Learning Management System - Matematicko-fyzikální · PDF fileREMES: LEARNING...
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Learning Management System R. Remeˇ s University of South Bohemia, Faculty of Agriculture, ˇ Cesk´ e Budˇ ejovice, Czech Republic. Abstract. Learning management system (LMS) is software that automates the administration of training. The LMS registers users, tracks courses in a catalog, records data from learners, and provides reports to management. An LMS is typically designed to handle courses by multiple publishers and providers. It usually doesn’t include its own authoring capabilities, instead, it focuses on managing courses created by a variety of other sources. Introduction In my doctoral studies I occupy myself with IT supported teaching. For such purposes we use Learning Management System (LMS). LMS is software that automates the administration of training events. All LMS’s manage the log-in and registration of users, manage course catalogs, record data from learners, and provide reports to management. There used to be a distinction between learning management systems and more powerful ”integrated” learning management systems. That distinction has now disappeared. The term learning management system is now used to describe a wide range of applications that track student training and may or may not include functions such as: Authoring — which means tools that offer the option of editing and saving materials in or transform documents into a Web format. Tools that produce multimedia and tools for site management or site publication, and management of layouts (e.g. CSS formatting tools). Classroom management — ways of organising the resources, pupils and helpers in a classroom, so that teaching and learning can proceed in an efficient and safe manner. Competency management — personal competency gap analysis. Competency management is used to identify skills, knowledge and performance. Knowledge management — the distribution, access and retrieval of unstructured information about human experiences between interdependent individuals or among members of a workgroup. Certification or compliance training — courses for learning from home, office or any remote loca- tion with internet access. Personalization — adaptation of users based on personal details. Mentoring — is designed to promote students development. By this we mean goals, schedules, training, and evaluation. Chat — a system allowing real-time communication between two or more users. Discussion boards (message boards) — forum provided for discussion. LMS provides students their own virtual learning environment, where they can find courses, tests or instructions how to study. They can participate in discussions on various topics or consult some subjects, that are hard to understand, as if they were in a real classroom. Commercial or open source? Nowadays there are two kinds of Learning Management Systems. First of them is commercial, and the second is free or so called open source project. I’m going to concentrate on the second type which is designed for the Higher Education purposes. WDS'05 Proceedings of Contributed Papers, Part I, 207–212, 2005. ISBN 80-86732-59-2 © MATFYZPRESS 207
Transcript of Learning Management System - Matematicko-fyzikální · PDF fileREMES: LEARNING...
Learning Management System
R. Remes
University of South Bohemia, Faculty of Agriculture, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic.
Abstract. Learning management system (LMS) is software that automates theadministration of training. The LMS registers users, tracks courses in a catalog,records data from learners, and provides reports to management. An LMS istypically designed to handle courses by multiple publishers and providers. It usuallydoesn’t include its own authoring capabilities, instead, it focuses on managingcourses created by a variety of other sources.
Introduction
In my doctoral studies I occupy myself with IT supported teaching. For such purposes we useLearning Management System (LMS). LMS is software that automates the administration of trainingevents. All LMS’s manage the log-in and registration of users, manage course catalogs, record datafrom learners, and provide reports to management. There used to be a distinction between learningmanagement systems and more powerful ”integrated” learning management systems. That distinctionhas now disappeared. The term learning management system is now used to describe a wide range ofapplications that track student training and may or may not include functions such as:
Authoring — which means tools that offer the option of editing and saving materials in or transformdocuments into a Web format. Tools that produce multimedia and tools for site management orsite publication, and management of layouts (e.g. CSS formatting tools).
Classroom management — ways of organising the resources, pupils and helpers in a classroom, sothat teaching and learning can proceed in an efficient and safe manner.
Competency management — personal competency gap analysis. Competency management is usedto identify skills, knowledge and performance.
Knowledge management — the distribution, access and retrieval of unstructured information abouthuman experiences between interdependent individuals or among members of a workgroup.
Certification or compliance training — courses for learning from home, office or any remote loca-tion with internet access.
Personalization — adaptation of users based on personal details.
Mentoring — is designed to promote students development. By this we mean goals, schedules, training,and evaluation.
Chat — a system allowing real-time communication between two or more users.
Discussion boards (message boards) — forum provided for discussion.
LMS provides students their own virtual learning environment, where they can find courses, tests orinstructions how to study. They can participate in discussions on various topics or consult some subjects,that are hard to understand, as if they were in a real classroom.
Commercial or open source?
Nowadays there are two kinds of Learning Management Systems. First of them is commercial, andthe second is free or so called open source project. I’m going to concentrate on the second type which isdesigned for the Higher Education purposes.
