Educators examine pros, cons of open source platforms
Simon Fraser University CIO Jim Cranston says software licensing fees are one impediment to using emerging technologies in areas such as e-learning. Perhaps Cranston hasn't heard of Moodle.
Moodle - modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment - is an open source software package used by more than four million people in 150 countries. It is designed to enable users and educators to create online courses quickly and easily.
B.C.'s Royal Roads University recently announced it is converting 76 of its online courses to the Moodle platform over the next six months. Carrie Spencer, acting CIO at Royal Roads, which delivers its graduate and undergraduate programs online and in short residencies to students around the globe, had been using a system it had developed in-house. That worked well enough until recently, Spencer says, but it wasn't sustainable, so Royal Roads went to the open source community. Using an open source platform will be more cost-effective for the school in the long run, she says, although there were some costs involved in the customization of the Moodle interface.
Open source, although not new, is still an emerging technology in the education sector. Many institutions, from the elementary school sector upwards, have at least looked at it as a means of cutting costs.
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