Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: dokeos.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to dokeos.com.

Comments · 11

  1. Dokeos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Real Open Source Applications for Education?

    I have seen a lot of people who mention systems like Moodle, Sakai, Atutor and alike (Blackboard/WebCT alternatives). I would like to add Dokeos to this list: http://www.dokeos.com/. Dokeos has only just released its 1.8 version which can include a videoconferencing module besides all the other 'classic' course management modules.

  2. Re:Claroline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Real Open Source Applications for Education?

    or Dokeos which is quite similar but more evolved: http://www.dokeos.com/

  3. Re:Where's Moodle? by Adhemar · · Score: 3, Interesting · on How Open Source Is Changing Education

    Moodle (moodle.org) is great, but so is that other Free Software e-learning and course management web application Dokeos (dokeos.com). (A fork of ex-Claroline, by the original authors, who are no longer employed by the UCL who owns the trademark Claroline.)

    Which one is the best, Moodle or Dokeos, ultimately comes down to personal preferences. In general Dokeos is more Blackboard-like, and I know several institutions who choose Dokeos because of the lower learning curve, having used Blackboard before.

    Also worth noting is another free software package, a project funded by the (Mark) Shuttleworth Foundation: SchoolTool (schooltool.org), including SchoolBell. It's not an e-learning and course management web application, but rather a school infrastructure administration tool.

  4. Re:The real reason they're trying to patent this. by edremy · · Score: 3, Informative · on Blackboard Patenting Educational Groupware
    This annoyed a lot of people, so much in fact, that the IS department faculty have started an initiative to code a new one, from scratch, in Java.

    Why? It's not like there aren't already a lot of highly capable Open Source LMSs out there, some are even written in Java.

    Depending on your needs, any of these could work fine. We've been running on Dokeos for the past three years, and although our needs aren't high it's worked quite well.

  5. As a manager of a college's Open Source CMS by edremy · · Score: 4, Informative · on Blackboard Patenting Educational Groupware
    I'll be interested in what they can actually do. We use Dokeos, which is headquartered out of Belgium. They don't have a lot of penetration in the US and I can't imagine the EU holding this patent valid, so I'm going to ignore this entirely. Moodle is out of Australia and the press release indicates a corresponding patent has already been issued there and it does have a lot of folks in the US using it. Sakai will be the real test, since they are totally US based.

    I can't imagine this isn't a long term strike against the Open Source LMSs out there. There's no real commercial competition anymore in the field with WebCT gone. Desire2Learn, Angel and the rest are ants under the feet of the Blackboard elephant, but Sakai and Moodle are getting real traction- the real buzz at EDUCAUSE isn't at the BB booth but at Sakai talks, the college just up the road dumped BB for Moodle this summer, etc.

    I had a long conversation with some BB salesdroids last year and they more or less admitted that BB's long term future isn't their LMS, it's the OneCard system. They get a cut out of every purchase made with it, and it's a real cash cow.

  6. More options: Dokeos and Reload by edremy · · Score: 2, Informative · on Suggestions for Scriptable CAI Apps?
    Dokeos is an Open Source courseware system. (e.g. Blackboard, Sakai, Moodle) It has a simple, web-based SCORM lesson builder which allows you to build scripted lessons from content on the system such as documents, links, tests, etc. It will import Hot Potatoes tests as well, and many SCORM lessons from other systems.

    Reload is a SCORM editor. This might be a bit beyond what your people want, but it will build quite complex lessons from various bits of content

  7. Other open source options by edremy · · Score: 1 · on Blackboard and WebCT merge
    I set up Dokeos where I work. (Randolph-Macon Woman's College) We've been running it for three years now with few problems. Doesn't have every feature of BB or WebCT, but it's getting there feature-wise, it's free, the developer community is pretty responsive and it's *very* simple to modify. I've been able to hack in numerous little features and integrate with a half-dozen other campus systems with very little effort.

    Better known than Dokeos and Moodle in the US is the Sakai project This is a big collaboration between a bunch of research-1 schools (MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana) with about $6 million in backing from the Mellon foundation. I might have used this in place of Dokeos if it existed when I installed it, but then again maybe not. It's a much more top-down piece of design as opposed to the very bottom up Dokeos and Moodle.

