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Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle

8th April 2009 By 148 Comments

Since the economic downturn began I’ve noticed much more interest in open source Learning Management Systems (LMS), and it’s no surprise that when people ask what the options are, the answer is usually Moodle. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Moodle, but it certainly isn’t the only open source LMS out there.

Because there is no licensing cost involved with open source solutions, its easy for organisations to just jump in and set up the first solution that comes along. There is however a cost to installation and support, either financial or time related. Anyone setting up an LMS has a responsibility to research and choose the solution that is right for the learners and the organisation.

As a starting point here are 10 open source alternatives to Moodle. These are deliberately brief descriptions, and I would encourage you to visit these sites and explore each solution in some detail.

Docebo In use in corporate and higher education settings. Offers support for a number of different learning models and is compatible with SCORM 1.2 and 2004. It offers interfaces to external systems such as video conferencing and HR systems.

eFront The base install is quite minimalist, but this is easily extended with modules available from the site. Commercial versions with additional features are also available.

Dokeos A very well featured LMS that also offers content authoring and video conferencing tools. Supports converting Office documents into Learning Paths. Offers user synchronisation with HR management systems such as Oracle and SAP.

Claroline Aimed more at the educational than corporate arena, this system is based around specific pedagogical principles (as is Moodle). Supports SCORM content as well as a built in Wiki and other online content tools.

ATutor Actually an LCMS, ATutor also offers tools for the management of learning. The “A” stands for Accessible and it has excellent support for key accessibility standards as well as support for SCORM, IMS etc.

ILIAS Provides testing and assessment tools as well as collaboration tools such as chat and forums, and distribution technologies like RSS and podcasts.

OLAT A well featured system in its tenth year of development. Recently the winner of the “IMS Learning Impact ‘Leadership Award’ 2009 for best open source learning platform”.

Sakai Aimed at Universities, this project has a clear roadmap and has seem considerable development in the last few years. Backed by the Sakai Foundation which manages relationships with educational and commercial supporters.

.LRN Originally developed at MIT, .LRN claims to be the most widely adopted enterprise class open source LMS solution.

openelms Marketed specifically as a business solution, and claims a diverse customer base that ranges from Merrill Lynch to Queens Park Rangers football club.

Ganesha This LMS developed by Anema, has been around since 2001 and is in use in several large organisations. The site, and the LMS itself, are in French but it can be translated.


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  • celebrate

    sorry one other question. I have looked but didnt seem to see any real mature solutions that are wordpress plugins, Scholar Press seems to have some promise, but not ready for prime time yet.

    So any wordpress options?

  • http://beeznest.wordpress.com/author/ywarnier Yannick Warnier

    Hi Kalpesh,

    For colleges, you definitely want to have a look at Chamilo: http://campus.chamilo.org (or http://chamilodev.beeznest.com if you want to try the latest stuff – to be stabilized by the end of the month). The major distinction with Moodle is that it is much easier to use for teachers and students (I’ve been reported a factor 5 difference in training time to get teachers able to produce content on their own).

    Celebrate,

    Chamilo 1.8.8 (to be out this month) will include a plugin with BigBlueButton. Although we do not include the videoconferencing software as is (because it is a whole different software architecture), you can host your videoconference server with 207me.com (write an e-mail to Stephen Dame at “sdame at 207me dot com”) for a pretty reasonnable price, then connect it very easily to Chamilo. This is for live videoconferencing. If you want to replay pre-recorded videos, then you can just use Chamilo and upload your videos from YouTube, Vimeo or whatever you want, it’s built in.

    Of course, I might not be considered neutral here as I am a developer for Chamilo, but considering most of our users are very happy to use it or to have moved from Moodle, I’m pretty sure that I’m not telling tales here, and that you’ll like it (most of the time people choose Moodle as the first, not the best, option).

  • http://georgedonnelly.com George Donnelly

    I need something primarily for keeping in touch with individual students while class is not in session. It would be nice if it could also manage courses, but primarily I need it for keeping student records in a permanent place where they can always find it and liaising with individual students.

