Assessment of 5 leading open source CMS from Commonwealth of Learning

http://www.developmentgateway.org/
download/201768/COL_LMS_Open_Source_-_July_2003.pdf

Not sure how this one got past me, must have been the summer doldrums, but back in June this report commissioned by the Commonwealth of Learning evaluating the field of current open source course management systems was released. It provides a fairly extensive analysis of the 5 shortlisted products (Moodle, LON-CAPA, ILIAS, dotLRN and ATutor) and ends up recommending ATutor for adoption with ILIAS coming in second.

It’s an interesting recommendation. One could contrast it with the recent piece from Rob Reynolds at xplana that looked at some of the same products, but with a very different evaluation framework. It’s also a bit unfortunate that it wasn’t able to assess Stanford’s Coursework, which was only then being released. I guess the other small fault I would find with it is that it takes a naive view of product selection based on feature assessment, as it simply provides a total of the various assessments, thus considering all features as being of equal weight, though it does separate out systemic issues from functional features. And if I was the Moodle guy, I think I might cry foul over a few of their ‘subjective assessments.’ Still, a very worthwhile resource and reference. – SWL