WDS'05 Proceedings of Contributed Papers, Part I, 207–212, 2005. ISBN 80-86732-59-2 © MATFYZPRESS
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ATutor
ATutor is an Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS) designedwith accessibility and adaptability in mind. Administrators can install or update ATutor in minutes,and create themes to give ATutor a custom look and feel. Educators can quickly assemble, package,and redistribute Web-based instructional materials, easily retrieve and import prepackaged content, andconduct their courses online. Students learn in an adaptive learning environment.
Brihaspati
This is an effort of Educational Technology Research Group, IIT Kanpur which aims at developinga platform-independent highly scalable content delivery tool for web-based elearning system.
This software is implemented in java using Turbine, an open source framework to build secure webapplications. This conforms to the Model View Controller (MVC) paradigm which aims at separatingcontent, presentation and business logic.
Development for regional Indian languages in progress. Currently used by many Indian universitiesand colleges.
Currently this project is funded by Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Govt.of India (since November 2003) and IIT Kanpur (since August 2002).
Claroline
Claroline is an Open Source software based on PHP/MySQL. It’s a collaborative learning environ-ment allowing teachers or education institutions to create and administer courses through the web.
The system provides group management, forums, document repositories, calendar, chat, assignmentareas, links, user profile administration on a single and highly integrated package.
Claroline is translated into 28 languages and used by hundreds of institutions around the world. Thesoftware was initially started by the University of Louvain (Belgium) and released under Open Sourcelicence (GPL). Since then, a comunity of developpers around the world contributes to its development.
COSE
COSE (Creation of Online Study Environments) is a system which facilitates active and collaborativelearning for a wide variety of learners (traditional, distributed and distance), with a particular focuson approaches such as problem-based learning and cognitive apprenticeship. COSE 2 builds on thesuccesses of COSE, developed in part with funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee(JISC), with a redesigned user interface, improved performance and improvements to the accessibilityand interoperability of the software. The most significant improvement of all, of course, is in the price.As a free binary download COSE 2 is now available to FE and HE establishments and government andcommercial organisations worldwide. Cambridge Software Publishing and Staffordshire University haveagreed to release later versions of COSE 2 to be made available under an Open Source Licence.
CourseWork
CourseWork is an open source course management system, designed to provide an open, modularframework for learning objects. It uses OKI APIs whenever possible.
It is written primarily in Java, using the Java servlet technology. Stanford’s implementation ofCourseWork runs with the Apache web server, using TomCat 4.0 for the Java servlet server. DTL(Display Template Language), developed at Stanford, is used to create the presentation displays. Thedatabase back end is Oracle. CourseWork has been run on both Sun Solaris and Linux.
Other institutions have ported CourseWork to work with PostgreSQL, and is expected to be com-patible with other SQL implementations as well.
Using CourseWork, instructors and teaching assistants can set up a course Web site that displaysannouncements, on-line readings, a dynamic syllabus and schedule, on-line assignments and quizzes, adiscussion forum for students, and a grade book. CourseWork is designed both for faculty with little Webexperience, who can use CourseWork to develop their Web site quickly, and for expert Web-users, whocan use it to organize complex, Web-based materials and link them to Web communication tools. TheCourseWork source code is free and open, and can be downloaded from their site for any organizationto use and modify to their own needs.
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Docebo LMS
DoceboLMS is an open source e-learning platform written in php, mysql, and scorm 1.2 compliant,for distance learning developed in italy and known as ”Spaghettilearning”, since the 2.0 version the nameis changed in DoceboLMS. (In latin Docebo means ”I will teach”).
The project is now developed by programmers located all over the world and the original team iscoordinating more than 20 developers. The learning management system charateristics are:
• written in PHP and MySql, so it can run in Linux, Windows, Macosx and in most of the internetprovider web hosting,
• open source, so completely free,
• support SCORM 1.2, the e-learning international standard,
• manage different learning models, from collaborative learning to self learning.
Fedora
Fedora is a general purpose repository service developed jointly by The University of Virginia Libraryand Cornell University. The Fedora project is devoted to the goal of providing open-source repositorysoftware that can serve as the foundation for many types of information management systems. Thesoftware demonstrates how distributed digital information management can be deployed using web-basedtechnologies, including XML and web services.
Fle3 Learning Environment
Fle3 is a web-based software for computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). It is designedto support learner and group centered work that concentrates on creating and developing expressionsof knowledge (i.e. knowledge artefacts) and design. Fle3 contains three learning tools and severaladministration tools.
