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Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#51

Post by KaiserPro »

dash2 wrote: post #50

The 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…

> As a result, there is no payoff for innovating

I mean thats not true. It means there are different pressures for innovating.

Buying a system in that will reduce the number of staff hours needed to do admin by 5% clear sale.

Buying in staff who cost 3-5x what a normal admin would cost, for a open ended, unsupported software project that has a high chance of failure? not a clear sale.

Schools are not tech companies, they do not have the capacity to spin up a software stack. They want software they can buy, and buy support at the same time.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#52

Post by biztos »

PeterisP wrote: post #17
biztos wrote: post #15

LMS stands for Learning Management System in case anyone else didn’t know. And it’s a misnomer as far as I can tell, because it’s a system for managing the teaching, or the administration maybe, but is not actually used by the learners.

IDK, in our local universities Moodle-based systems are very much used by the learners as that's the primary way of receiving and looking up all learning material other the lectures themselves (and now with covid, also the recordings of remote lectures), the organizational information e.g. schedule changes and other comunication, feedback, and of receiving and submitting assignments and, in some cases, tests; it's es…

Thanks for explaining, I stand corrected!

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#53

Post by seeekr »

cors-fls wrote: post #32

Check out Richie. It is a modern MIT-licensed LMS built with Django and React. It is used by FUN (France Université Numérique) a public MOOC platform, and EduLib, which looks like the equivalent in Canada. Richie : https://richie.education/ FUN : https://www.fun-mooc.fr/fr/

Thanks for the link. IIUC Richie is more of a CMS for courses and related info that can integrate with an LMS like edX, but it's not an LMS itself.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#54

Post by nickjj »

I've thought many times of building one but ended up using something similar to Teachable (for now). I don't even want to mention their name because their service isn't that good and I wouldn't recommend them but moving tens of thousands of folks to a new platform is a big burden for students so the only time I ever plan to make a move is when I release my custom platform.

But, as for open sourcing the platform. I think it's tricky because if you're in tech chances are you'll want to build your own custom platform, if you're not into tech you'll use an existing SAAS service or outsource someone to build it for you in which case there's almost a 0% chance it'll end up being open source because the goal there is to hire someone on demand to build and lightly maintain it, not champion an open source project for years to come.

Plus the decisions you make when building the platform are super custom based on what you want.

Are you going to support the idea of buying multiple packages for 1 course, such as package A and package B at different prices? How will you handle upgrades? What about subscriptions vs single purchases? Can students comment on things? Will it track and remember progress? Will you have searchable captions? What about handling time sensitive discounts? Which payment providers are you going to support?

Then there's the whole idea of optimizing the course consumption experience for your audience, for example a tech course could be displayed and have features that are much different than a Yoga course.

There's about 100 other questions to ask here and chances are your combination of features isn't going to be the same as someone else so then you end up with limited platforms that try to do everything and create an average at best experience, or you drill down and build a super niche platform that's great for what you want to do but maybe not everyone else.

All of this makes it very hard to have a successful open source project IMO.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#55

Post by utdiscant »

mkl wrote: post #49
AIrtemis wrote: post #41

I would really recommend Eduflow here. Have tried several LMS's and it has an intuitive platform that resembles notion. We're experimenting with its peer learning components at the moment.

That doesn't seem to be open source? Their home page [1] has lots of stuff about pricing, sales, requesting quotes, etc., and their GitHub [2] has lots of forks of open source projects but not a main LMS project as far as I could see. It also isn't clear it's an LMS itself, as it has a use case example "Extending your LMS's capabilities", and the pricing page has an "LMS Integration" enterprise feature: "Integration…

Correct, we are not open source (I am the CEO). But if that is not a hard requirement, then I do actually think we offer a lot of the things mentioned in the post.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#56

Post by 867-5309 »

trabant00 wrote: post #38

I find commercial LMSs to be full of dark patterns that substitute learning and value with gaming-like interfaces with achievements, medals, bars to be filled, check-boxes to be checked, Netflix-like hard to navigate to give the appearance of endless choice, lack of human curation so you can only find the most popular but not the most valuable and so on. If your interest is in selling then yes, nobody has done the wo…

having worked for a company which made LMS software I can vouch for this. buzzwords like "gamification" and "user stories" were bandied about daily with next-to-nil privacy concerns. want to implicitly record every student's interaction? there are a handful of APIs for that..

"The Experience API (or xAPI) is a new specification for learning technology that makes it possible to collect data about the wide range of experiences a person has (online and offline)."

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#57

Post by Jacqued »

seeekr wrote: post #53
cors-fls wrote: post #32

Check out Richie. It is a modern MIT-licensed LMS built with Django and React. It is used by FUN (France Université Numérique) a public MOOC platform, and EduLib, which looks like the equivalent in Canada. Richie : https://richie.education/ FUN : https://www.fun-mooc.fr/fr/

Thanks for the link. IIUC Richie is more of a CMS for courses and related info that can integrate with an LMS like edX, but it's not an LMS itself.

Hey! I'm one of the maintainers of Richie. That's exactly right, it's meant to be a web portal in front of one or more LMS.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#58

Post by brodock »

The problem most LMS face is that they have to cover a variety of personas and automate their worflows. What schools and universities pay for is something that can work more like a CRM than a CMS, and those have to be flexible/configurable etc, which makes it complex to setup.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#59

Post by philipps »

Since you list other non-open source solutions as well in your question, I’ll mention one more, which might be the closest to what you are looking for > maven.com.

We started collaborating with them right after they launched, and just finished our first course on their platform.

I also wish there was a good open source alternative but the revenue sharing with maven is fair, the team is a joy to work with, and the product is improving rapidly.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?

#60

Post by dash2 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #51
dash2 wrote: post #50

The 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…

> As a result, there is no payoff for innovating I mean thats not true. It means there are different pressures for innovating. Buying a system in that will reduce the number of staff hours needed to do admin by 5% clear sale. Buying in staff who cost 3-5x what a normal admin would cost, for a open ended, unsupported software project that has a high chance of failure? not a clear sale. Schools are not tech companies,…

Buying a system in for marginal gains isn't innovation. I think you agree with my substantive point.
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