    Is there anything for that?

  • Barry

    Hi George. Most of the options listed in the original post and comments, as well as Moodle, would let you do this. If you don’t need the LMS specific features, you could consider a more mainstream CMS such as Drupal or Joomla, or perhaps WordPress with the BuddyPress plugin.

  • Elena

    George,

    Besides Drupal and Joomla are WordPress compliant both. You can also use Droomla – new integration of Drupal and Joomla. Some details about Joomla: you can use Joomla with Joomla LMS or Joomlearn and add the JomSocial (social networking tool – http://www.jomsocial.com/). Joomla LMS is integrated with JomSocial and it is possible to view LMS related information in a user profile.

  • http://beeznest.wordpress.com/author/ywarnier Yannick Warnier

    Hi George,

    Out of the box, you can install Chamilo 1.8.8 from http://chamilo.googlecode.com/files/chamilo-1.8.8.zip, follow the installation guide from http://chamilodev.beeznest.com/documentation/installation_guide.html and you’ll not only get a messaging tool between students that recognize each other as “friends”, and the capability (through a few options) to get these messages to trigger e-mails and let them form groups, but also the possibility to later start using a fully fledged (and easy to use) e-learning system… It all depends on your needs, but I doubt you’ll find anything easier or more adapted to your needs ;-)

  • Steve

    Great article, much appreciated Barry.

    I am looking for a way to create an online community to support existing students who learn on site or online in different cities.

    At this point I need the community element more than the LMS course ware, is this something Moodle can do? I have just begun the discovery processes, so much to learn! I’m thinking the grouping function might be part of the answer, and the way the courses are categorised.

    At the core, I’d like to students who have taken class 1 to be able to chat, collaborate and get together virtually with other class 1 attendees, no matter where they attended class, or how. The same with class 2, 3, 4, 5.

    Should class 1 be able to meet class 2 or 3 attendees? I don’t even know, probably. Thanks for the feedback.

  • Barry

    Hi Steve,

    You could use Moodle to build a community site (moodle.org is such site) but my own view is that it isn’t the best tool for the job.

    I would consider using WordPress + BuddyPress (and maybe ScholarPress later when you need the courseware element?) or Open Scholar which is built on Drupal.

  • Sarit

    To Yannick Warnier ,

    Is there a way to have English documentation available since there is a French version on the Chamilo documentation site?

    Chamilo is very to use and jump into but documentation in English would help make this LMS a much better learning experience for both the student and teacher user.

    Thank you in advance.

  • Brian

    Q. Referencing these OS LMS recommendations … I’m particularly interested in OLAT and .LRN – these seem to be the most robust from reliable sources. My client specified “Must have the ability to generate course completion certificates.” Suggestions? Experiences? Your comments are welcome and appreciated, thank you.

  • http://www.olat.com Christian

    Hi Brian,

    In OLAT you do not have the possibility to generate certificates yet. For our clients we suggest to open a course element “contact form” called “Request for certificate”. You define the rules on this course element that it will open if users finished the test successfully. So you can print a nice certificate and send it by mail. Another option is to use SCORM and to integrate the print of an certificate in SCORM (used by other clients of us). Also we can develop this nice feature for you ;-)

    Regards Christian

    New OLAT is out now with ePortfolio included: olat.org

  • http://beeznest.wordpress.com/author/ywarnier Yannick Warnier

    You can generate certificates automatically from an HTML-based template, based on score of specific course elements (exams, learning paths, forum contributions, assignments, external evaluations, surveys) inside Chamilo 1.8.8.2 (you can try it using http://chamilodev.beeznest.com test platform by creating a teacher account and a course, then going to the “evaluations” tool inside your course and following the instructions). That is if you’re open to something else than OLAT and .LRN at all…

    This being said, it doesn’t include (just yet) barcode generation.

    The method described by Christian is alright in most cases and can pretty much be implemented in any LMS easily (thanks to SCORM).