Fle3 is easy to localize to different languages (all you need to do is to translate one file). Currentlyusers may choose their user interfaces language to be Finnish, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese,Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Italian, Lithuanian, Estonian, German, Polish, Danish or Chi-nese.
Fle3 WebTops can be used by teachers and students to store different items (documents, files, links,knowledge building notes) related to their studies, organize them to folders and share them with others.WebTop also includes shared ”course folder” for each course. The same shared ”course folder” is availablein the Knowledge Building and Jamming tools as well. The items in the WebTops can be called learningobjects.
With Fle3 Knowledge Building tool groups may carry out knowledge building dialogues, theorybuilding and debates by storing their thoughts into a shared database. In the Knowledge Building studygroup may use Knowledge Types to scaffold and structure their dialogues. The Knowledge Type setsare fully editable and one may export and import them from one Fle3 to another. Fle3 comes with twodefault Knowledge Type sets: Progressive Inquiry, and Design Thinking.
Fle3 Jamming tool is a shared space for collaborative construction of digital artefacts (pictures, text,audio, video). A study group may work together with some digital artefacts by simply uploading anddownloading files. Versions are tracked automatically and different versions are displayed graphically.Jamming can be used for many kind of collaborative work requiring versioning.
For teachers and administrators Fle3 offers tools to manage users and courses, and study projects.The administrator may also export and import courses or the fully content of the Fle3 database in XMLformat (compatible with the Educational Modelling Language — EML).
Fle3 is a Zope product, written in Python. Zope and Fle3 run on almost all Operating Systems(GNU/Linux, MacOS X, *BSD, etc.) and Microsoft Windows.
ILIAS
The web-based learning management system ILIAS is available as open source software under theGNU General Public License (GPL). Universities, educational institutions and every interested personmay use the system free of charge and contribute to its further development. ILIAS has a very bigworldwide user and developer community. The software development worldwide is coordinated by teamat the Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne.
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ILIAS allows users to create, edit and publish learning and teaching material in an integrated systemwith their normal web browsers. Tools for cooperative working and communication are included as well.
I-Study
This is an open source platform based on PHPBB Forum dealing with actual didactical aspects forcooperative learning. The platform supports English and German speaking people. Tutorial and websiteis only in German.
.LRN
.LRN is an open source enterprise-class suite of web applications and a portal framework for sup-porting course management, online communities and collaboration. Originally developed at MIT, .LRNcan be used to support a range of applications, including course management, e-learning, and researchcommunities. .LRN is in use worldwide at MIT (U.S.), University of Heidelberg (Germany), Universityof Cambridge (U.K.), University of Bergen (Norway), University of Sydney (Australia), UniversidadGalileo (Guatemala), and University of Copenhagen (Denmark).
.LRN provides a complete portal framework with capability for course management, online commu-nities, content management, and learning management.
Manhattan Virtual Classroom
The Manhattan Virtual Classroom is a password protected, web-based virtual classroom systemthat includes a variety of discussion groups, live chat, areas for the teacher to post the syllabus andother handouts and notices, a module for organizing online assignments, a grades module, and a unique,web-based email system open only to students in the class. Developed at Western New England College,Manhattan is free, and is released under the GNU General Public License.
Moodle
Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. The design anddevelopment of Moodle is guided by a particular philosophy of learning, a way of thinking that you maysee referred to in shorthand as a ”social constructionist pedagogy”.
The word Moodle is originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Envi-ronment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It’s also a verb that describesthe process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, anenjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodlewas developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an onlinecourse.
Moodle will run on any computer that can run PHP, and can support many types of database(particularly MySQL).
Moodle is an Open-Source e-learning system, currently in use at 987 sites in 74 countries, and hasbeen translated into 34 languages.
OLAT — Online Learning and Training
OLAT is a web-based Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) / Learning Content Man-agement System (LCMS) used in the public sector of Switzerland. The initial development started atthe University of Zuerich, Switzerland where it is deployed on the main OLAT server. Official supportfor OLAT is available at the Multimedia and e-Learning Center (Only available for Swiss universitymembers). OLAT is open source and completely free of charge.
Sakai
The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, the Portal Consortium, and theOpen Knowledge Initiative (OKI) are joining forces to integrate and synchronize their considerableeducational software into a modular, pre-integrated collection of open source tools.
The Sakai Project has just released specifications for higher education open-source software us-ing JavaServer Faces. These specifications, called the Sakai Technology Portability Profile, will ensuresoftware being developed will operate across the systems of participating university partners.
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Seminar
Free e-learning platform on a PHPBB basis. This platform is supported with 2 languages (Ger-man/English) and universities may use them for free. This system is very similar to I-Study.
