July eJournal

FINDING A SUITABLE SOLUTION FOR E-LEARNING DEVELOPMENT AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Groups: Duong Thi Thu Huyen, Le Thi Thanh Binh, Nguyen Vinh Ngoc, Noreen Boots Gocon-Gragasin, Subhash Sharma

One importance step before implementing e-learning, organization that prefers to expand the e-learning in dialectic activities is to identify the need and demand of all subjects involved in to learning and teaching activities such as learners/ students, lecturers/ tutors, content designers, program designers and management and administration staff, etc. Based on those collected information and depended on the available financial resource and organization structure and model, the leaders and authority of those organizations will decide the best suitable solution and services for their units. There are 4 options to implement e-learning in an organization, at present:
- Set up an own e-learning system. This is extremely expensive in time, finance and other resource. This can be suitable for big companies or educational organizations that are strong in financial resource as well as software developed personnel.
- Purchase commercial software. This solution is feasible with the major companies and educational organizations with variety software that is different in functions and cost of license. Before choosing to buy software, several factors should be taken in to account, such as e-learning model, compatibility with existing software and system, satisfy/meet the technical requirements, financial ability, etc.
- Hire software from Application Service Provider (ASP). With this implementation, the educational organizations have to focus to develop the content and monitor the quality of provided service in spite of pay attention to the hardware and supportive software. This solution enable the organization to reduce the overall price and quite feasible with educational organizations in short-term.
- Develop a system by using the open source software. This is an optimal solution that support for implementing and suitable for specific educational content. It is also easier to upgrade the system in the future.
Open source software is software that can be distributed free with original source code. It means that the user can edit and change the source code for user purposes without getting the acceptance from its designers. Meanwhile, all the commercial software is distributed without its source code.

What is the suitable tool for e-Learning project? the open source software or commercial? by Subhash Sharma

The demand for E-learning products and services is growing fast with customers ranging from enterprise companies and government agencies to schools and universities. Geographically dispersed enterprises are taking advantage of opportunities presented when learning materials and the Internet get together decreasing expenses on a broad range of training they need to provide. Higher education and schools are looking to optimize their operations and make more use of online education. The increasing demand for e-Learning projects necessitates the requirement of a suitable solution for e-Learning development. There is no doubt that open source software is really proving panacea for this purpose. Use of an open source software for developing a system is an optimal solution that support for implementing and suitable for specific educational content. It is also easier to upgrade the system in the future.
As the world is moving towards a more collaborative form of software development, many independent software vendors are leveraging the power of open source software to build new software products at a low cost. In fact there is a sort of competition among the software venders to popularize their product and for this purpose open source software is being made available by them to the IT users. There no denying fact that Open Source Software is becoming increasingly popular and even major companies like IBM, Oracle and others are creating or converting some of their software solutions to be Open Source Software (OSS).
Open Source is often confused with freeware because much OSS is free of charge. However, this is not a requirement as such, but the distribution of the source code for the software is. Freeware programs are free of charge, but it is not a requirement that the Source Code is open/distributed e.g. MSN Messenger is free of charge, but the source code is not open.
Open source software has become mainstream. Applications such as the Firefox Web browser, Apache Web server, Linux operating system, MySQL database platform, and PHP programming language continue to gain popularity. Most importantly, these applications often equal or even surpass the quality of well-known commercial, proprietary software.
Open source software is also making important inroads into the world of online learning. Open source e-learning now includes:
• Learning management systems (LMS)
• Learning content management systems (LCMS)
• Course authoring tools
• Tools to create media elements such as animations, audio, and video clips
• Browsers and players to present content
• Wiki Software Systems
• Digital image editing, image viewing
• Audio Utilities
• Office and home use
• Useful Scholarly programs
• Forum systems
Benefits of open source e-learning software :
• Low initial cost: Open source software is free to download.
• Flexibility and customizability: You can modify the software as needed to make it better.
• Extensive active user communities: Participating in open source projects is a source of distinction among developers.
• Multi-platform capabilities: Many open source applications run on multiple platforms including Windows and Linux.
• Adherence to standards: Interoperability is a high priority for many open source developers.
• Tendency to use and link to other open source software: Including popular languages and platforms such as PHP and MySQL database
How to find Open Source Software:
It is necessary to know about the OSS before one uses it. To get detailed information on OSS, one can refer to: http://www.opensource.org where ten principles for Open Source Software can b found out.
Also one can read more about the philosophy behind Free Software and the GNU-public License, which OSS is often distributed under at: http://www.gnu.org . At the GNU-site there is also a big directory of "Free Software".
If one is looking for Open Source Software, then a good place to start is definitely Sourceforge.net. Sourceforge hosts different development projects within the OSS-community. At this site there are more than 100.000 registered development processes and more than a 1.200.000 registered users – butone should have a look at: http://sourceforge.net - Especially it might be useful to browse through their "Project of the Month" site.
Other useful links:
The site OpenCd.org also features a nice compilation of useful programs: http://www.theopencd.org/
And the same goes for a Nordic Project aimed at compiling useful OSS programs: http://nordicos.org/
UNESCO has gathered an amazing overview of different OSS applications: UNESCO portal
The site Winlibre.com features software to manage, install and upgrade various Open Source programs. It also features an overview of different programs and utilities.
The site http://ossite.org/ features a Special Interest Group (SIG)on Open Source Software in Education. This is a great resource for people interested in OSS and education.
A different version of the Open CD especially aimed at education can be found at a page developed by Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society: Open CD for education
A good collection of Open Source for Windows has been compiled at: http://www.opensourcewindows.org/
A similar collection of Windows Open Source Programs can be found at: http://osswin.sourceforge.net/
You can also find open source software alternatives to well-known commercial software - like Windows, Visio, Photoshop or Captivate at the site osalt.com. Their mission is to provide easy access to open source alternatives to well-known commercial products.
http://www.osalt.com/

By studying the available alternatives one has to decide whether open source e-learning is right for him. Before going for the right choice one should understand the following:
• Details of the differences between open source and commercial software, including details about typical software development cycles, pricing, licensing, and more.
• The impact of open source software on online training.
• The environment in which training software is developed and deployed.
• The issues involved with implementing open source software tools, including deciding whether you should go the open source route.
• The outlook, strengths, and trends of six open source LMS software packages, four course development and packaging tools, multiple tools to create media elements, and open courseware offerings.
It need not be emphasized that by opening more doors in e-learning technology, open source software has become a strong contender in online training and e-learning sectors. With technology constantly advancing, one can expect more open source offerings to emerge in the e-learning arena – changing the landscape of online instruction and training for the academic world and industry alike.
With such swift technological advancements on the horizon, chances are you can find suitable tools to meet one’s training needs in either the open source or commercial sector. But open source provides unique advantages – filling the low-cost high-control niche – that are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve through commercial, proprietary avenues.