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.
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Delicious
FriendFeed
YouTube
Flickr
Google Profile
Last.fm
{ 1 trackback }
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for that list Barry. I’ve been looking for a list like this for a while. I’ve encountered a few of these packages before, but to be honest I’m still looking for the Wordpress of the LMS world (I think there’s an opening there!).
I really don’t understand why Moodle gets all the hype it does. On a usability scale, I would give it 2 out of 10.
I guess there have been a lack of open source alternatives.
Moodle is a 2 out of 10 on the usability scale? Only if you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re not willing to put any time into it. Moodle gets the hype it does because it’s better than all 10 of the alternatives listed above. People should explore all avenues, I think. But Moodle is more popular than these others for a reason. Several reasons actually. Moodle is not perfect but we looked at several of the above alternatives and they basically sucked next to Moodle.
Michael, would you believe that I have used LMSs that are to Moodle on usability as Moodle is to Wordpress?
I used to think that Moodle was difficult to use, but I can see that it has inherited many of its more idiosyncratic features as a result of the developers taking as their inspiration a certain widely unloved commercial alternative.
For my money, the adoption and continued integration of Ajax into Moodle will bring usability enhancements that are probably overdue, but where Wordpress is really only about broadcasting content to a uniform audience, perhaps coping with a handful of authors, the multiple identities and permissions in an LMS are always going to present a greater challenge for admins to cope with, no matter how slick the interface.
@Michael Heraghty – My pleasure, I’m glad you found it useful. I think the inherent complexity of an LMS makes it challenging to keep the UI simple, but there’s definitely room for improving the user experience.
@Richard MacLemale – I think together, Michael and yourself make a good point – out of the box Moodle may not be the most intuitive system, but put in some effort and you’ll get the results (and I think the same can be said of most of the others too). I’m not sure I’d say that Moodle is simply better than any of the other options – it’s important to do what you did, and appraise a number of options to see which best suits your needs. Too many people head straight for Moodle without first assessing their needs.
@Dan R – Moodle’s interface continues to improve, but I think I’d differentiate between the user interface experience and the issues of poor workflow. There are only so many things you an fix with the liberal application of Ajax
There are so many good alternatives over Moodle right now that I am surprised on all the heap it still gets. Moodle is very rich feature-wise but when things come to offering solutions and not just features it is a mediocre solution. Espcially on the UI I would give it 0.5 on a 10 scale.
I have played with most LMS’s the last few months and I would highly suggest to use either eFront (www.efrontlearning.net) or Dokeos (www.dokeos.com). Both are feature rich (by the way, I guess you missed most of eFront functionality on the small review which probably mean these guys did a good job on hiding complexity
).
Both eFront and Dokeos has more features than you probably need and helpful communities to build effective solutions.
Again, don’t count features… compare solutions.
@John McNamara – I couldn’t agree more on the features vs solution argument. It doesn’t matter how many features it has if you don’t need them (the same is true of commercial LMS solutions).
You can count & compare features and tools and gizmos and gadgets all you want, but a skilled course builder can make a cinder block deliver a better learning experience than a PhD who refuses to spend the time & energy learn the greatest CMS in the world (whether Moodle or anything else).
That it was/is designed & developed by educators & a vast community of open-source developers to be learner-centric (as opposed to the tool-centric approach favored by many commercial products) gives Moodle a huge advantage.
Other than that, it’s all in how you know & use a tool.
Hello there,
I just want to add the factor that was one of the deciding ones for me: the moodle community. On moodle.org there is so much support being given quickly and competently (all for free as well!), the documentation on docs.moodle.org is clear and can be understood by a non-techie like me and the community decides on feature implementation of future moodle releases. You can also use twitter to connect with other moodlers and even there I had a minor problem fixed within minutes.
The thing that I find very important is that the support is not only technical but also pedagogical. And if anyone has ever been to a moodlmoot (the name for a moodle user conference) they will have been amazed by the amount of quality sessions dedicated to sound teaching using cooperative principles.
Best regards,
Stephan
Hi there.
Can’t just read and pass by, without thank u all for the clarity and help ur post and comments bring me in my choice.
I was looking for an elearning system to sell a course in emarketing field. The problem with going through each system is so long and u can’t do it properly when u don’t really know the standarts of the field.
By the way, just want to add that, usability is next to everything on the web and if a tool is weak here, there is a huge disavantage. I’ve developped ans sell online tools, so i know a little bit what it’s all about.
And i think moodle just have the advantage of being the first popular solutoin out there.
Thanks for each other input.
Nice day to u’ll.
Hi Barry,
Some things you didn’t mention about some of these systems are important considerations for content providers. For example, openelms requires a Windows server and only works on IE. The .lrn system was built on the openacs architecture and while it is probably very robust, it pretty much requires a dedicated server and is thus an expensive solution for individual content providers. Most commercial hosting companies, running unix/linux servers with apache/mysql cannot offer openacs or .lrn hosting.
