CMS

Course Management Systems (CMS)


This page is about one of the most powerful tools for organizing and managing educational process in the Web. It is a tool that provides instructors with a set of tools and a framework that allows the relatively easy creation of online course content and the subsequently teaching and management of that course including various interactions with students taking the course.

The area of use of Course Management Systems includes designing full-featured distance courses, as well as blended courses. Each CMS has different features and provides unique approach to course design and delivery. Although, most of them have a standard set of tools and services:
 * Designing tests/quizzes,
 * Uploading files on the course page for group sharing (text documents, presentations, audio, video and other types of content),
 * Designing web and text pages,
 * Assignment submission tools,
 * Grading tools,
 * Student activity tracking,
 * Managing student and instructor accounts,
 * Group synchronous discussion tools (text chat, audio/video chat),
 * Group asynchronous discussion tools (forums),
 * Wikis or other group document editing tools.

These are the most popular commercial CMSs:

[|Desire2Learn]
These are the most popular open source CMSs:

[|Moodle]
Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. Moodle is the most popular Open Source CMS in the world. For first-time users, the Moodle documentation is quite thorough [|Moodle Documentation]

[|Dokeos]
Dokeos is a open source online learning suite. It provides :
 * [|Learning Management] : SCORM import, edit and export,social interaction, sophisticated test and surveys
 * [|Oogie Rapid Learning] : build SCORM courses online from templates, from Powerpoint...
 * [|Accurate reporting] that you can export to Excel, Business Objects...
 * [|Videoconferencing] : virtual meeting and virtual classroom for live training sessions