Claroline, An Open Source eLearning and eWorking Platform

Claroline 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. Translated into 35 languages, Claroline has a large worldwide users’ and developers’ community.

Released under Open Source license, the Claroline platform allows hundreds of organizations from 86 countries to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces online. Each course space provides a list of tools enabling the teacher to :

• Write a course description
• Publish documents in any format (text, PDF, HTML, video...)
• Administer public and private forums
• Develop learning paths
• Create groups of students
• Prepare online exercises
• Manage an agenda with tasks and deadlines
• Publish announcements (also by e-mail)
• Propose assignments to be handed in online
• See the statistics of the users activity
• Use the wiki to write collaborative documents

Adjustable to various training contexts, Claroline is not only used by schools and universities, but also by training centres, associations and companies. The platform is customizable and offers a flexible and custom-made working environment.

Claroline is capable of hosting a large number of users easily. It is compatible with Linux, Mac and Windows environments. Claroline is based on free technologies like PHP and MySQL and uses the current standards like SCORM and IMS/QTI for the exchange of contents.

Claroline has been developed following teachers' pedagogical experience and needs. It offers intuitive and clear spaces administration interface. The daily platform management doesn't require any specific technical skill. The platform is quickly installed and the use of any web browser allows to manage the various course sections and enrolled users fluently.

[Claroline Website] [Download] [Demo]

Tutorom, Create and Deliver Your Own Tutorial

Tutorom allows you to easily create and deliver elearning content, free of charge. We are currently in beta, adding new features every week, but for now feel free to explore and comment via the forums, or email us at info@tutorom.com with suggestions or ideas.

We have added some content to the site to give you an idea how it works - 60,000 lessons added from the VTC computer learning library (8,000 of which are free, the rest on subscription of $30 a month), and hundreds of free school education lessons. We have also added video content from expertvillage. If you have courses or content you want added please contact us.

[Tutorom Website]

Nuvvo, On Demand E-Learning

Nuvvo is an on-demand e-learning service designed for individual instructors. It costs nothing to use, though it has some ads and gets a percentage if you charge students. Nuvvo is a website that incorporates Ajax, RSS/Atom, VoIP (via Skype), vCard, and ICalendar. Nuvvo has integrated e-commerce and an eLearning Market where courses can be advertised.

Commonly, e-learning systems are designed for institutions, not individual instructors. These are usually called a Learning Management System (LMS), Course Management System (CMS), or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). Nuvvo includes most of the end-user features found in these systems, but specifically lacks the administrative features required for organizing large hierarchies of users, and integration possibilities for connecting with other software systems in an institution's IT ecosystem.

Nuvvo was created by Savvica Inc., a Toronto-based software company founded by John Philip Green, with help from David Ritter and others, and launched in December 2005. Green, Nuvvo's chief architect, has said that Nuvvo--a more compact version of an enterprise LMS designed for individual instructors--was conceived while Savvica was building its Enterprise LMS and released as a sort of side project.[citation needed] As the service attracted more and more users, the company gradually shifted its focus from enterprise learning software to the lighter, ASP service. Savvica now focuses solely on improving and supporting Nuvvo.

Nuvvo shares many characteristics with other Web 2.0 services. Its service is entirely web-based, and follows the user-centred design principles made popular by Flickr, del.icio.us, 37signals and others. Following a similar commercial model to those services, it's free and focused on user-generated content and community building.

Content authoring is featured, with tools for creating multimedia-enriched lessons, quizzes and assignments. Blogging is included, as are messages, scheduling tools, course management, and user administration. Unlike a traditional LMS setup, the conversations, media files, and text curriculum are all integrated and on the same page, facilitating discussion and student interaction.

Evaluation tools are another part of Nuvvo. Instructors build test, quizzes, and assignments with multiple choice questions, true/false questions, etc. Most question types are automatically graded and entered into Nuvvo's gradebook, where students can keep track of their progress.
Nuvvo also features e-commerce, which allows instructors to charge for courses. Instructors set a course price and students pay with their credit card upon joining the course. Nuvvo subtracts an 8% transaction fee and pays the instructor the rest. Instructors can list their courses in Nuvvo's eLearning Market, an Ebay-like listing site where students browse courses and request enrollment.

[Nuvvo Website]

Edublogs

Edublogs is "the largest education community on the Internet" where you can sign up for a free WordPress-powered blog. The site provides lots of useful information, e.g. how to use your blog with your students and how start a conversation using your blog. An ideal site for educators who want to blog with support.

Comments from contributors :

• "a great free blog-hosting site for teachers and students alike. It's specifically designed for educational use and is incredibly responsive to user needs, suggestions, and problems." Larry Ferlazzo
• "But of course :)" James Farmer (the founder of Edublogs)
• "if I didn't have my own domain I would use this service (it seems like I recommend it every day to another teacher)" David Parry

[Edublogs Website]

Websoft CourseLab

CourseLab is a powerful, yet easy-to-use, e-learning authoring tool that offers programming-free WYSIWYG environment for creating high-quality interactive e-learning content which can be published on the Internet, Learning Management Systems (LMS), CD-ROMS and other devices.

[CourseLab Website] [CourseLab Download]