Category Archives: business
10 alternatives to Moodle for e-Learning software, LMS Platform using open source/GPL
A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content. An LMS, based on the focus can also be called as e-Learning software, Virtual learning environment (VLE), Course management system (CMS), learning delivery platform, course delivery systems etc.
A virtual learning environment (VLE) is also a prominent term which stands out. It is an education system based on the Web, that models conventional real-world education by integrating a set of equivalent virtual concepts for tests, homework, classes, classrooms and perhaps even museums and other external academic resources. It normally uses Web 2.0 tools for 2-way interaction, and includes a content management system.
LMS is a software for planning, delivering, and managing learning events within an organization, including online, virtual classroom, and instructor-led courses. For example, an LMS can simplify global certification efforts, enable entities to align learning initiatives with strategic goals, and provide a means of enterprise-level skills management. The focus of an LMS is to manage students, keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. It performs administrative tasks, such as reporting to instructors, HR and other ERP systems but it is not used to create course content.
In this article we shall be reviewing the following open source LMS/e-Learning software.
eFront, Dokeos, Claroline, ATutor, ILIAS, OLAT, Sakai, .LRN, openelms, Fedena
and the bonus one WeBWorK
Moodle overview and feature lists 2.2 and 2.3
About Moodle
Moodle (abbreviation for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free source e-learning software platform, also known as a Course Management System, Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). As of December 2011 it had a user base of 72,177 registered and verified sites, serving 57,112,669 users in 5.8 million courses
Moodle is used to host online/offline classes. It can also be used in various other aspects of business, besides classroom delivery platform
Example
- Hiring and Interviewing
- Roll-out Products and Services
- Managing Compliance Training
- Competency Tracking
- Create and maintain collaborated knowledge base
- Inter organization discussion forum,
- Web Conferencing
- Running workshop
- Getting employee feedback
Moodles modular design allows hosting various different types of activities and resources.
Moodle supports various different learning delivery formats and can be integrated with platform both in software and application layer.
In this article we shall try to give an overview of the feature and capability list of Moodle. This article can also be used as a reference/list of modules for activities, resources, block design and reports supported by Moodle right out of the box, with a brief description of that module.
Moodle changes across major upgrade 1.9 to 2.0 to 2.1 to 2.2 to 2.3
Moodle development has always been active. In recent years the changes has resulted in improved end users and teachers experience. Administration process and interface has also improved a lot.
We see most of the major upgrade from version 1.9 to 2.0. Most of these changes has been improved and refined over time up to 2.2. We continue to observer the same improvement process to continue for the upcoming release of 2.3 with few new features.
New Moodle promises for easier management for teachers, better user experience for student and many performance enhancements and additional integration for administrators. The product looks more promising and stable for large deployment in education and business use.
iPad/iPhone enterprise deployment
iPad/iPhone enterprise deployment
In my opinion a tablet is most useful if used as a consumer (read your mail, news, presentation, view documents etc) as oppose to a content creator. The limiting factor is how much content you might be able to create using an iPad, even one with Bluetooth keyboard. The enterprise standard integration of an iPad is probably derived from the idea of integrating laptop in a business environment. While we run a laptop program which is integrated to the business environment, we look into accessibility, data security, authentication, enterprise application integration and miscellaneous productivity software and tools. Ability to do seamless integration, providing backup and recovery services and technical support is the key to its success. In this blog I shall try to describe how to deploy tablet for enterprises/ educational institutes in a step by step
What is ECM? Document workflow work in an ECM?
Quoted from Wikipedia: “Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM covers the management of information within the entire scope of an enterprise whether that information is in the form of a paper document, an electronic file, a database print stream, or even an email”
ECM is also known as document management system (DMS) or even digital asset management system.
Wifi blocking wallpapers from a different point of view, for enterprise users
Today I got real excited seeing this WiFi blocking wall paper block in Gizmodo. I see these wall papers giving us capability of having scalable network in an enterprise environment.
Most of the blogs I have come across is mainly about keeping home WiFi network single out of neighbor reach (security). This is a good thing, as it would allow end users to have more control over where his/her data travels, and stay out of the noise created by neighbor’s wireless network, better throughput and freedom of using all available channels.
To deploy a 802.11 b/g wireless network in a home or office can be troublesome for various reasons. In an apartment like environment, you always have neighbors using up the all available channels (ironically you only have 3 non overlapping channels for 802.11b/g). When you finally manage to find a free channel someone will come and start using it and give you hard time with your performance. The demand for wireless network is growing; starting from your laptops, cell phones demands wireless channels extends to blue tooth, iPod, home theater, even up to your Xbox/ps3.
At business environment especially in school/university we have this proximity of classroom/office space which heavily requires quality WiFi signal for everything working in those rooms. Having so many wireless access points and wireless clients in such proximity making them work in perfection could be difficult. The challenge is to make all these devices talk in appropriate non overlapping channel without interference. I see these WiFi Blocking wallpaper as a gift from above in such scenario
This solution shall surely allow you to have more access point installation in a smaller area without having too much to worry about power and channel.
Diagram bellow explains how this can be archived
Wifi wall paper in enterprise Enviromnet
Please feel free to make comments on the proposed solution, as I plan to try it out not in a very distant future.