    Cheers, Yannick

  • Oladipo

    Hi Yannick

    The chamilo demo looks pretty good, however I am not sure what it is I am doing wrong, I have been trying to install the application on a website but have been unsuccessful so far. Do you have any pointers as to what could be the cause of this? The website is running on a linux platform with cpanel.

    Thanks Dipo.

  • http://about.me/thelle Thelle Kristensen

    Thanks a lot Barry!

    You can find, edit and express your opinion about open source alternatives to moodle here:

    http://alternativeto.net/software/moodle/?license=opensource

    AlternativeTo.net is based on users recommendations to give you the best overview of alternative software and is free to edit by anyone!

  • George Kelvin

    Moodle is although a stable system with plenty of user group. Its quite complicated to work on. I feel Dokeos is quite good on simplicity sake. Its a bit buggy but a cool one.

  • http://beeznest.wordpress.com/author/ywarnier Yannick Warnier

    Dipo: You should try version 1.8.8.4 of Chamilo that we’re releasing next week, it comes with a series of little fixes that might fix your issue.

    Also, you might want to check (although in Spanish) an article I wrote a long time ago about installing Dokeos on CPanel. As Chamilo comes from the same root as Dokeos, it’s still valid for both (although we already stabilized and simplified a series of things since we left it behind). http://beeznest.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/instalar-dokeos-en-un-hosting-con-cpanel/

    You should be able to work it out with translate.google.com. From what I can remember, most problems come from not selecting the single database mode or not leaving the other db-related fields (other than “main database”) empty.

  • http://www.geniekids.com Ratnesh

    I am looking for a LMS that allows me to do the following. Have tried moodle but found it restrictive (unless i knew programing whihc i don’t). Can you suggest which LMS will work for our req. WE WANT:

    Step by step flow of learning tasks - Student cannot go to (or even see) task 2 without first finishing task 1.
Every task - the student gets some inputs (text / video / audio / weblink etc) and has to submit some response (open ended).
Student can go back and see her previous submissions (though can’t change them)
student can see submissions made by others (in the past or even in future) when they attempted that task (and is able to comment on their submissions)
Similarly other students  and faculty can comment on each submission from the student.
During each task - the student can separately make her personal notes (private)
During each task - student can ask question(s) to the faculty  - which the faculty responds to later. Student receives a notice when faculty’s responds.
Student is also able to see what questions others have asked and what were responses of faculty / others.
Even after finishing the whole module - student can see the whole whole lesson including own submissions & other student’s submission and faculty and everybody’s comments

  • abhijeet

    Hi barry I want to start online classroom using live video conferencing for the students of rural and semi-urban part of india. Which of these open source software will be best suited for my needs.

  • Wayne

    Barry

    Are any of the open source LMS’s easily configurable to start on online classroom or does the nature of open source systems necessitate personnel with good IT background? I’m looking for something open source but easily configurable that supports video presentations, slideshows and course management.

  • http://www.visualoutcomes.com.au Larissa

    Hi, I need to create training portal for several universities. We teach students how to use practice management software in teaching clinic. I’ve used Moodle for first university, but there are few problems, one – it is bit slow, second – how can I separate different universities groups – I’d like to monitor users and have separate reports on different university progress. May be someone can advise how to overcome this problem or what application to use?

  • Barry

    Moodle doesn’t have any out of the box support for groups, nor very good reporting (mind you, that’s not uncommon in many LMSs, open source or commercial). You might want to have a look at the Moomis plugin which adds these and other features.

  • Nikolaos Melaxronitis

    You might want to check efront (www.efrontlearning.net) that has a very good reporting tool included on the main package and comes free of charge. I think that the Commercial editions include a report generator as well.

  • Nikolaos Melaxronitis

    … eFront also support branches that act as logical entities. You can add each university as one branch and create reports as being isolated.

