I have a specific Moodle vs. Sakai question. Sakai bills itself as not just a LMS/CMS, but a collaboration environment, and argues that Moodle is only a LMS/CMS. To what extent have Moodle users found ways to effectively reproduce the collaboration tools touted by Sakai? This question is important to our adoption of Moodle for some extra-institutional collaborative projects we'll be managing, and I need clearheaded arguments for Moodle's functionality (possibly in conjunction with DMS etc. add-ins) in terms of research collaboration.
Thanks,
Jim P.
Sakai has a forum tool. And I think they are thinking of a wiki (I think it's still in beta). All things that Moodle has, and has had for a while 
You can use Moodle as LMS, as Collaboration Environment, and as Rocket Launch Coordination Platform. The Most Requested Customisation for Moodle I know about is... "can we rename 'Course' to 'Community' so we can run collaborative communities?". We do a search-and-replace in the language files, rename teachers to coordinators or facilitators, and students to participants or something like that, and voilà!
You can use Moodle as LMS, as Collaboration Environment, and as Rocket Launch Coordination Platform. The Most Requested Customisation for Moodle I know about is... "can we rename 'Course' to 'Community' so we can run collaborative communities?". We do a search-and-replace in the language files, rename teachers to coordinators or facilitators, and students to participants or something like that, and voilà!
>> The Most Requested Customisation for Moodle I know about is... "can we
rename 'Course' to 'Community' so we can run collaborative communities?"
I couldn't find this in bug tracker, but I'm pretty sure it was there. You wouldn't happen to have an ID number for it would you?
I can't do a search-and-replace as some "Courses" I maintain should still be called courses, some I would like to call "Communities".
The RLCP sounds very interesting, I'm curious to know who's using Moodle in this manner?
I couldn't find this in bug tracker, but I'm pretty sure it was there. You wouldn't happen to have an ID number for it would you?
I can't do a search-and-replace as some "Courses" I maintain should still be called courses, some I would like to call "Communities".
The RLCP sounds very interesting, I'm curious to know who's using Moodle in this manner?
It's not in the bugtracker, it's something that Moodle does today, trivially, making a custom lang pack. And if you have courses _and_ communities, just use per-course language packs
> The RLCP sounds very interesting, I'm curious to know who's
> using Moodle in this manner?
We are! Watch it fly: http://moodle.org/stats/
> The RLCP sounds very interesting, I'm curious to know who's
> using Moodle in this manner?
We are! Watch it fly: http://moodle.org/stats/
> per-course language packs
ouch... I know, I know... it just seems so "painful". What if I want to allow students to choose their own language? Now I'm looking at a custom language pack for each language,... yuck. Not that it matters to me, I don't think I've had any student choose anything but English!
ouch... I know, I know... it just seems so "painful". What if I want to allow students to choose their own language? Now I'm looking at a custom language pack for each language,... yuck. Not that it matters to me, I don't think I've had any student choose anything but English!
> What if I want to allow students to choose their own language?
Regardless of where you set it, you want to know what the word for 'Community' is in each language
Regardless of where you set it, you want to know what the word for 'Community' is in each language
The point about it being "painful" still stands though. Would it be a good idea to make this a direct feature of Moodle - like we have "Your word for teacher" and "Your word for student" on a global/course level, it would be nice to have "Your word for course" - this would mean that a single Moodle installation could host both "course"s and "community"s...
Hmmm. Sounds like a partial solution... goes from being painful but flexible, to being simple but limited. When you configure 'your word for Foo' you break things for users on other languages 
I am confused though. What's painful about search & replace? I do it all the time on many different projects and things, from OpenOffice documents (I'm sure MSWord can do it too! ) to code...
I am confused though. What's painful about search & replace? I do it all the time on many different projects and things, from OpenOffice documents (I'm sure MSWord can do it too!
We use Moodle as a collaborationtool for groups in our schools but also as a tool for a project of schools with five different brands of VLE's *). Core of this collaboration is NOT Moodle but the design and exchange of educational arrangements for secundary education. So we cannot wait to test all these new exchange formats of Moodle...
We call
www.deonderwijsvernieuwingscooperatie.nl
(it is Dutch for unionforredisgnofeducation, and so longggg that you make immediatly a bookmark for it)
VLE´s are: Natschool(1), TeLeTOP(1), Fronter(1), it´sLearning(1) and Moodle(6)
We call
- the courses: workrooms
- the teachers: moderators
- the students: members. (and we have guests)
www.deonderwijsvernieuwingscooperatie.nl
(it is Dutch for unionforredisgnofeducation, and so longggg that you make immediatly a bookmark for it
VLE´s are: Natschool(1), TeLeTOP(1), Fronter(1), it´sLearning(1) and Moodle(6)
We use Moodle for several campus wide collaborative projects at HSU, it works pretty well.
I think the definition Sakai is using here is more one of project goals rather than functionality, Moodle is aimed more at being an LMS, though the definition of LMS is expanding beyond the course to include all sorts of collaborative research projects, while Sakai aims at being a collaborative research tool that can also be used as an LMS.
It might be accurate to say that Moodle is a better fit for teaching institutions, though I would say that Moodle would work just fine for research institutions as well.
I think the definition Sakai is using here is more one of project goals rather than functionality, Moodle is aimed more at being an LMS, though the definition of LMS is expanding beyond the course to include all sorts of collaborative research projects, while Sakai aims at being a collaborative research tool that can also be used as an LMS.
It might be accurate to say that Moodle is a better fit for teaching institutions, though I would say that Moodle would work just fine for research institutions as well.
Thanks, Michael et al.; this is helpful. I do think that the DMS tie-in to Moodle needs to be improved to facilitate better research collaboration, but realize there is good work being done in that vein.
Regards,
Jim P.
Regards,
Jim P.