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The underlying protocol most [1] LMS use, [2] LTI, is horrible (IMHO). That may have something to do with the quality of platforms built in top of it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_Tools_Interoperabil...
Or build yourself using modules on a vanilla drupal.
I think the problem is that everyone wants something slightly different from an LMS. If they are lucky there is something out there that works the way they want out-of-the-box, otherwise they end up trying to bend something else into the target shape or using something that tries to please everyone so ends up overly complex and unwieldy.
> which are very restrictive in their feature set, and not customizable
What you want to customise could be key. Can you name a non-open option that you think would be at least close to ideal for your plans, without too much panel-beating to change its shape, and why that one in particular is attractive? This might help with getting better suggestions for alternatives.
Let me add 'Blackboard'. What a joke of a piece of software. If I agreed with people who think blackboards are bad and should (have) be(en) replaced with whiteboards, the joke might be 'ha ha it's old and crusty it's even in the name'. I'm a few years out of university so I wouldn't know where to start on its problems - though one thing in particular I remember was it's weekly offline for maintenance window on Wednesday afternoons - but the university paid a disgusting amount of money for it. Lecturers thought it was crap too. The Computing dept. had its own system (built and maintained as a Summer project for undergrads I believe) that did mostly the same (well, the bits it needed of course) that worked great and must have cost ~nothing. They were starting to be forced on to Blackboard as I left.
tl;dr: It's like SAP for universities.
You can try this - https://open.edx.org/
Learning Management System... Meh. I never managed my learning.
- Existing learning management systems are a mirror (and a victim) of the education system itself, as that's where most of the developers come from: Academic, underfunded and people-focused.
- Academica leads to overflowing complexity. In the whole system, simplicity is punished and complexity is cherished, so you end up with confusing UX.
- Underfunded is pretty self-explanatory
- People-focused is where like in any bureaucracy, nobody really wants to make anyone else replaceable. So instead of with a hard focus on users and learning tracks, you end up with an old system of classes, teachers and students, where of course you have the 10% great teachers that _should_ have run the class for everyone and the 90% that starves their class of any legit info.
From the uni and publisher sides, it's similar, but not completely equal. Both universities and book publishers would never make anything truly great because it would all cannibalize their business.
If you come from the other side and think that the whole learning system is rife for revolution with first-principle thinking, tree-trunk learning and a standard of "Intuition isn't optional" (massive props to https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuition-isnt-optional... ), then you quickly see the other side isn't interested in any fundamental change in their approach (see above for the why).
Furthermore, even if you try, those are the people in charge deciding where their (very tiny) funds go. They will go towards the solution that prioritizes system survival above quality and radical change.
So you see these people rather going towards the content publishers.
For investors, the field is mostly uninteresting for the reasons above, so you don't see any quality invest.
As a parent, I'd love to see someone really cracking edtech, but unfortunately what it would take would be a pretty massive initial investment into a seriously great solution that then proceeds to tackle funding, education system and self-reliance as well. It'd be a philantrophic invest of a few dozen million and then go for a very long road of paying back in small rates.
I'm still up for it, maybe in my next startup :)