sakai mobile) was initiated in January of 2011, and although progress was made on the development of the project, it never came to fruition.
Please take note that some third-party developers have taken it into their own hands to develop a Sakai-based app for their systems. One such app is Rutgers Sakai that can be found on the Apple app store. It allows the students of Rutgers University to access their Sakai LMS from their mobile devices and has all the necessary features enabling them to peruse their courses.
How does Sakai LMS compare to other LMS?
Many LMSs rival Sakai, and although we can’t compare them all, we will compare it with the other top open-source LMS known as moodle, which dominates the market share for open-source LMSs.
Moodle seems to surpass Sakai in various categories, including having a mobile android and Apple app and full support that consists of a help desk (email), Forums, phone support, 24/7 live rep, and online chat.
They even have training that consists of live online tutorials, webinars, documentation, videos, and in-person seminars.
Besides the mobile app and full-on support, Moodle offers deployment across windows, Mac, Linux, web-based, and cloud-based systems, while Sakai can only be deployed on windows, the cloud, and the web.
How Does Sakai LMS Compare To Moodle LMS?
| Features and functions | Moodle | Sakai |
| Software | Free trial and free version | Free version |
| Best for | Higher education, corporate, government non-profit | Higher education |
| Asynchronous learning | Yes | Yes |
| Blended learning | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in course authoring | Yes | Yes |
| Learner portal | Yes | Yes |
| Synchronous learning | Yes | No |
| Video confrencing | Yes | No |
| E-commerce management | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud, SaaS, Web-based, Windows, Mac, Linux | Cloud, Saas, Web-based |
| Mobile app | Android, iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Support | Email/help desk, FAQ’s/Forums, phone support, 24/7 live rep, online chat | Wiki page, community |
| Training | In-person, live online, webinars, documentation, videos | Documentation, Wiki page |
| Alternative systems | WorkRamp, Absorb LMS, Inquisiq | eLeap, Northpass, BRIDGE |
What Are the Pros and Cons of Sakai LMS?
| Pros: | Cons: |
| It is free | Constant internet activity is impossible for some users. |
| Flexibility | Integration issues with school’s student information systems |
| User friendly | Difficulty in navigating discussion forms |
| Customizable quick menu | Can’t have multiple tabs running on Sakai |
| Direct messaging to students | Check box for emails result in students not getting info |
Sakai Tutorial Videos Available On YouTube
Conclusion
As a free, open-sourced LMS, Sakai offers a very usable and viable alternative to providing a learning platform for you or your educational institution to teach online. It has all the essential features you would expect of the other major LMS as has is the 5th most used learning management system globally.
Sources
LMS Market Won’t Grow, Continuing To Be Dominated By The Big Four
Recommendation for University-wide Learning Management System
