Moodle - LMS

Moodle. 

                  Moodle is one of the most popular open source LMS options available today. It features dashboards, learner tracking, and multimedia support. This open source Learning Management System also gives you the ability to create mobile-friendly online courses and integrate third party add-ons. For those who want to sell their eLearning courses to the masses, Moodle has paired with PayPal to make the checkout process simple and staightforward. One of the standouts of this tool is the user community. Unlike many other open source LMS solutions, you can get answers to pressing questions almost immediately by accessing the online support database, and download pre-made eLearning courses that can save you the time and trouble of creating them from scratch. It’s worth mentioning that Moodle may be a bit more complicated for new users, but mastering the tool is well worth it if you want total design freedom.

Link : http://moodle.org

Best Learning Management System

The 5 Best Learning Management Systems - eLearning

1. Moodle.
                  Moodle is one of the most popular open source LMS options available today. It features dashboards, learner tracking, and multimedia support. Learn more 

2. ATutor.

          This open source Learning Management System boasts a variety of useful features, ranging from email notifications to file storage.Learn more 

3. Eliademy

            This open source Learning Management System is completely free for educators and eLearning facilitators, but a small fee per user is charged for the Premium version  Learn more 

4. Forma LMS

               From skill gap analysis to detailed analytics and reporting, Forma LMS is packed with variety of features Learn more  

5. Dokeos.           If you’re looking for pre-built eLearning course elements, then Dokeos may be the best open source LMS option that is offered for free up to 5 users. Learn more

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

Information and Communication Technology

ICTs stand for information and communication technologies and are defined, for the purposes of this primer, as a “diverse set of technological tools and resources used to communicate, and to create, disseminate, store, and manage information.”  These technologies include computers, the Internet, broadcasting technologies (radio and television), and telephony.
In recent years there has been a groundswell of interest in how computers and the Internet can best be harnessed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of education at all levels and in both formal and non-formal settings. But ICTs are more than just these technologies; older technologies such as the telephone, radio and television, although now given less attention, have a longer and richer history as instructional tools. For instance, radio and television have for over forty years been used for open and distance learning, although print remains the cheapest,most accessible and therefore most dominant delivery mechanism in both developed and developing countries. The use of computers and the Internet is still in its infancy in developing countries, if these are used at all, due to limited infrastructure and the attendant high costs of access.
Moreover, different technologies are typically used in combination rather than as the sole delivery mechanism. For instance, the Kothmale Community Radio Internet uses both radio broadcasts and computer and Internet technologies to facilitate the sharing of information and provide educational opportunities in a rural community in Sri Lanka.Similarly, the Indira Gandhi National Open University in India combines the use of print, recorded audio and video, broadcast radio and television, and audioconferencing technologies.

virtual learning environment (VLE)

 

A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a Web-based platform for the digital aspects of courses of study, usually within educational institutions. VLEs typically: allow participants to be organized into cohorts, groups and roles; present resources, activities and interactions within a course structure; provide for the different stages of assessment; report on participation; and have some level of integration with other institutional systems.For those who edit them VLEs may have a de facto role as authoring and design environments.VLEs have been adopted by almost all higher education institutions in the anglosphere

The following are the basic or the main components required for a virtual learning environment or online education curriculum to take place.
A VLE may include some or all of the following elements:

• The course syllabus
• Administrative information about the course: prerequisites, credits, registration, payments, physical sessions, and contact information for the instructor.
• A notice board for current information about the ongoing course
• The basic content of some or all of the course; the complete course for distance learning applications, or some part of it, when used as a portion of a conventional course. This normally includes material such as copies of lecture in the form of text, audio, or video presentations, and the supporting visual presentations
• Additional resources, either integrated or as links to outside resources. This typically consists of supplementary reading, or innovative equivalents for it.
• Self-assessment quizzes or analogous devices, normally scored automatically
• Formal assessment functions, such as examinations, essay submission, or presentation of projects. this now frequently includes components to support peer assessment
• Support for communications, including e-mail, threaded discussions, chat rooms, Twitter and other media, sometimes with the instructor or an assistant acting as moderator. Additional elements include wikis, blogs, RSS and 3D virtual learning spaces.
• Links to outside sources – pathways to all other online learning spaces are linked via the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment).
• Management of access rights for instructors, their assistants, course support staff, and students
• Documentation and statistics as required for institutional administration and quality control
• Authoring tools for creating the necessary documents by the instructor, and, usually, submissions by the students
• Provision for the necessary hyperlinks to create a unified presentation to the students.

A VLE is normally not designed for a specific course or subject, but is capable of supporting multiple courses over the full range of the academic program, giving a consistent interface within the institution and—to some degree—with other institutions using the system. The virtual learning environment supports an exchange of information between a user and the learning institute he or she is currently enrolled in through digital mediums like e-mail, chat rooms, web 2.0 sites or a forum thereby helping convey information to any part of the world with just a single click.

Web-Based Education

• Web-Based Training (WBT) is mostly a form of computer-based training and that generally uses a learning management system (LMS).

• It also is defined as e-instruction or web-based instruction or simply as e-learning.