[Using Sakai] LMS evaluations & comparisions?

[Mark J. Norton]

On 10/29/2012 11:37 PM, Gregory Guthrie wrote:
> It is interesting that edX and courser are not building on any of these existing big installed base systems, I wonder what new sorts of features they will create and introduce, and how that will drive the evolution of current mainstream LMS systems.
I have sampled an edX course.  The interface and tools are very, very 
simple and easy to use.  Essentially, they have a custom, Flash based 
video tool and an assessment tool.  That's about it for content 
delivery.  There is a forum tool that links to assignments allowing 
participants to discuss the assignment.  Courses are described by an XML 
document, but most of the effort goes into video production.

The edX system and other MOOCs (Massive, Open, Online Courses) seem to 
be coming out of CompSci departments at various large universities.  
This is certainly true of edX.  While it's good to have a fresh take on 
curriculum-focused delivery tools, no attempt is being made to leverage 
existing industry standards or even other open source learning 
management systems.  There is a certain amount of arrogance in this 
approach, IMO.

Sadly, most of the MOOC platforms are not being developed in an open 
manner.  As such, the people developing these applications are very 
likely to run into the same problems that Sakai, Moodle, Canvas, and 
others have encountered (and largely solved).

- Mark Norton