Open Source LMS

I had previously written about Low Cost LMS and Rapid Learning Management Systems, but I receive an inquiry from someone who had a very constrained budget and wanted to build an eLearning Portal.

Some details of what they want / need:

The portal we need to develop should be able to handle online registration, producing letters of offer, payment gateway, producing letters of acceptance, producing student cards, downloading syllabi, downloading study guides, processing purchasing orders that trigger the distribution of the textbooks by the Publishers’ office to students, communication between mentors and students, organizing forums, notice board, chat rooms, uploading e-Lectures, downloading topic questions, downloading assignments and coursework, posting answers to mentors, mentors grading the students’ work and posting marks, issuing tutorial time-table, posting final exam dates and posting exam results, transcript issuance and degree issuance and graduation.

Because of their very limited budget, I suggested they dive into more depth looking at open source LMS products.  To help get that started, I looked at eLearning Learning and found some pretty good sources around LMS / Open Source and Learning Management System / Open Source.

• Open Source life, LMSs beyond Moodle- Learning Rocks, December 18, 2008
• The Right Way To Go About Open Source LMS- Upside Learning Blog, October 23, 2009
• The Corporate Moodle: A Tipping Point?- Learning Visions, June 26, 2009
• Concerning Open Source, LMSs and SCORM: Correcting Some Common Misconceptions- The E-Learning Curve, October 19, 2009
• To open source or not?- Learning Conversations, December 30, 2008
• Open Source LMS Comparison- The Learned Man, April 27, 2007
• Open Source vs Commercial LMS- Learning Next, April 18, 2007
• ZaidLearn: Any Free Hosted CMS or LMS? (Yes, Obama Says!)- ZaidLearn, May 16, 2009
• Sakai 3 Development Process- Experiencing eLearning, June 9, 2009
• How Big is Moodle?- MinuteBio, June 12, 2009
• Moodle!- The Learned Man, April 28, 2007
• Rapid Learning Management Systems- eLearning Technology, October 20, 2009
• A first look at Sakai 3- Clive on Learning, October 16, 2009
• Gartner: E-learning Market Pushing Toward Open Source, June 7, 2008
• Open source for learning costs less, January 12, 2009
• LMS Selection, July 24, 2009
• Blackboard vs. Moodle, May 7, 2009
• Assessing PLE/LMS systems | nmc, November 11, 2008
• Moving to Moodle: Reflections Two Years Later (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT, December 29, 2008