4 ms·

It honestly would be great for some competition, FOSS or not in the distance learning department. Blackboard and friends are horrendous, and as we know zoom has

It honestly would be great for some competition, FOSS or not in the distance learning department. Blackboard and friends are horrendous, and as we know zoom has myriad problems. For a small group meeting I have each week that is now online, I've started using jitsi too.

synergetic 6y ago
Agreed. Moodle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle) is a solid FOSS alternative to BB and is widely used among UK universities.
enjoyyourlife 6y ago
Canvas (https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms) is open-source
- remexre 6y ago
  This actually surprises me, with how cruddy it is, I assumed it was proprietary... My uni switched to canvas from Moodle, to the general detriment of anyone without fast internet and a fast PC.
  - servilio 6y ago
    Do you know if they are using the a hosted version or hosting it themselves?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I brought this up once and a couple of university employees were quick to mention that features that actually let them use it at scale cost a bunch of money and there were fairly large support costs even for open source solutions.
bransonf 6y ago
Blackboard has some really shady IP practices as well. In 2006 they got a patent essentially for LMS (learning management systems) in general and immediately sued a competitor. Not only that, I’ve discovered some minor exploits in my time using it. For what it is, it’s horrible software and none of my professors were ever happy to use it.
eulenteufel 6y ago
My universities computer science, physics and math departments use Sakai [1] instead of the university blackboard and I quiet like it. It's FOSS and works well on mobile (in contrast to the universities blackboard system) [1] https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai
danhor 6y ago
My University uses ilias and in my experience it's way better than moodle, but I haven't used BB. Although I haven't seen any glaring issues in the english translations, it seems to be primarily targeting german audiences. https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS
e12e 6y ago
Is there any life left in .lrn? Based on the ancient aolserver? https://dotlrn.org/ https://dotlrn.org/

synergetic 6y ago

Agreed. Moodle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle) is a solid FOSS alternative to BB and is widely used among UK universities.

enjoyyourlife 6y ago

Canvas (https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms) is open-source

remexre 6y ago
This actually surprises me, with how cruddy it is, I assumed it was proprietary... My uni switched to canvas from Moodle, to the general detriment of anyone without fast internet and a fast PC.
- servilio 6y ago
  Do you know if they are using the a hosted version or hosting it themselves?
saagarjha 6y ago
I brought this up once and a couple of university employees were quick to mention that features that actually let them use it at scale cost a bunch of money and there were fairly large support costs even for open source solutions.

bransonf 6y ago

Blackboard has some really shady IP practices as well. In 2006 they got a patent essentially for LMS (learning management systems) in general and immediately sued a competitor. Not only that, I’ve discovered some minor exploits in my time using it. For what it is, it’s horrible software and none of my professors were ever happy to use it.

eulenteufel 6y ago

My universities computer science, physics and math departments use Sakai [1] instead of the university blackboard and I quiet like it. It's FOSS and works well on mobile (in contrast to the universities blackboard system) [1] https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai

danhor 6y ago

My University uses ilias and in my experience it's way better than moodle, but I haven't used BB. Although I haven't seen any glaring issues in the english translations, it seems to be primarily targeting german audiences. https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS

e12e 6y ago

Is there any life left in .lrn? Based on the ancient aolserver? https://dotlrn.org/ https://dotlrn.org/