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A comment on Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software.

Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by noobermin on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @01:30AM (#23474269)
It honestly would be great for some competition, FOSS or not in the distance learning department. Blackboard and friends are horrendous, and as we know zoom has myriad problems. For a small group meeting I have each week that is now online, I've started using jitsi too.
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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by synergetic on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @01:44AM (#23474328)
Agreed. Moodle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle) is a solid FOSS alternative to BB and is widely used among UK universities.
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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by enjoyyourlife on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @01:46AM (#23474337)
Canvas (https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms) is open-source
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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by remexre on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @08:26AM (#23476304)
This actually surprises me, with how cruddy it is, I assumed it was proprietary... My uni switched to canvas from Moodle, to the general detriment of anyone without fast internet and a fast PC.
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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by servilio on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @12:15PM (#23478795)
Do you know if they are using the a hosted version or hosting it themselves?
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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by saagarjha on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @01:27PM (#23479700)
I brought this up once and a couple of university employees were quick to mention that features that actually let them use it at scale cost a bunch of money and there were fairly large support costs even for open source solutions.
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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by bransonf on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @02:25AM (#23474523)
Blackboard has some really shady IP practices as well. In 2006 they got a patent essentially for LMS (learning management systems) in general and immediately sued a competitor.

Not only that, I’ve discovered some minor exploits in my time using it. For what it is, it’s horrible software and none of my professors were ever happy to use it.

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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by eulenteufel on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @06:58AM (#23475752)
My universities computer science, physics and math departments use Sakai [1] instead of the university blackboard and I quiet like it. It's FOSS and works well on mobile (in contrast to the universities blackboard system)

[1] https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai

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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by danhor on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @12:24PM (#23478914)
My University uses ilias and in my experience it's way better than moodle, but I haven't used BB. Although I haven't seen any glaring issues in the english translations, it seems to be primarily targeting german audiences. https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS
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Re:Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software by e12e on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @02:01PM (#23480110)
Is there any life left in .lrn?

Based on the ancient aolserver?

https://dotlrn.org/

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