  • http://beeznest.wordpress.com/author/ywarnier Yannick Warnier

    It depends on how you want to group users exactly and what report you want, but you might want to have a try at Chamilo too. It allows you to: - create sessions (a specific notion that groups students to take a group of courses during a limited timeframe, and enables the “coach” of that session to have precise reports of only those students in all these courses) - group students by “classes”, which lets you subscribe/unsubsribe them to sessions or individual courses

    There are many reporting panels and an easy way to develop new reports with some basic PHP development skills from a special feature called the dashboard.

    It has an adaptative tests feature which includes the possibility to mark an area on an image (like a radiography) and ask the student to mark the same area, and calculates the results based on the percentage of coverage. This is similar to what was available in D0keos medical. We find it particularly useful in the health area where the human training requirements are slightly more… vital, so to speak.

    But as I mentioned before, the biggest differentiation with others is that it’s easier to use from both the teacher and the learner’s point of view.

    You can try it on http://chamilodev.beeznest.com (it’s a test platform, you can login as admin / admin and do whatever you want, with respect) and you can download the (still raw) manual in English here: http://support.chamilo.org/attachments/1782/Chamilo_Admin-guide-1.27-6_reviewed.pdf (the manual explains about sessions in one of the last chapters and it is also available in French and Spanish if that suits you better).

  • http://beeznest.wordpress.com/author/ywarnier Yannick Warnier

    Ratnesh, it seems to me that most LMS will do what you want with just a little configuration.

  • Elena

    Larissa, I use JoomlaLMS and group users to interact with LMS independently. In group they have their own courses that other users can’t view, their own teachers and CEOs etc. You just go to back-end create a group, create restricted category to collect all the courses you would like to be available for this group only and assign this restricted category to the group. Then you should assign teachers and CEOs to the group. Teacher and CEO are default roles. More roles can be used within a group. You can customize default roles too. For example I have Pro version and I set role permission for a teacher to work with certain groups only.

    And about reporting. Reports are available right from your dashboard. You can choose a group to get separate reports. You will get access report on number of visits to every course by students and courses completion report for every course and every student. Student grade report is also available to track a student progress in all his courses. It is not a group report, just a person related. The reports are reportable to CSV or EXL. Have a look – http://www.joomlalms.com/lms-help/teacher-documentation/reports.html

    It is all about default options. Besides Pro version is delivered with PHP open code, so it can be customized by yourself or you can hire native developers.

  • Eelco

    Despite being familiar with most of the programs in the list above, I usualy swear by a wordpress/buddypress install. That takes care of any content delivery and group-building aspects of the learning environment. The only problem is that there is no apparant way to save test results. As a workaround I use the mquiz plugin and link a keyword that’s given upon succesful completion. This keyword is then used as the password for the next assignment and/or noted on a PDF-worksheet.

    Perhaps this isn’t the most sophisticated way to go about it, but it’s quick, easy and get’s the job done.

  • Maria

    Hi, abhijeet ,

    you may have a look at BigBlueButton for video conferencing .

    http://bigbluebutton.org/overview

  • Dee

    Open source LMS is a new frontier for me. I am working with a business that would like to setup a formal training program for one software program of many. I would like to suggest an open-source LMS, because it seems to meet their needs of low-cost, easily maintained (post setup) and user-friendly. They would like to be able to load tutorials (presentations), do assessments, track and report trainees. I’ve never used Moodle or Sakai, only read what was offered via their respective sites. For example, I see that assignments is an option to complete an assignment and upload it, versus signing-in, do/view a tutorial and then executing a quiz (assessment). Am I understanding the process correctly? Is the way these systems work or are they customizable? Feedback is greatly appreciated.

  • Barry

    What you want to do is pretty standard fare for any LMS including Moodle, Sakai or most of the other systems listed in the post and comments.

  • http://Dillonthompson.com Kate

    We need an LMS that is good at publishing quizzes and tallying and reporting answers. Any recommendations?

  • jeiem

    Is there LMS that based on .NET? and it’s OpenSource?.