Shibboleth Project
Shibboleth, a project of Internet2/MACE, is developing architectures, policy structures, practicaltechnologies, and an open source implementation to support inter-institutional sharing of web resourcessubject to access controls. In addition, Shibboleth will develop a policy framework that will allowinter-operation within the higher education community.
It has been tested on various platforms (Windows, Solaris, Mac OS and Linux). The originalimplementation is entirely in Java, so there is one package for all platforms.
Wordcircle CMS
Wordcircle is a course management tool focused on the needs of teachers and students looking tocollaborate online. The product was designed with certain basic features in mind. In its initial release,the product includes a calendar, discussion board and course materials (files) module as well as a projectmodule for students to store journal entries and documents related to teacher and self-assigned activities.While there are many course management tools like this, not many are easy to use from an educativeor administrative standpoint. The user interface is intuitive and clear as is the maintenance of coursesand the system itself. Currently, wordcircle is being used by a handful of academic institutions mostlyin the United States. The first group to help define and test the system is now using it successfully atMills College in Oakland, California. Wordcircle, programmed in PHP, is open-source, commercial freeand available at no cost.
Conclusion
To summarize all this we can see, that most of these systems do not consist only of LMS, but extendtheir abilities and functions with application of Content Management Systems (CMS).
Content Management Systems (CMS) are used to store and subsequently find and retrieve largeamounts of data. CMS’s work by indexing text, audio clips, images, etc., within a database. In addi-tion, CMS’s often provide version control and check-in/-out capabilities. Using robust, built-in searchcapabilities, users can quickly find a piece of content from within a database by typing in keywords, thedate the element was created, the name of the author, or other search criteria.
So LMS’s are with CMS’s formed to Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS).LCMS’s usually have good search capabilities, allowing developers to quickly find the text or media
needed to build training content. Learning content management systems often strive to achieve a separa-tion of content – which is often tagged in XML – from presentation. This allows many LCMSs to publishto a wide range of formats, platforms, or devices such as print, web, and even wireless information devices(WID) such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), or laptop computers, all from the samesource material.
These abilities are added to LMS for the following three main reasons: firstly, in LMS there is alack of content creation capabilities, in addition there is a disability of reusing contents, and finally theworkflow tools to manage the content development processes are missing.
References
e-Learning Centre: Open source course management systems [online]. e-Learning Centre, c1994–2005.URL: <http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/vendors/opensource.htm>
Course Management Systems - EduTools [online]. WCET, c2005.URL: <http://www.edutools.info/course/index.jsp>
ATutor Learning Content Management System [online]. Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, c2001–2005.URL: <http://www.atutor.ca/>
Brihaspati [online]. ETRG (Education Technology Research Group), IIT Kanpur, c2002–2005.URL: <http://home.iitk.ac.in/ ynsingh/tool/brihaspati.shtml>
Claroline: Open Source e-Learning [online]. Catholic University of Louvain, c2000–2005.URL: <http://www.claroline.net/>
The COSE Virtual Learning Environment — for Active Collaborative Distributed eLearning [online]. Stafford-shire University Enterprises Ltd, c2003.URL: <http://www.staffs.ac.uk/COSE/>
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CourseWork: an Open Source Course Management System [online]. Board of Trustees of the Leland StanfordJunior University, c2004.URL: <http://getcoursework.stanford.edu/>
DoceboLMS e-learning open source scorm compliant LMS PHP Mysql [online]. c2005.URL: <http://www.docebolms.org/>
Fedora Project [online]. Red Hat Inc., c2005.URL: <http://www.fedora.info/>
Fle3 is a Learning Environment! — Fle3 CSCL Software [online]. Learning Environments for Progressive Inquiryresearch group, c2004–2005.URL: <http://www.atutor.ca/>
ILIAS open source [online]. ILIAS-Projektmanagement, c2005.URL: <http://www.ilias.de/>
i-study v1.6 — die OpenSource Plattform fur asynchrone kooperative Onlineseminare [online]. Dresing T.,Rademacher N., Pehl T., c2004–2005.URL: <http://www.i-study.de/>
.LRN [online]. .LRN Consortium, Inc., c2003–2005.URL: <http://www.dotlrn.org/>
Moodle Services — moodle.com [online]. Moodle, c2004.URL: <http://moodle.com/>
Shibboleth Project — Internet2 Middleware [online]. Internet2, c1996–2005.URL: <http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/>
Wordcircle course management for teachers and students [online]. Matt Reider, c2004.URL: <http://wordcircle.org/>
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