Learning Management Systems (LMS)
See IT Throughe provides an opportunity for teachers and lecturers in the Sydney region, Australia and world to develop their own online courses without the need for the technical support and facilities required to set-up a server of their own.
As service provider, we concentrate on technical hosting and support for small business, pilot, or testing requirements. Our hosting services are not for national level institutions. We are generally open to allow smaller projects or classes for your scool to use ATutor or Moodle software at a low scale for low cost - with the reliability of the service.
Decision Making
The following might assist you in decision making process for course management system:
Compare: Course Management Systems at Edu Tools. This site was built to assist higher education in using a more rational decision making process to review the many options for a course management system. For example compare ATutor and Moodle .
Evaluation: Edutech provides evaluation of learning management systems and of various e-learning software. Evaluation reports are available, for:
| Product | Producer |
| ATutor | Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto, Canada |
| Claroline | Catholic University of Louvain / CERDECAM (Belgium) |
| dotLRN | OpenACS consortium |
| Ilias | University of Cologne (Germany) and open-source community |
| Moodle | Martin Dougiamas and open-source community |
| OLAT | University of Zurich |
Advantages of Open Source products for eLearning
Most of the institutions who prefer Open Source products claim the following advantages:
- A key advantage is the quality/cost ratio. Open Source product are offering a sufficient or good quality at low costs. The total cost of ownership (TCO) have been considered and estimated by many institutions.
- Open Source products are more flexible because they allow to add custom extensions and adaptions. Customizations and functional extensions can be implemented easily in reality, because the required know-how is available at the institutions.
- It is easier to perform tests and make test installations, because the software and documentations is readily available.
- It is politcally easier to start a Open Source based service, because no special funding is needed in the initial phase.
- It is easier to estimate long term costs because commercial vendors tend to change license fees and license models.
Further advantages that were less often mentioned:
- If they have the choice, institutions prefer to spend money on staff than on licenses.
- Open Source products are more platform independent, and do not require Microsoft server infrastructure.
- It is easier to participate in communities of interest, because every serious Open Source project has one.
Demo: Real Working Full Feature Course for ATutor
Most of the larger working courses out there will be private. You might take a look at the Learning to Learn course, which includes a whole variety of features. It hasn't run for a little while, and many of the interactive features were disabled, but it may give you an idea of the possibilities.
Moodle is an LMS. ATutor is an Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS) designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind.
