Don't overthink it. WordPress + LMS plugin + Zoom could get the job done.
Lifterlms is my current favorite amongst plugins.
Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
121–130 of 164 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#122I thought that some of the MOOC companies open-sourced their LMS. Have you looked at https://open.edx.org/ ?
I am doing the odd contracting job for a company that deploys and manages edX for clients. It's not fun. Bloated and outdated..
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#123Moodle is actually great, IMO. You can customize the UI to your liking and integrate it with bigbluebutton for a complete solution that includes remote learning classrooms instances as need arises, with full recording of lectures.
Moodle is good until you realize that the documentation on it is garbage.
Moodle Is Great! It's Open Source! If you need more functionality, just add a plugin.
WAIT. HIT THE BRAKES RIGHT THERE.
Yes. It's open source. But that isn't helping anything. When you find a plugin that does The Thing You Need, you find that it's for a version of Moodle that's several years old and was written by one guy who hasn't touched it since 2014.
There are some plugins that are great and up to date. They are not Open Source. They cost real dollars and aren't terrible.
But if you want Moodle because it's FOSS, then your motivation is wrong.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#124I would really take a second look to moodle. It's very customizable, have some good mobile apps, and a great api, so you can extend it to your heart's desire.
If you're a developer, Moodle is fine, because it needs a developer to become usable for most businesses. It might be better for academia, but for business use it's garbage.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#125Start writing a good design document, and somebody might implement an open source version of it.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#126One reason is that is is really tough to define what an LMS does since it can serve various use cases. Most people who are not familiar with LMSs think of Blackboard/Moodle/Canvas/EdX and mostly for academic/schools. There is a whole set of industries for LMSs like B2B training, HR/Compliance/Continuing Ed/Healthcare etc. Then you have Product companies who just need to train their customers, create brand recognition…
There is a lot of untapped potential here. I was close to early enterprise adopters of Articulate which was a much more limited product in the mid-2000s. Pharma had HQ training (yearly compliance plus some specialist courses), but field sales has regular training and updates which was a full time production effort. A single LMS could have worked across the org as long as it had enough of the nudging and reporting which would have served the industry needs.
It seems that many people on HN struggle with understanding the needs of industries because their formative experience is as developers in startups and tech. This really inhibits the ability of folks to attack opportunities later when they want to create a startup. The number of times I've seen enterprises play with startup tools while they wait for the industry incumbent to catchup is very high.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#127Have you looked at https://github.com/edx/edx-platform? It's one platform that's established and open source. It might not be lightweight enough for your needs though.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#128From someone who's spent 15 years in industry (from time to time being subjected to corporate training) and a dozen years as a prof where I've used Blackboard and Canvas:
An LMS falls into the class of software where the purchasing decision is made several layers of management above the actual users. At least in the case of LMSs sold by for-profit companies (I don't know about Moodle, but Canvas is basically Instructure Inc) there are zero incentives to provide a product which actual does the intended job, rather than ticking all the check boxes in an evaluation process.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know why but it always gets on my nerves when people decide to address a multinational forum with people from every corner of the world and ask for their time and attention, but at the same time decide to save 2 seconds of their own time to avoid typing out “Learning Management System (LMS)”. We all are from different backgrounds and industries and same acronyms can mean different things. I worked in finance,…
I have the same issue with numerous TLAs, most frequently around here: "NLP". My usual thought sequence is "'Neuro-Linguistic Programming'? Uhhh, no... it's not that, not in this space. 'Near Letter Perfect'? Hmmm... don't think so. 'New Lunar Passage'? Has Elon been smoking that stuff again?..." Eventually I figure it out, but for some weird reason my brain doesn't really want to hang a hook into "Non-Linear Process…
You just did the same with TLA ... Thanks to another commenter who explained it
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#130The short version: * Education is socialized. That is, people don't pay for it, instead the state buys it. At university level, this is slightly less true but the state still provides loans which may never be paid back. Even for the rich, who buy their own education, the sector is still extremely inefficient since the main value added is not from the teachers but from the other students. That is, universities are fun…
I find statements like this incredibly arrogant. As if education could be revolutionised by some webapp. Moreover it's also provably false. Education is big business in most countries and a significant portion of gdp (and often not "socialise" either, universities, private schools, private certificate/education providers etc.). Despite of that nobody managed to "disrupt" education yet, because education is difficult…
What's arrogant is assuming that we are educating our kids as best as we can already. For anyone working in the sector, that's not just arrogant, it's absurd.
Most developed countries have state-run primary and secondary education systems, and most of them also have highly or entirely state-funded tertiary education. This is a statement of the obvious, I think. I also mentioned reasons why private providers often had little incentive to innovate.
I haven't experienced Canvas or Moodle, but I've experienced Blackboard. Blackboard is beyond dire. See my other comment and the notorious review it links.