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There is a lot of software out there claiming to be free. Often, what this really means is a free trial, or a free, highly limited version. And most offer no freedom to make changes to the software.
Open source software is different. It really is free. In both respects. It’s free to download and use. And you have the freedom to make changes to the software and to the documentation.
In the world of education and adult learning, you’ll find several established open source projects. We’ll take a brief look here, particularly focussing on the content authoring side of things. We will explore who they’re for, how easy they are to install and use, and how sustainable they are.
That last point is critical. It’s fine to experiment with software from all over. As soon as you want to roll it out across an organisation and start to depend on it, you need to have some confidence it will be maintained and supported for a while.
This post focusses on elearning authoring tools. I’m deliberately keeping that definition quite tight - in that it must be specifically designed to support teaching and learning. I could, in theory, include applications like LibreOffice, Dokuwiki, Booktype, and a whole host of others. And I could include more complex platforms like Moodle, OpenEdX and Wordpress. I’ll cover those in future articles.
Adapt
Target audience
Elearning design agencies with technical teams, or highly technically competent elearning designs.
Ease of use
Adapt consists of two parts: a framework for developing elearning content, and a server-based authoring tool. The latter isn’t being pushed very much now. Most of the work seems to be done on the framework. It requires a considerable level of confidence with technology and coding to get the best out of the software. Once you have it, though, you can build consistent, good looking content reasonably quickly.
Sustainability
The software is supported by a collaboration between a number of elearning design agencies, mainly in the UK. The documentation, which is extensive, is open for contributions. Given it’s not really designed for non-technical users, the way to support further development is to engage with one of the collaborators.
Exe Learning
Target audience
People who want to quickly create template driven SCORM packages, or standalone HTML pages with learning exercises.
Ease of use
Exe Learning is an application to install on Windows, MacOS or Linux. It then runs as a tab within your browser. It produces responsive pages, along the lines of Articulate Rise, Adapt or Gomo. Each page is built up of one or more iDevices - educational activities - of which there are many types.
You have little control over the output look and feel, unless you want to get into stylesheets.
It’s really strong on metadata. In fact, it’s one of very few tools that implement metadata well.
Unfortunately, its SCORM export, unlike all other authoring tools, relies on the learning platform to provide the navigation between pages. There’s no internal navigation in the learning packages. This is how SCORM was meant to be, but most platforms these days don’t implement navigation well, or, in many cases, at all.
Sustainability
The software seems to be maintained, and is supported by a number of Spanish and Catalan public organisations. Other than contributing code, there don’t seem to be many ways that users can support the project (eg. with documentation or paying for services).
H5P
Target audience
People who want to create small, discrete activities to embed in the webpages or learning platforms.
Ease of use
With H5P you can quickly create a range of interactive exercises and resources to embed in any web page. You’ll either need the authoring component installed into a Moodle, Wordpress or Drupal site, or you can use the standalone, commercial authoring tool, hosted by h5p.com.
Like Exe Learning and Xerte, authors are filling in a series of forms. The data is then rendered by H5P to create the finished object. It’s not hard, once you have an idea of how each activity type will behave for the learners.
Sustainability
H5P Group has just been bought by D2L. That will hopefully give it a investement boost. I think they must see a potential return from the H5P.com commercial authoring tool - but they’ve committed to retaining H5P as an open-source project too.
Open Elearning
Target audience
People who want to quickly create SCORM packages, or standalone HTML pages with learning exercises.
Ease of use
Open Elearning is an application that sits on your Windows, MacOS or Linux computer. It’s easy to download and install.
It’s based on a slide model, like Articulate Storyline. It’s fairly ease to use, although a little ideosyncratic at times, and the documentation has not kept up with recent versions of the software. So you may be having to do some more complex things by trial and error.
Sustainability
The company behind Open Elearning offers paid for support and design services. The software itself seems to be maintained and developed at the moment, although the documentation and marketing is lacking at times. There seems to be no way for the community to contribute to the documentation, which is a shame.
Xerte
Target audience
Organisations, with a technical team, and multiple people who need to create accessible content - primarily in higher education.
Ease of use
Xerte is server-based, and so needs some setting up, which can be a bit technical at times, especially if you want to create your own custom branding.
Once it’s set up, authors login and create courses by choosing activity types and filling in forms. A bit like Exe and H5P.
Unfortunately if you want a responsive design (that works on mobile devices) that will severely limit the activities to just text and graphics. The more interesting interactions work on a fixed-size slide only.
Since my review in March 2024, there has been some work to improve the documentation.
Sustainability
Xerte is part of the Apereo Foundation - an organisation designed to support open source projects for higher education. Financial support only comes via donations. There is no commercial arm to bring in funds.
Posted: 30 August 2024
Tags: Open source Advocacy Solution design Supplier selection
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