    I gave a talk at a conference over the summer about Open Source CMSs and the trends. BB/WebCT/Angel and the like should be very, very scared, at least for their core CMS products. There's been little real innovation in them in the past few years so the OS ones have a static target to shoot for and lots of schools are really, really sick of the companies backing them. Blackboard contacted the Sakai project heads about a collaboration- the response was "We've not interested in working with you." BB will survive by diversifying and moving to financial services- they sell a one-card system (doors, meals, vending machine, bookstore, etc) that is also a credit card, and they get a cut of every purchase. That's what is going to keep them alive, since BB the product itself is in trouble.

  8. I'm teaching a similar course by bertvv · · Score: 1 · on What Makes an OSS Class Work?
    Hope this doesn't get lost because it's such an "old" thread, but...

    Incidentally, starting this academic year, I teach a similar course, called "Open Systems". It's also part of a one year continuing education course, specifically (but not exclusively) for graduated Bachelors Applied Informatics. The "Open Systems" course lasts one semester (about twelve weeks) and I teach it six (!) hours every week, which many would consider *waay* too long. Maybe they're right, but consider that the fact that my institution wants to organise such a course is a signal that people are starting to realise the importance of the F/OSS phenomenon...

    Anyway. These are some lecture subjects that I have in mind:
    • Introduction, definition of Open Systems, interoperability, portability, open standards
    • What is F/OSS, the difference between the two, available F/OSS applications
    • Understanding Open Source licensing models, judicial and strategical consequences of F/OSS
    • Open Source = open sores? Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
    • Starting with Open Source systems: a roadmap towards adoption
    • The Open Source Business Model
    • Closing security holes with Open Systems (including a "how to encrypt your e-mail" hands-on session)
    • Open Systems certification
    • Open Source Software development: tools, organisation,

    As part of the course, the students have to work for an Open Source project. Either they choose one for theirselves, or I put them to work for Dokeos, an e-learning platform that is used (and actively improved and developed) at my institution. The idea is that they write a report, not only about what they've done, but also about the organisation of the project, how communication went, how conflicts are solved, etc. Most of them did an internship in a commercial development environment and they can compare both worlds, which should result in interesting reading...

    Students get assignments every now and then, such as comparing an Free/Open Source application with its commercial counterpart (e.g. OpenOffice vs MS Office, the GIMP vs Photoshop, ...). I also plan to organise debates about the issues being lectured.

    If you want to exchange ideas, teaching materials, etc., send me an e-mail. In the spirit of Open Source, I'm happy to share my course materials with you. My address is my slashdot user name, followed by @advalvas.be.
  9. Dokeos by edremy · · Score: 1 · on An Open Source Alternative to Blackboard?
    Too late for most readers since I just saw this topic, but take a look at Dokeos.

    It's a GPL'ed LAMP-based CMS. We've been using it (or its parent Claroline) for the last two years here at the college. It's not feature complete when compared to BB- the biggest misses are a gradebook and an advanced conferencing system- but it does about 90% of what we need it to do. Our most recent survey got a good or excellent vote from 86% of the faculty.

    It's very easy to modify and customize. I've got it set up to suck course and enrollment info from our (nonstandard) student information system, we have single sign-on through our campus uPortal, automatic access to files in our eReserve system, etc. The folks at Dokeos are pretty good about taking feedback and code (I've given a lot of the former and a bit of the latter), although once in a while a bug will slip for a bit.

    I've got a BB salesdroid showing up on campus soon to try and sell us on an "upgrade". Between Dokeos, Sakai and Moodle I can't see why we'd ever need to consider a commercial product- the features BB has that are better than these groups aren't going to be used here anyway.

  10. Dokeos by turboke · · Score: 1 · on An Open Source Alternative to Blackboard?

    http://www.dokeos.com/

  11. Dokeos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on An Open Source Alternative to Blackboard?

    My university used to have blackboard, but they've recently switched to the open-source dokeos. Works perfectly!