Forum OpenACS Q&A: New project?

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Posted by Grant Murray on
Hello, I'm new. I am an educator in search of a better LMS.

Might have seen a big spike in interest since Covid and all - shame if not, but I want to make a better LMS.

I'm using teachable LMS right now, they're fair business practice but I need to be able to implement better pedagogy. I will have to do so until I can figure out something else out, and I'm hoping this might be an option.

My LMS will host at least the course content, feedback methods, survey, tests, certification, transcripts, and different user types, scaling for individual users to low-cost, high-volume sales. It might need a payment gateway unless it can integrate with Wix.

I am currently using Wix to host and build my website. I use a page on that website to operate like a terminal to my current LMS. The website will host information, downloadable resources, and could host the media, lectures, and other content.

I'm worried this isn't the place for me. I'm intimidated by the jargon I see everywhere, and in a lot of places it looks like the community isn't active anymore. My profession affords me little spare time, and I need to be producing content to match my strength as an educator, not failing to setup the windows server packages on my windows7 personal PC (which I totally did before coming to these forums, I seriously don't know if I'm capable of trying dotLRN out :(

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2: Re: New project? (response to 1)
Posted by Antonio Pisano on
Dear Mr. Murray,

the dotLRN project is still active and in use in a few places, such as the Vienna Univertity for Economics and Buisiness, although some of the features we deliver there are implemented via locally-developed modules that are not part of the code you can find here.

We do not offer a payment system integration right now, but apart from that, most of the use cases you have listed we could support. However, you might find the learning curve rather steep if the goal is to run a self-operated LMS and you might need some kind of technical support and customizations.

Concerning scalability, dotLRN and OpenACS are proven to be highly scalable and able to run systems with thousands of cuncurrent users.

To check whether dotLRN can be suitable for you, the easiest way is to install the underlying OpenACS system on a server of your choice and then install dotLRN on top of that. There are two options:

- Linux installation https://openacs.org/xowiki/naviserver-openacs
- Windows installation https://openacs.org/xowiki/openacs-system-install-windows-server (for Windows paid support is available, if needed, on the linked website)

In case you want to proceed, please first get OpenACS running via one of those methods and then we could help you further.

My best regards

Antonio