Srouce:
http://dvice.com/archives/2012/05/anti-wi-fi-wall.php
http://www.linformaticien.com/actualites/id/24723/un-papier-peint-pour-proteger-son-wi-fi.aspx
Document-management-workflow
Enterprise document management system workflow
Via Flickr:
A simple workflow for a document management system
Read the full blog What is ECM? Document workflow work in an ECM?
How to extend your LVM disk
How to extend a LVM
This document is a continuation of LVM made easy, my previous blog
This document is on LVM2 and assuming your Linux distribution supports LVM2
This document also assumes you have LVM setup out of /dev/sdb
Volume group name is “mail-storage-group”
Logical volume name is “mail-storage-lv”
And we shall attempt to extend “mail-storage-lv” by adding a new disk
- Initialize a new physical volume in the on the disk/partition as applicable
- Add the physical disk to the existing volume group “mail-storage-group”, you want to expand
- Expand the logical volume “mail-storage-lv” receding in the volume group “mail-storage-group”
- Do online resizing of the partition
Knowledge base Systems, a review on phpMyFAQ
An organization needs to maintain a repository of information. This includes common knowledge or business specific information such as white papers, user manuals, policy document, knowledge tags, or answers to frequently asked questions. A general purpose document management system can fill the void, however a single purpose knowledge base system will be a far better fit.
A knowledge base provides a means for information to be collected, organized, shared, searched and utilized. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_base)
Contents stored in a knowledge base are usually HTML; they can also be accompanied in various other formats for document and used
We can imagine a knowledge base build on articles, white papers, troubleshooting information, FAQs, manuals, policy and procedures. Following could be some of the attribute of a knowledge base.
There are various application platform that can be used as a knowledge base
Following are some of them:
Media Wiki http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
Andy’s PHP Knowledgebase Project http://aphpkb.org/
phpMyFAQ http://phpmyfaq.de/
As we decided to investigate more, media wiki was one of our obvious choices but once we tried out phpMyFAQ, we found it to be interesting and easy to use. phpMyFAQ looked like a great choice. It has all features you can ask of a knowledge base.
Details on phpMyFAQ
Managing content
- Content management system: - You can administrate your users, groups, news, categories, FAQ records, attachments, comments, glossary items, stop words in the password protected administration backend.
- Categories and tags: - You can create unlimited categories and subcategories for your FAQs. Your users can browse through the categories. You can tag all records and an automatically generated tag cloud helps your users, too.
- Powerful Search: – Your users can easily find questions and answers using the search feature with search in all languages or in one category. Using the Instant Response frontend your users will find questions and answers while they are typing like in Google Suggest! You’ll also get a list of the most popular searches and you get a graphical report about the search in the administration backend.
- FAQ Statistics: - Analyze the way of your users through your FAQ with the built-in user tracking; analyze the quality of your records with the statistics of the user voting and the number of views on each record. You can also download an extended reporting sheet as CSV download.
- Most popular and sticky faq’s:- The start page of the public area shows an automatically created list with the most popular records and of the latest FAQ entries. You can also define “sticky” FAQs which always appear on the main FAQ page. The sticky FAQs are also the first ones in the category FAQ lists. The most popular and the latest FAQs are also available as RSS feeds.
- Question answers with Attachments
- Revisions: - Store the old entries in wiki-like revisions, so you can switch back to old versions of the FAQ entry.
- User comments: - Get more feedback by your users and visitors, by allowing them to comment on your questions and answers.
- Community modules:- All users can write questions to the system, so that other user can answer these questions. They can also answer these open questions or add translations for existing FAQ records. All these user-generated entries have to be enabled by the administrators.
- Easy to use HTML editor:- Add your FAQ entries using the integrated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor based on TinyMCE and create rich text, links, lists directly through your web browser. Your links will also be automatically verified during saving your new FAQ record. The Ajax-powered Image Manager provides a web interface to browse for image files (JPEG, PNG, GIF, and others) on the web server.
- User and group permissions:- You can assign permissions to users and groups, you can create users and user groups with permissions and category and even record restrictions for viewing and creating/editing content. It’s even possible to secure the whole FAQ frontend.
- LDAP/AD support: Add your company’s OpenLDAP based user management into the system for authentication or just secure your whole FAQ by using HTTP authentication. System also supports LDAP-data mapping, e.g. against an Active Directory Server, including multi-domain-authentication, e.g. against an ADS-Global Catalog
- Various database system support:- MySQL (libmysql and mysqlnd), PostgreSQL, SQLite, Sybase, MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, IBM Cloudscape, Apache Derby
- Export: FAQ can be export as PDF, printed or emailed from the same screen.
- Advanced spam control: - System uses captcha’s, bad word lists and IPv4 and IPv6 ban lists to prevent spam.
Integration aspects (with systems and policy)
This boils down to, phpMyFAQ, a knowledge base system which can be use used in various environment. For example knowledge base for a software, service, business process, educational institute or for a business.
Special thanks to Vikram for helping me out with the research work with testing and a demo implementation for the review of phpMyFAQ
Xeois helps you with implementation of knowledge base systems phpMyFAQ
