Open-Source Online Knowledge Portals for Education

The open-source community has created a broad suite of educational and e-learning course management systems (CMS) referred to as educational knowledge portals (EKP). An EKP is a software system designed to aid instructors in the management of online educational courses for their students, especially by helping teachers and learners with course administration. These systems make it possible for a course designer to present to students, through a single, consistent, and intuitive interface, all the components required for a course of education or training. The system can often track the learners’ progress, which can be monitored by both teachers and learners. Components of these systems usually include templates for content pages, discussion forums, chat, quizzes, and exercises such as multiple-choice, true/false, and one-word-answer testing. New features in these systems include blogs and really simple syndication (RSS) technology. Services generally provided include access control, provision of e-learning content, communication tools, and administration of user groups. They might also provide functions like threaded discussions, chat, grade books, course outlines, file sharing and digital content display. This chapter uses the term educational knowledge portal, however these e-learning systems are sometimes also called learning management systems (LMS), virtual learning environments (VLE), education via computer-mediated communication (CMC) or online education. They might also be called a managed learning environment (MLE), learning support system (LSS) or learning platform (LP). The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the concept of open-source knowledge portals and highlight some of the benefits and risks associated with using these types of systems. This chapter will also explore some of the opensource systems that are currently available and successfully used by educational institutions.