What are significant new features in Sakai 25?

Context for upgrading to Sakai 25

In December 2026, Turnitin will decommission the originality checking integration that is actively used by the Assignments tool in Sakai 23. As its replacement, Turnitin offers a newer integration method that is supported by Sakai 25 but not Sakai 23. This factor is the primary motive for the upgrade to Sakai 25 on Aug. 22, 2026.

User Interface & Navigation

The Sakai 25 user interface adapts to the screen size of the browsing device. 

Desktop Layout

Phone Layout

Significant UI Changes

• Site Navigation: A wider left panel and smaller breadcrumb links at the top now result in less word wrapping for course site and tool titles. Also in the phone view, the Sites drawer button in the footer now toggles the site navigation display.

• Datetime pickers: Datetime fields have been segmented into discrete subfields (for setting the year, month, day, hour, minute and AM/PM), in a fixed format where each subfield has discrete focus. Furthermore, the UI for date and time pickers are now dependent on the browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) used. Some browsers (e.g., Firefox, Safari) do not support a popup timepicker.

  • Important: Copying and pasting a datetime value in Sakai from one field to another is currently only available in Chrome.

New Feature Highlights

Site Info

• More granular site import options: The ‘Import from Site’ process has been enhanced to allow instructors to choose which items to import for some tools instead of having to import all content associated with that tool. Furthermore, instructors can opt to import permission settings from some tools. 

• Joinable sets available by date: Instructors can optionally configure availability dates for groups that instructors intend students to join for group activities.

• External tools form revised: The External Tools form for installing LTI integrations with online textbook-related services has been significantly revised.

  • Important: External tools as provided by textbook publishers are required to have a risk assessment completed by PLU Risk Services and a technical feasibility assessment completed by the Sakai support team. When requesting such assessments, please provide 60 days advance notice. To initiate a request, please email sakai@plu.edu.

Assignments

• New Turnitin interface: As of this writing, the new Turnitin interface based on LTI 1.3 is in development. More substantive details will be forthcoming once they are known by the Sakai support team.

• Grades column added to student view: Grades for returned assignments are now displayed to students directly in the main Assignments view. Beforehand, students would need to click each assignment link to view the corresponding score within Assignments.

• Revisions to new grading interface: The preview area for viewing student work and the grading panel now display side by side for desktop browser displays above a certain width. This change allows for the preview area to be scrolled without having to close the grading panel.

• Student self-evaluation with rubrics: Instructors can assert a new rubric option for assignments: “Allow students to self-evaluate their work with this rubric”. Instructors can stipulate to what extent a student is required to complete the self-evaluation prior to submitting their work.

• Rubrics in peer-evaluation assignments: For peer-evaluation assignments configured to use a rubric, students can now use the rubric in completing their assigned peer evaluations.

• Groups & external tool submission type: Assignments with a submission type of ‘External Tool (LTI)’ can now be released to one or more groups of students instead of only releasing to all students in the site. This submission type can also now be used with group assignments.

Tests & Quizzes

• Email notification change: The optional email notifications that an instructor can select to send when publishing an assessment will no longer be sent at the time of publication;  instead they are scheduled to be sent when the assessment is available for a student to take. The scheduling of these notifications also account for differences an instructor may have configured in ‘Exceptions to Availability Dates and Time Limit’.

• ‘Answer Key’ feedback setting revised: The “Answer Key” feedback option in the “Grading and Feedback” section of “Settings” has been replaced by “Show if student response is correct/incorrect” and a contingent sub option “Show the correct answer”.

• New options for randomizing and/or fixing questions: An assessment part can now be configured for a “Fixed and Random draw from question pool” or a “Random draw from multiple question pools”. These new options are in addition to the other standard options “Questions authored one-by-one” and “Random draw from question pool”.

• Calculated question improvements: To reduce the complexity of some calculations, intermediate formulas in the form of global variables can now be used within the question text, defined formula and calculations, feedback for correct/incorrect responses, and other global variables.

• Markup input form & rich-text: The input form for creating assessments with markup text now includes a switch to use the rich-text editor. Rich text (boldface, italics, etc.) can now be applied to questions and selectable answers in markup text without having to subsequently edit the assessment in the assessment builder.

• Improved navigation for viewing student submissions: Accessed via the Total Scores page and then clicking on a student’s name, the student submissions view now has navigational controls at the top right of the view similar to those in the new grading interface in Assignments. This includes a dropdown menu of all student submissions from which to select, plus next submission and previous submission buttons. 

• Correct / Incorrect / Blank statistics: The Total Scores view for an assessment now displays more detailed statistics for question types that can be auto-graded.

• Access levels for question pool sharing: When granting other instructors access to question pools, instructors can grant one of the following three access levels: “Read Only”, “Modify”, and “Read and Write”.

• Exportable question pools: Question pools can now be exported, and they can be reimported as other question pools or as assessments.

Gradebook

• UI infrastructure revised: While the main Grades panel in Gradebook has not changed significantly, it does have a slightly different look and feel. For instance, cell and header menus are now accessed by clicking a cog wheel icon. Other differences are mostly due to required maintenance needed for Gradebook’s UI infrastructure.

Lessons

• Bulk Edit Subpages: For Lessons pages containing multiple subpage links (e.g., ‘Weekly Content’), the ‘Bulk Edit Subpages’ allows instructors to revise subpage names and captions in a single form.

• ‘Add Learning App’ supersedes ‘Add External Tool’: In the Add Content menu, the ‘Add External Tool’ item has been removed. Integrations in Lessons pages for all external tool links are now supported through the ‘Add Learning App’ option.

Profile

• Pronouns & name pronunciation: A student’s pronouns and name pronunciation if set are now accessible in Gradebook, Assignments, Tests & Quizzes, Discussions, Roster, and elsewhere when an instructor clicks a student’s profile avatar.

• Profile data simplified: The rarely used ‘Faculty/Staff Information’, ‘Student Information’ and ‘Personal Information’ sections of Profile have been removed. Furthermore, ‘Contact Information’ contains only the PLU email address and an optional ‘Mobile phone’ number.

• Privacy Settings tab removed: User profile privacy settings set to ‘Hide from others’ in the Sakai 23 will be honored by removing corresponding profile data during the upgrade to Sakai 25. For example, if a user has entered a mobile phone number in their profile and has set the ‘Contact Information’ privacy setting to ‘Hide from others’, the mobile phone profile data for that user will be removed during the upgrade.

Roster

• Export sheet reformatted: Information about group membership has been transferred to two new separate worksheets within the exported spreadsheet: Groups and Sections.

News

• The rarely used News tool has been decommissioned in Sakai 25.

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Need support? Contact sakai@plu.edu.