Sakai is an open source Java-based, service-oriented learning management system and collaborative learning environment designed to be scalable, reliable, interoperable and extensible.
Sakai is a free educational software platform distributed under the Educational Community License (a type of open source license). Sakai is used for teaching, research and collaboration. Systems of this type are also known as Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).
Sakai is maintained and developed by the Sakai community, in which academic institutions, commercial organizations and individuals work together. It was developed within the Sakai Project, and continued by the Sakai Foundation, which merged with the Jasig Foundation into the Apereo Foundation, which stewards Sakai's maintenance and development today.
The Sakai software includes many of the features common to course management systems, including document distribution, a gradebook, discussion, live chat, assignment uploads, and online testing.
In addition to the course management features, Sakai is intended as a collaborative tool for research and group projects. To support this function, Sakai includes the ability to change the settings of all the tools based on roles, changing what the system permits different users to do with each tool. It also includes a wiki, mailing list distribution and archiving, and an RSS reader. The core tools can be augmented with tools designed for a particular application of Sakai. Examples might include sites for collaborative projects, teaching and portfolios.
In addition to the advantages of being open-source, Sakai also supports user extensibility through the use of LTI interfaces, an increasingly important and common tool for hosting learning tools
My Workspace tools
- Preferences - allows setting of preferences
- Message Of The Day
Generic collaboration tools
- Announcements - used to inform site participants about current items of interest
- Drop Box - allows instructors and students to share documents within a private folder for each participant
- Email Archive - all messages sent to a site's email address are stored in the Email Archive
- Resources - share many kinds of material securely with members of your site, or make them available to the public
- Chat Room - for real-time, unstructured conversations among site participants who are signed on to the site at the same time
- Forums - communication tool that instructors or site leaders can use to create an unlimited number of discussion forums
- Message Center - a communication tool that allows site participants to communicate using internal course mail
- News / RSS - uses RSS to bring dynamic news to your worksite
- Poll tool - allows users to set up an online vote for site participants
- Presentation - allows you to present a set of slides to many viewers
- Profile / Roster - view the names, photos, and profiles of site participants
- Repository Search - search content created by tools within a worksite or course
- Schedule - allows instructors or site organizers to post items in a calendar format
Teaching tools
- Assignments
- Grade book
- Module Editor
- QTI Authoring
- QTI Assessment
- Section Management
- Syllabus
Portfolio tools
- Forms
- Evaluations
- Glossary
- Matrices
- Layouts
- Templates
- Reports
- Wizards
- Search
- Web Content
- WebDAV
- Wiki
- Site Setup
- MySakai Widgets
The official website for Sakai is: http://www.sakaiproject.org/
The main bugtracker for all Sakai projects: https://jira.sakaiproject.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa
To join the sakai-dev list follow the instructions from: http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