  • Rachel

    Thank you for all this wonderful information! Very helpful. I am a education consultant looking to help school districts in California find low-cost, easy to manage LMS systems to replace the for profit ones they are currently using. In some districts, they are interested in introducing new programs to students (and teachers) who have never previously been exposed to online learning. One compliant that I have heard from teachers is that Moodle is a bit confusing and daunting to someone new to LMS. Is there a particular system that you recommend that is less “scary” for those teachers and administrators just now coming into the light of online learning? Thank you.

  • Barry

    Hi Rachel,

    I can understand why some people might find Moodle difficult to learn at first; I was the same. However, if you’re new to LMS I think they’re all a bit scary, and that includes the commercial systems.

    A few people have recommended eFront as being a more user friendly solution, but it isn’t as ‘open’ as Moodle.

    To my mind, the most important thing to do is to clearly identify all of the requirements of the scholl district (and that will include ease of use for teachers) and then prioritise that list. Compared to some other types of software, there are relatively few open source LMS solutions and it’s likely that you will have to compromise somewhere. A prioritiSed lost will help you to do that.

    There’s also no substitute for a proper evaluation, so you really need to get all of the posible solutions installed and try working through as many scenarios as possible to see how they cope. You may want to get a group of teachers to help you do this, and they can feedback on the usability.

    Good luck, and do let us know what choices you make.

  • Barry

    If you want something built on MS technologies you’re limited for choice. I believe that Open Elms is built on asp/net and SQL server but it’s difficult to find out much from their web site. There was also a project to ad LMS capabilities to DotNetNuke called DotNetSCORM, but their website currently says they’re moving to new servers.

  • http://beeznest.wordpress.com/author/ywarnier Yannick Warnier

    Rachel, if that helps at all (although I’m obviously biased as I know my solution – Chamilo LMS – more than others), I was recently invited in a country-side primary school in Uruguay (=Latin America, developing world) using those little green laptops from the One Laptop Per Child project. I was invited there by the father of the teacher who taught a multi-grade class of 15 students from 6 to 9 years old, and as I presented myself the teacher suggested I presented the software I helped building (as it was related to learning anyway). In less than one hour and with the help of those (quite slow) little laptops, the pupils knew how to create courses, how to create documents and how to create a mini-exam inside the platform. They tend to learn faster than adults, obviously, but apparently they really loved it (to my surprise). You can guess how much less trained these kids were to using technologies in comparison with children in California. Some of their parents have cellphones with texting capability and a TV, but that’s pretty much it. Only at school do they have a small laptop to play with (and I was said they only used it 2h a week). I don’t want to extend much on the subject, but as far as I understand Chamilo is quite suitable for primary schools (we have at least 50 of these reportedly using it in Latin America, but we don’t have much reports from the US, although it is completely translated to English – actually it’s the source language).

    Just for the fun, here is the school: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=salto,+uruguay&hl=en&ll=-31.391217,-57.71553&spn=0.001969,0.004128&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=58.946508,135.263672&hnear=Salto,+Uruguay&t=h&z=19

  • http://www.LatitudeLearning.com Jeff Walter

    The Latitude Learning LMS is based on .Net technology. It is available on the cloud at http://www.LatitudeLearning.com or installed with a free internal use license. You can sign up for a 100-user Forever Free LMS at LatitudeLearning.com

  • Rachel

    Thanks for all the great suggestions everyone!

  • http://www.openolat.org Christian Franck

    Hi Barry, If you are interested you can add another alternative on your list. We just created the new open source initiative OpenOLAT which is a fork from OLAT. The University of Zurich decided to redesign OLAT for the next years and because we added so many new features to OLAT which will not work anymore, we founded OpenOLAT. Also open source with Apache lisence, with many additional features. Information you can find at http://www.openolat.org. Christian

  • http://equadrants.com swati saha

    Hi All, I just wanted to clarify one thing like, any course developed in moodle / olat etc. are free for commercial usage?

