Xmast - LMS vs CMS

ch 1: BASIC CONCEPT (2)

today is a holiday...im so boring..lay on my bed, watching cd, eating, day-dreaming, whatsoever..so better i update my entry here while doing nothing. Continue to our topic....

before that, here is the tutorial we do in our class. (contact me if u want the answer)

Arranging Proper Steps in Constructing a Web Site: download

In this entry, i will discuss about what is LMS? CMS? LMS stands for Learning Management System. while CMS stands for Content Management System.

LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

what i understand between these 2 terms is LMS is for the educational purpose such as E-Learning. Students can interact each other, download notes, participate in forum.

Lecturer can upload resources, edit, add function, view students etc. usually the IPT used moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) as their template for E-Learning because it is free and open source program.

There are so many templates and languages available to be downloaded in moodle. You can visit here to explore more about the moodle.



Here's example of UTM E-Learning that use moodle as the template:

Figure 1: UTM E-Learning. click here ---> http://elearning.utm.my

Another example of LMS is Sakai, WebCT, Blackboard, ATutor, OLAT, Dokeos, Claroline etc.

Sakai is also a free and open source software built by universities for universities to provides the teaching and collaboration tools instructors need to support classroom learning. With this in mind, the system is intended to be flexible enough to allow universities to swap tools in and out, depending on the need of the particular campus.


WebCT now owned by Blackboard, is an online proprietary virtual learning environment system that is sold to colleges and other institutions and used in many campuses for e-learning. The latest versions of this software are now called Webcourses. WebCT is significant in that it was the world's first widely successful course management system for higher education.

ATutor is a open source LMS. it is used in various contexts, including online course management, continuing professional development for teachers, career development, and academic research. The software is cited as unique for its accessibility features, (useful to visually-impaired and disabled learners); and for its suitability for educational use.

OLAT is a Online Learning And Training based on Java and completely free of charge. It is a LMS that supports any kind of online learning, teaching, and tutoring with little didactical restrictions. OLAT is free software/open source, and has been developed since 1999 at the University of Zürich.

Dokeos is is a open source online learning suite. It provides all the features needed for e-learning and blended learning management : From Authoring to Reporting.

Figure 2: Features in Dokeos

Claroline is a collaborative eLearning and eWorking platform (Learning Management System) released under Open Source license (GPL). it is an Open Source eLearning and eWorking platform allowing teachers to build effective online courses and to manage learning and collaborative activities on the web.

Here is the statistics of higher LMS market penetration between Moodle, WebCT+Blackboard+Sakai:

1. Moodle: 2,981 deployments / 54% market share
   8,772 X (348 / 1024)
2. Blackboard + WebCT: 2,500 deployments / 45% market share
   3,700 - 1,200 K-12
3. Sakai: 35 deployments / .63% market share

Figure 3: Comparison between Moodle, Blackboard+WebCT and Sakai

There is also a paper on the Moodle and ATutor LMS by Peter Lengyel and friends from University of Debrecen. This paper examines and evaluates the functional features, modules,
standards, hardware and software requirements, and compare between two current system which is Moodle and ATutor.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

A CMS is a collection of procedures used to manage

work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based. The procedures are designed to:

• Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data
• Control access to data, based on user roles. User roles define what information each user can view or edit
• Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data
• Reduce repetitive duplicate input
• Improve the ease of report writing
• Improve communication between users

In a CMS, data can be defined as almost anything - documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, etc. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation.

Example of CMS are:

• Joomla
• Mambo
• PhpNuke
• Xoops

Most of the CMS use PHP as a platform and mySQL as a database.

Joomla is an open source content management system platform for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets as well as aModel–view–controller (MVC) Web application framework. It is written in PHP, stores data in MySQL and includes features such as pagecaching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization.

Mambo (formerly named Mambo Open Source or MOS) is a free software/open source content management system (CMS) for creating and managing websites through a simple web interface. It has attracted many users due to its ease of use.