Sakai

What Sakai is

Sakai is an open source learning management system made for colleges and universities. The site describes it as an open source system "created by higher ed for higher ed", and the community page says it is "created, maintained, and supported by an engaged consortium of colleges, universities, and commercial affiliates such as Longsight Inc." The home page stresses that Sakai is fully open source and that the community innovates "based on teacher needs" to serve students and faculty "in-person or online." It also credits Sakai with "market leadership" in education technology.

For an institution, the practical meaning of open source is spelled out on the home page: "Sakai is 100% Open-Source, so you never have to worry that it will be acquired and altered." The software is a free download. A college can run Sakai on its own servers or have one of the commercial affiliates host it in the cloud, and either way the institution, not a vendor, decides how its learning environment is run.

Building and delivering courses

Course building centers on lessons and modules. The features page says instructors can "create and organize text, resources, quizzes, tests, assignments, links, video, and other media into coherent lessons or modules", control access to materials through conditional release, and upload, store and share files and other resources in the same place. Conditional release means material can be opened to students under conditions the instructor chooses, so a course can be paced rather than handed over all at once.

The video library on the features page names the tools behind this. Lessons, Assignments, Tests & Quizzes and Gradebook each have a Sakai 22 walkthrough, and further videos cover the Conversations tool, dark mode in Sakai 21, the new features in Sakai 22 and the features in development for Sakai 23. The features page's description adds that Sakai offers "mobile accessibility" and that its tools for assignments, grading, course building and collaboration are "more accessible than ever."

Grading and assessment

The features page presents Sakai's grading and assessment tools as a strong choice "for collecting student submissions and providing rich feedback on their work." It lists high-stakes testing, formative assessments, online assignments, rubric-based scoring and "fast, easy grade-entry capabilities." That covers both ends of a course: low-stakes quizzes that let students check their understanding along the way, and formal exams and graded assignments that end up in the gradebook.

Communication and group work

Communication gets as much weight as content. Sakai offers a range of communication options and "group-aware tools", with a choice of synchronous and asynchronous tools "for messaging, discussions, social connections, and collaborative work." The features page adds that strong support for groups makes it easier for students "to keep in touch, learn together, and work in teams", which suits seminar-style courses and project work where a class is split into smaller teams.

Administration and integration

For the people who run the system, Sakai has course and system administration tools for managing courses and users, and a "highly configurable system of roles and permissions" that the site says lets an institution "customize the platform to match your business processes."

Integration is where the site makes one of its firmest claims: "Sakai is a leader in the development and implementation of the IMS LTI specification." Through LTI, external learning tools can be brought into Sakai courses, and Sakai also has "an extensive API which facilitates the development of deep, native integrations with third party applications." Beyond the packaged release, community members build Sakai-specific tools and release them for others to use, and the site invites institutions to build their own. Member institutions can also work with commercial affiliates "to create integrations, develop new tools, or create new functionality for their digital learning environment."

Governance and data ownership

Sakai has no single vendor at its center. The community page says member institutions "work together to innovate and advance Sakai based on their own teaching and learning needs", and the community is coordinated by the Apereo Foundation. The Sakai Project Management Committee (PMC) is responsible for strategic oversight and operates on "meritocratic principles of member selection, and consensus-based decision making in an open and transparent manner."

Testimonials on the home page make the same point from the user side. Alan Regan of Pepperdine University says "We all have a voice in the product roadmap" and that "Education, not profit, is the top priority of Sakai". Sakai Community Manager Dr. Wilma Hodges says the community encourages institutions and individuals to influence the product's features, strategy and development "in a very tangible way." Julianne Morgan of the University of Dayton calls Sakai "feature-rich" and says it lets you build "a truly meaningful learning experience".

Data ownership follows from the same model. Under the heading Best for Privacy, Sakai founding architect Dr. Charles Severance is quoted: "Because Sakai is open source, you can maintain control, possession, and ownership of your student data over the long term."

Hosting, affiliates and trying it

Three commercial affiliates develop, host and support Sakai. Longsight is described as "the leading developer of new Sakai functionality", which it contributes back to the community, and it hosts and supports Sakai in the cloud so institutions do not have to manage servers or dedicate resources to support and maintenance. Learning Experiences is a business devoted to adding value to the Apereo communities and encouraging the use of open source and open content in education. EDF is described as a global education technology company whose Sakai experts provide cloud services, development and support.

There are two free ways to try Sakai. The cloud-hosted route creates a sample account courtesy of Longsight, Inc., where you build a sample course as an instructor, experience it as a student, ask questions and use the online help. The self-hosted route is a free download that you configure yourself, for sampling Sakai in a more independent environment. The site's community stories feature Northwestern State Community College, Pepperdine University and Johnson University.

Who it suits

Sakai fits colleges and universities that want an LMS shaped by educators, with student data under the institution's own control and a voice in the roadmap through the community. It suits institutions that rely on varied assessment and group work, and those that need to plug in external tools through LTI or connect campus systems through the API. A college without its own server team can still run it through a hosting affiliate such as Longsight.

The caveat is that Sakai is a community product rather than a subscription service: an institution either runs it in-house or contracts hosting and support from an affiliate, and should plan for one or the other. Its focus is squarely on higher education, so a corporate training team or a solo course seller is not the reader the site is written for.