@Tim Chambers – Some great points there Tim, thanks.
Why do you say that OLAT has quite steep server requirements? A comparison: The moodle documentation on the moodle website says that for 1GB RAM about 50 concurrent user sessions can be running. OLAT on the other hand can handle a 1000 concurrent users with 2GB RAM (thats the setup at the University of Zurich). Where did you get this impression from?
Hi Joel, thanks for the correction. I’ve updated the post accordingly.
i believe getting a good LMS system involves making some difficult choices.
Hi Mwafa, you’re absolutely right, and that’s true whether you choose a commercial or open source solution.
To clear one thing up, I wasn’t knocking Moodle’s *usefulness* — I was complaining about it’s *usability*.
@Rihcard — Re. “Moodle is a 2 out of 10 on the usability scale? Only if you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re not willing to put any time into it.”
No, I didn’t know what I was doing when I first encountered Moodle, and I was confused. I had to spend a lot of time reading before I could build a decent course. I now train teachers in how to use Moodle.
Moodle, while highly useful, isn’t very usable. Usability is a measure of intuitiveness. When a system is usable, people who “don’t know what they are doing” (a.k.a. beginners) can figure it out quickly.
If Moode was more usable, I wouldn’t have to put so much time into it, and teachers wouldn’t require training.
I like Moodle, but I would love if it was more usable. Until then, it’s leaving the door wide open for a more usable competitor to steal it’s throne.
@Michael – I have to agree. Any app has a learning curve, but you are echoing a view that I’ve heard many times, that Moodle is particularly unintuitive. It would benefit from the kind of UIX development that Drupal is now investing in.
You forgot Chisimba, which has more features than almost all of the above, plus is optimised for low bandwidth, which saves money and is easy to work with and translate to any language (default English though).
It is in use across Africa and now in the US and Afghanistan amongst others and has a large and very active dev and user community
http://avoir.uwc.ac.za is the place to download. GPL licensed
Hi Barry,
Just a little correction about Dokeos (which I’m lead developer of). The conversion of Office document is to learning paths, not Flash.
Apart from that, I couldn’t express enough the fact that it is a pretty dangerous and difficult task to describe LMSes so shortly
Interesting job! Way to go!
Y.
I want to launch my website as a free e-learning website to cater IT Courses. I’m trying to find the best e-learning platform to deploy my courses. I have tried moodle but it’s interface is not that easy to learn especially for new user, I have conducted some survey composed of 30 participants and ask them to try my demo Courses deployed on my test servers, with Moodle, eFront and OLAT platform installed on them. Before the test, Moodle is my first choice, but after the tests that I made things changed. I found out based on their feedbacks that eFront and OLAT is much easier to use, Moodle is a bit lousy when it comes to usability (sorry, i love Moodle, but it really needs improvements on that criteria). Now I want to know other people experiences in using eFront and OLAT especially on larger deployments.
What would you recommend for a free or cheap lms to sell and distribute different content to different groups?
@Paul – Thanks for the heads up on Chisimba, I hadn’t heard of it before, but will be watching it’s development with interest.
@Yannick – Thanks for stopping by, I’ll correct that in the post. It is a big subject to have tried to cover in such a short post, but I do hope it has at least got people thinking beyond the obvious.
@Mark – Good luck with the project. It’s nice to see some usability testing going on. In Moodle’s defence, I think it can be made more usable, but you do need to put in some effort.
@pingus – The best recommendation I can make is that you identify exactly what your requirements are and then evaluate a range of solutions to find the most suitable.
hi every body
thank you so much for this list
i`m new in LMS Systems
and i will to choose the best of them for start to change and use it
i will to it has the best features and full of features,easy to use, easy to change
if you can please help me and suggest me the best solution you think
i cant read English very good
and i`m sorry for writing English in bad style
@Andrew – Thanks for stopping by. The first step would be for you to list all of the requirements that you have for an LMS, and then compare that to the systems available. Good luck.
Hi
We at our organisation run a Phd Course in ecology affiliated to a university. So I want to know which of the above opensource solutions work the best.
Thanks for doing this post Barry. We are currently evaluating Moodle and it’s uses for our upcoming e-learning implementation. As you stated, one must look at what the requirements are before choosing a solution. The approach I have suggested with our implementation is to develop the course logically, and then let us think about how to implement that course online. I think too many organizations try to develop around a solution rather than choosing one that fits what they are trying to accomplish. This approach has us looking at maybe something like Adobe connect for synchronous learning and possibly using Moodle for asynchronous learning only.
I never knew that alternatives are there to Moodle also!
Being new to LMS solutions and being an avid WordPress user I’m also seeking the ‘Wordpress of the LMS world’ per the comment by ‘Michael Heraghty’.
I’ve just started to ‘play’ with Moodle and have found it very simple to install. Over the next few weeks I’ll be installing a few of the other solutions mentioned in this article and having a play with them. Hopefully that will me decide on which solution to move forward.
B.T.W. Thanks for the excellent article Barry.