Open-Supply Instruments To Increase Digital Studying
Why choose open source tools?
The digital transformation has currently developed into one of the most important educational trends, especially considering the current situation worldwide. If you have quick and constant access to learning content, you can acquire knowledge and do tasks from anywhere. And we know that situations often require it. With eLearning tools we can respond to the latest demands in the education sector. But why do many educational institutions choose open source software for their learning process?
Here are 3 main reasons for this:
1. Security
While it sounds trite, we won’t stop saying that security is an important part of choosing software for education. Sensitive learner and educator data must always be protected. With open source tools (and even better with self-hosted tools), you have full control over sensitive data and can be sure that it is protected from potential threats.
2. Flexibility
With open source products, you can easily add additional functionality that is needed for teaching and learning. The great thing is the community behind the open source projects; They often help develop the product and bring in new ideas and features. If you already use open source software, you can usually combine it with other open source tools.
3. Cost efficiency
We cannot deny that the price of software is an important issue for many educational institutions. Some of them, especially smaller ones, are often on a tight budget for IT equipment and infrastructure. No wonder they choose free, open source software instead of wasting their entire budget on expensive applications.
7 open source tools for education
Let’s see what open source software you can use to speed up the learning process.
1. Moodle: The most popular and most customizable LMS
Moodle is an open source learning platform that allows you to create custom, secure classroom environments with interactive online courses on your private network. Students can take online courses under the tutors control or on their own flexible schedule.
As one of the most popular academic resources, Moodle is used in many educational institutions around the world. What makes Moodle unique is that you can easily expand and customize its ecosystem. When you open the Moodle plugins directory, you will find over 1,700 helpful plugins and add-ons developed by the open source community, such as grading, audio and video calls, creating certificates, etc.
2. ONLYOFFICE Docs: Document editing and co-authoring for your LMS
With ONLYOFFICE Docs you can easily connect editors [1] with any eLearning platform you already use (including Moodle, OpenOlat, Chamilo, WebWeaver, HumHub and others) and collaborate on documents right within the course structure.
The suite is highly compatible with Microsoft Office files and offers many academic formatting and navigation features such as footnotes, table of contents, bookmarks, etc. Integrated plugins for creating bibliographies, searching for synonyms, translating and checking grammar provide additional functionality you may need for teaching and need learning.
Collaboration functions include real-time and paragraph-blocking co-editing modes, review, tracking of changes, integrated chat, comments and mentions, and document comparison. You can also share documents with your students or colleagues with different authorization levels in order to protect certain data from unwanted attention.
3. OpenOlat: Swiss learning platform with podcasts
OpenOlat is an online LMS for teaching, learning and communication that was developed by the Swiss company Frentix. OpenOlat stands for “open online learning and training”. This learning software offers numerous didactic options for creating and sharing your content. You can organize users into groups, assign them to online courses and classes, and take exams.
Among the collaboration tools from OpenOlat you will find chat functions, blogs, comments, wiki, an assessment toolkit, project groups and virtual classes, portfolio tasks and even podcasts.
4. Chamilo: Free learning platform with time-controlled exams
Chamilo is a free eLearning management system developed by the Chamilo Association, a non-profit organization based in Belgium. Chamilo’s mission is to provide seamless access to educational software and resources to anyone who needs them. Multiple service providers and developer communities contributing to the project are of great help in this.
Chamilo allows you to do many activities that are necessary for the learning and training process (e.g. managing students and courses, monitoring their progress, creating a social communication network, taking exams, creating certificates and more).
5. Open eLearning: Free authoring tool for multimedia courses
Open eLearning is free, open source software that allows you to create engaging educational courses and interactive tutorials in the form of games. It has screen recording tools and photo editing software to help you work faster. Open eLearning is a stand-alone solution. You can easily download it with several clicks and install it on your computer. It doesn’t require a subscription or internet connection.
6. Adapt: Easy-to-use authoring tool for cross-device content
Adapt Learning is an open source and free eLearning application that allows you to create and design course content with interactive elements for any device.
The service is based on the Adapt Framework. To start working, you need to create a new user account and log into the system. When you create your course, you can preview it to see how it will look to other users. Once you are ready, you can publish the materials you have created. Courses created with Adapt Learning can be delivered via a web server or via a SCORM-compliant LMS.
7. CourseLab: Authoring tool with a programming-free WYSIWYG environment
CourseLab is a free e-learning authoring tool that you can use to create interactive tutorials, presentations, and other learning materials. It supports all internet data friendly formats as well as most font styles. Content created in CourseLab is compatible with some learning management systems, including Moodle.
We hope that you find this article interesting and that the mentioned open source tools will help you to achieve even better results in the digital education process.
References:
[1] ONLYOFFICE: collaboration on documents within eLearning platforms
ONLYOFFICE
Fast and secure web-based office suite for the education sector with online editors, document and project management
