Evaluation of An Open Source Learning Management System: Claroline

A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software package for delivering and managing course materials over the Internet and offering features for online collaboration. The LMS will provide the provision of on-line learning, on-line assessment and collaborative learning. A few of LMS were released under Open Source Software (OSS) license such as Claroline, Moodle and more. These LMS are totally free and very effective for e-learning. The main objective of this research is to evaluate subject being taught 'Routing Protocols and Concepts' using Open Source LMS at the Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (FSKM). The Routing Protocols and Concepts is a course offered for the Bachelor of Science (Hons) (Data Communication & Networking) students at FSKM. This research will focus on online Open Source LMS and we choose Claroline as our case study. The Claroline was released under Open Source license (GPL) version 2. The Claroline is compatible with GNU/Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. It is based on free technologies like PHP and MySQL. It allows hundreds of universities and schools to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces through the web. The platform is used in more than 80 countries and is available in more than 30 languages. At the end of this research, the results will be beneficial for universities and colleges in bringing OSS products and services that promote e-learning and online communities. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of i-Learn Centre, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.