The development of Open Sourcee-learning environments:the Chamilo experienceProf. dr. Frederik Questier, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Guest lecture at Beijing Normal University, 21/10/2010

This presentation can be found athttp://questier.com

http://www.slideshare.net/Frederik_Questier

Belgium

Brussels

Atomium building © www.atomium.be - SABAM 2010; photo CC-by-nc-sa by fatboyke Luc B

Atomium building © www.atomium.be - SABAM 2010; photo CC-by-sa by Emilio Garcia

Bruges

The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the elder 1568

Carnaval de Binche

Student folklore

Country of 1000 beers

My background

➢ Teaching courses:

➢ Educational Technologies

➢ Learning Technologies

➢ Virtual Learning Environments

➢ E-learning design

➢ Departments

➢ Interdisciplinary Teacher Training

➢ Educational Sciences

➢ Former head of center for

➢ Education innovation

➢ Teacher staff training

➢ Virtual learning Environment

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My research interests

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Projects with Cuba

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Projects with Kenia (Nairobi and Moi universities)

Expertise Centre ICT for eduTrainingConsultancyResearchPostgraduate master ICT in Education

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Research and Innovation Director

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One Laptop Per Child

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1 Understand the Free & Open Source basics

2 Start a project or contribute to a project

3 Build a community or contribute to a community

4 Build expertise

5 Support your users and/or sell services

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"The most fundamental way of helping other people,

is to teach peoplehow to do things better

or how to better their lives.

For peoplewho use computers,this means sharing

the recipesyou use on your computer,

in other wordsthe programs you run."

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Free Software

➢The freedom to

➢ use

➢ study

➢ distribute

➢ improve

the program

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The software Freedomsrequire access to the source code

→ “Open Source Software”Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)

Source code: if encrypt(password) == encryptedpassword, then login=1, end

Compiled code: 001001011101010011001100001111011000110001110001101

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FLOSS characteristics

➢ User friendly ← written by users for users

➢ Cross-platform ← recompile source code

➢ High development pace ← reuse of best modules

➢ High quality ← peer review, reuse = survival of the fittest

➢ High security ← peer review, Unix origin, modular, encryption

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Yes, there is ahuge world of FLOSS communities

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Creating wealth by sharing"Seven open source business strategies for competitive advantage”

John Koenig, IT Manager's Journal, 2004

“Companies continue to waste their development dollars on software functionality that is otherwise free and available through Open Source. They persist in buying third-party proprietary platforms or creating their own proprietary development platforms that deliver marginal product differentiation and limited value to customers”

Picture reproduced with permission

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Success in FLOSS requires you to serve➢ those who spend time to save money➢ those who spend money to save time -- Mårten Mickos, CEO MySQL

33Frederik Questier at the MIT Miracle of Science Bar, 2009

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Chamilo version 2(beta version now)

➢ Completly refactored➢ Well designed

(versus organic growth of version 1)

➢ Abstraction layers➢ Repository based➢ Easily extensible➢ Rights management

(to make sharing easier)

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History of forks

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1998: how it started

➢ In a Belgian University➢ many people were frustrated

by the inflexible, non-free elearning systems

they had to use

➢ Prof. dr. Thomas Depraetere➢ starts the Claroline e-learning platform➢ publishes it as Free Software➢ got grants for it

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2004: fork 1original author wants to break free

➢ Growing number of users➢ outside the university➢ requesting professional services

➢ Prof. dr. Thomas Depraetere➢ starts a company, Dokeos➢ can't call it Claroline, cause university has trademark➢ can reuse software code, as it is Free !!!

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2010: fork 2the community wants to break free

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Future?From forks to collaboration?

➢ First talks between Chamilo and Claroline about common kernel in next versions

➢ Consortium of FLOSS e-learning platforms?➢ standards for exchanging modules

➢ (besides content and users)

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Build and Manage

a Community?

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DevelopmentLinus Torvalds' style

release early and often

delegate everything you can

be open to the point of promiscuity

Linus' Law"given enough eyeballs,all bugs are shallow."

