SakaiProject CMS Software Review
Sakai Software Review
Sakai differs greatly from WebCT and Blackboard in that it is open-source educational software. Sakai is essentially a collaboration of Universities, combining the best of their home-grown systems to create a new and better offering for all. The Sakai Project's aim is to create unique course management system that both competes with and complements commercial systems such as WebCT and Blackboard. The early versions of the project were based on existing tools created by the founding institutions, with the largest piece coming from the University of Michigan's "CHEF" course management system. The Sakai Project has grown and software has been written and enhanced for years now, so it now really is its own product now.
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, but the capacity for online collaboration is really the tail that wags the dog here. 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.
If online student collabortation, within classes or not, is a major part of what you will be doing I strongly recommend trying Sakai. Trying Sakai is low risk because it is free and you generally can demo it at www.SakaiProject.org without having to install it. You can download the software to install at that same URL. If you are familiar with Blackboard, have complex course management needs and are well funded, you should also contact Blackboard and see what their rep has to tell you.