Open Source LMS Short-listing
We have just been going through the process of short-listing open source LMSs as possible replacements for Interact and Blackboard. So far it has been a reasonably straight forward process as we were able to come up with criteria that quickly reduced the list from 29 down to 8, and then from 8 to 2. This was done without having to look at detailed comparisons of feature and requirements listings.
We started with the list of open source systems at http://www.edutech.ch/lms/ev3/opensource_lms_longlist.php
This list of some 36 systems was compiled in 2005, so we went through the complete list to see which projects were still active and also had a search around to see if any new projects had started. This exercise reduced the list to 29.
We then took the ‘killer’ criteria found at the above site and modified them to suit our needs. We came up with the following six criteria that a system had to meet in order to be short-listed for futher consideration:
- Integrated/homogeneous learning environment (not just a collection of separate open source tools)
- Active development, with at least 2 full time developers, multiple part-time/voluntary developers, and new releases within last 12 months
- Active community with users contributing to support forums, documentation, etc.
- Basic e-learning tools are available, assignments dropboxes, online testing, discussion forums, etc.
- Basic documentation is available
- English language version and preferably multilingual
This reduced the list of 29 down to the following 8:
- ATutor - http://www.atutor.ca/
- Claroline - http://www.claroline.net/
- dotLRN - http://dotlrn.org/
- Ilias - http://www.ilias.de/index.html
- KEWL - http://kngforge.uwc.ac.za
- Moodle - http://moodle.org
- OLAT - http://www.olat.org/website/en/html/index.html
- Sakai - http://www.sakaiproject.org/
Eight systems is still a large number to conduct a more detailed evaluation against, so to narrow it down further we then applied the following criteria:
- Existing medium/large scale University installations in Australasian region
There was some discussion about the validity of this criteria, but it was decided that there were clear advantages from a support, staff recruitment, and collaboration perspective if there was a local user base. Applying this criteria reduced the list to just two systems - Moodle and Sakai. We are now moving onto the next stage of the process of installing these two systems locally and undertaking a more detailed evaluation of their features against our requirements list.
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
hi! thanks for this short list. i’ve cited this page in our DE class on the topic of LMS. thanks for sharing!
January 8th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Other killer criteria might include…
* Does it feel right?
* Do other people feel that its “right” too?
* Does it make you feel all icky?
…. there’s not enough voodoo in careful analysis
September 10th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Can you please provide information on the follow-up between Moodle and Sakai.
- ease of installation
- amount of customization/ tweaking necessary to be ‘live’
- programming knowledge required? If so, what technologies?
- feature evaluation between moodle vs sakai?
- overall evaluation results
Thank you.
boylogik@gmail.com
September 10th, 2008 at 11:02 am
EDIT to my 1st post: I now read the 2nd page of this article and understand why Sakai was eliminated from the test. That being said, can you please elaborate on your experience with Moodle:
- ease of installation
- amount of customization/ tweaking necessary to be ‘live’
- programming knowledge required? If so, what technologies?
- feature evaluation between moodle vs sakai?
- overall evaluation results
October 2nd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Hi Chirag
Sorry about the dely in responding - there was an issue with my blog setup so I wasn’t getting comment notifications. I can comment on some of these points but not all as I changed jobs before the evaluation was completed at University of Canterbury.
-ease of installation
Moodle is very easy to install for anyone with a limited knowledge of how to set up php based web applications - and there are numerouse step by step guides to the process.
- amount of customization/ tweaking necessary to be ‘live’
You could quite easily go live with an out-of-the-box moodle install. Even if you want to install quite a number of extra modules and customise the theme with less than a weeks work you can have a reasonably well tailored Moodle install up and running
- programming knowledge required? If so, what technologies?
You could use moodle with no programming knowledge at all if you were happy with all the currently available options. If you are wanting to tweek things a bit, or even contribute to the ongoing development then a limited amount of php knowledge will get you started, combined with some experience in mysql or postgresql databases.
- feature evaluation between moodle vs sakai?
There is no comparison between the two in my view. The feature set of moodle far outstrips what is available in Sakai along with general usability. Sakai in my view is an alpha application framework rather than a fully functional LMS (well it was in April/May this year anyway)
- overall evaluation results
UC is just about to complete a 6 month trial of Moodle this month. I will see if I can get copies of the outcome of the trial to publish here when available.