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Book published underOpen Publication License

19 lessons for open source development

Commercial development= Cathedral style

Open Source development= Bazaar style

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The Cathedral and the Bazaarabout developers

1. Every good work of softwarestarts by scratching a developer's personal itch.

2. Good programmers know what to write.Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).

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The Cathedral and the Bazaarabout users

6. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle routeto rapid code improvement and effective debugging.

7. Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.

8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base,almost every problem will be characterized quicklyand the fix obvious to someone.

11. The next best thing to having good ideas isrecognizing good ideas from your users.Sometimes the latter is better.

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The Cathedral and the Bazaarabout development

17. A security system is only as secure as its secret.Beware of pseudo-secrets.

18. To solve an interesting problem,start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.

19. Provided the development coordinatorhas a medium at least as good as the Internet,and knows how to lead without coercion,many heads are inevitably better than one.

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Chamiloin 8 months time376 installations

in 26 countries14964 courses119601 users

Aim BIG !

http://version.chamilo.org/comm.php

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Be multi-lingual !

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Communicateopen and directly

➢ website

➢ mailing lists➢ users➢ dev-team➢ board members

➢ user days

➢ developers meetings

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Give the users a forum

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Make it easy to contribute !

➢ Offer➢ centralized source code management

➢ modular design

➢ plugin possibilities

➢ translation tools

➢ collaborations tools for development

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Build trustGive a growth path

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Analyse and monitor

your performance

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Automated Chamilo analysisby Ohloh.net

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6.5 years of Chamilo code activity in 2 minutescode_swarm : organic information visualization

made by Yannick Warnier http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY3d9-B6ikk

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Create a democratic structure

➢ Chamilo is a non-profit association

➢ General assembly➢ Members (admitted – effective | 25€ – 6000€)➢ Working groups➢ Board of Directors

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Foster an ecosystem

➢ Users➢ Developers➢ Official service providers

➢ certification

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Advantages for universityproprietary → FLOSS VLE

➢ co-decide the direction of development➢ create extensions

➢ user requested➢ research driven innovation

➢ more contacts with other educational institutions➢ contributions from others➢ programming projects for students➢ better knowledge of the system

➢ better trouble solving

➢ possibilities for funding or for selling services➢ more for the same amount of investment

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Advantages for universityopen sourcing own developments

➢ Get contributions from others➢ Start new collaborations➢ Broaden the expertise➢ Sustainability➢ Reputation➢ Ethical➢ It's fun!

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DARETO SHARE

Copyright acknowledgements➢ Belgium in EU Map CC-by-sa by NuclearVacuum➢ Belgium map, Public Domain➢ The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the elder 1568➢ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Asterix_in_Belgium.jpg➢ Atomium building © www.atomium.be - SABAM 2010; photo CC-by-nc-sa by fatboyke Luc B➢ Atomium building © www.atomium.be - SABAM 2010; photo CC-by-sa by Emilio Garcia➢ Gilles de Binche CC-by-nc-nd by Fabrice Huin➢ Saxophone CC-by-nc-nd by Bruno Bollaert➢ Graspop Metal Meeting Festival 2008 CC-by-sa by Jtesla16➢ Pralines, screenshot Neuhaus website➢ Moules frites: CC-by-nc-sa by poluz – Nicola➢ Belgian Beers: CC-by-nc-sa by Adam Lang➢ Brussels Waffle CC-by-sa by David Monniaux➢ Screenshota http://www.chamilo.org/➢ Screenshots http://Ohloh.net➢ Time Money CC-by by Nina Matthews➢ Birds CC-by-nc-nd by Denis Collette➢ Swiss Army Knife CC-by-sa-nc by herzogbr ➢ Share matches CC-by-nc-nd by Josh Harper➢ Social Network CC-by by Frederik Questier

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Active/Manipulative - Collaborative - Complex - Constructive - Contextualized - Conversational - Intentional - Reflective

Questions? Comments?Questions? Comments?谢谢谢谢

See also http://questier.com