    Thanks in advance for your guidance. Rgds: S Swati

  • Barry

    @Swati – can you clarify your question a little? Are you asking if courses produced in an open source LMS must be free, or whether you can produce commercial courses i an open source LMS?

  • http://www.microassist.com Ella Jane Moore
  • Kevin Andreyo

    Open Learning Management Systems: Sakai and Canvas—Serious Contenders to Moodle?

    The open learning management system (LMS) landscape continues to change at a rapid pace. Many educational institutions are moving from proprietary LMS solutions (Blackboard, Desire2Learn) to open solutions (Moodle, Sakai, Canvas). However, can Sakai and Canvas compete with the proverbial 800 pound Open LMS guerrilla – Moodle? The verdict is still out; but it is clear that many secondary and post-secondary institutions are finding Sakai and Canvas to be a better fit.

    If you are currently evaluating LMSs, consider the following criteria when deciding on best fit:

    • User Experience • Tools and Feature Set (Chatrooms, Discussion Boards, Messaging, Email, Galleries, Virtual Whiteboards, Calendar, Survey, Voting, Assessment) • Platform Development Technology • Reliability • Support • Mobile Learning • Analytics • Scalability • Integration with your current Student Information System • Company Reputation • Best Value • Future Outlook

    In addition, carefully consider these common features: (1) availability to host on the cloud; (2) peak load management; (3) development technology; (4) integrated learning outcomes; (5) mobile applications; (6) accessibility; (7) integration of state standards (k12); (8) browser support; (9) ePortfolio; (10) online student storage; (11) resource gallery; (12) SCORM compliance; (13) integration with third party add-ins; and (14) multimedia support.

    Sakai in Higher Education

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rutgers, University of Delaware, Wake Forest University, Pepperdine University, Boston University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University (NYU), Northwestern University, Rice University, Seton Hall University, Stanford University, Tufts University, University of Dayton, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, Yale University

    Sakai in K-12

    Graham and Charles Schools (Columbus, Ohio), Minisink Valley Central School District (Slate Hill, NY), Huron Valley Schools, Ohio Learning Network, Oregon City School District

    Canvas in Higher Education

    New Mexico State University, Utah Valley University, Brown University

    Canvas in K-12

    Utah Education Network (UEN), Park City School District, Rockingham County School District, Cottonwood High School, Granite School District, Jordan School District, Davis School District, Tooele County School District, Nebo School District, Murray School District, SUCCESS Academy, City Academy

    According to company press releases, Sakai has a user-installed base of more than 300 institutions and Canvas has more than 100. This past month, Instructure released Canvas K-12 with specific features including pre-populated state standards and common core curriculum, parental co-enrollment, attendance, and curriculum mapping. Web conferencing and social media settings are disabled by default.

    Finding the correct LMS is a challenge and just when you think that you have a solid understanding of the LMS landscape, it changes.

    Resources:

    http://www.moodle.org http://www.instructure.com http://www.sakaiproject.org

    Submitted By: Kevin Andreyo, Berks County Intermediate Unit

  • Rachel

    Absolutely loving Canvas right now!

  • Justine

    Hi Barry, I’m searching for an LMS similar to Moodle that will be able to integrate with IMIS as well as our website. I’d like it for CPD, events, quizzes, education, courses, etc. With the assessments we need something that will let us set the CPD credits/points to a certain number, not percentages…..and also be able to set up non-member access where they can do a quiz and receive a certificate at the end of the assessment without giving them access to all of our activities. We will also want to be able to upload videos, pdf’s, podcasts, audio, quizzes etc. Any ideas?? Thank you Justine

  • Barry

    You say you are looking for something similar to Moodle; are there particular reasons for not using it? I’m pretty sure that Moodle could do what you need, albeit with some additional plugins to handle CPD.

  • Amin

    Hi every body, I need a business purpose LMS with video conference,virtual class, e-library,white board features and HRM compatibility which could support high interacted learning activities and whether possible to develop mobile application or plugins for it, what is the best solution?

  • Mayur Shethe

    try this wordpress plugin   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hexam/

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