Intro

Hello,

My name is Dario Lopez-Kästen. I work as a Systems Developer and
Administrator at Chalmers University of Technology.

We have built a Learning Management System in Zope, with an integrated
Virtual Learning Environment. This is the result of a project that lasted
for about 18 months, with only the last 6 focused on development.

You can find the current version of it here: <a
href="http://ka.ita.chalmers.se"
target="_blank">http://ka.ita.chalmers.se</a>. It is LGPL, but there is no
official release yet.

I am currently looking into re-implementing the above using Plone. We need
to move on to a better platform for a system this size. IN my view, Plone
provides pretty much everything that is needed in terms of a supporting
infrastructure for an LMS/MLE/VLE and what is not there can be added later.

IMHO and generally speaking a sensible LMS/MLE/VLE usually uses all the
components available in any decent portal/community oriented system, with
the addition of a CMS of some kind and the needed administrative modules,
such as integration with legacy student and staff systems, enhanced
user/role management, syllabus publishing, personalisation, etc, etc.

This makes a portal, publishing and collaboration tool an ideal platform
upon which to build such systems. So, the work to be done (as some allready
have said on the list) is to identify what we need in an LME/LMS/VLE and
implement them.

If these features are available as infrastructure, then teachers and
eLearning developers can concentrate on developing high quality eLearning
solutions on top of it, instead of having to deal with administratrivial
tasks.

I think Plone and Zope are most suited for this kind of development, and
they can become a, or perhaps *the*, platform upon which to build a
LMS/VLE/MLE in the future.

Cheers,

/dario

- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Dario Lopez-Kästen, IT Systems & Services Chalmers University of Tech.



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