F. Questier, The development of Open Source e-learning environments: the Chamilo experience, guest lecture at Beijing Normal University, School of Educational Technology, Beijing, China, 21/10/2010

1. The development of Open Source
e-learning environments:
the Chamilo experience
Prof. dr. Frederik Questier, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Guest lecture at Beijing Normal University, 21/10/2010

2. This presentation can be found at
http://questier.com
http://www.slideshare.net/Frederik_Questier

3. Belgium

5. Brussels

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

8. Bruges

9. The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the elder 1568

12. Carnaval de Binche

13. Student folklore

15. Country of 1000 beers

18. My background

19. ➢ 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

20. My research interests
20

21. Projects with Cuba
21

22. Projects with Kenia
(Nairobi and Moi universities)
Expertise Centre ICT for edu
Training
Consultancy
Research
Postgraduate master ICT in Education 22

23. Research and Innovation Director
23

24. One Laptop Per Child
24

25. 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
25

26. "The most fundamental way
of helping other people,
is to teach people
how to do things better
or how to better their lives.
For people
who use computers,
this means sharing
the recipes
you use on your computer,
in other words
the programs you run."
26

27. Free Software
➢ The freedom to
➢ use
➢ study
➢ distribute
➢ improve
the program
27

28. The software Freedoms
require access to the source code
Source code: if encrypt(password) == encryptedpassword, then login=1, end
Compiled code: 001001011101010011001100001111011000110001110001101
→ “Open Source Software”
Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)
28

29. 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
29

30. Yes, there is a
huge world of FLOSS communities
30

31. 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
31

32. 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
32

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

34. 34

35. 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)
35

36. 36

37. 37

38. 38

39. 39

40. 40

41. 41

42. History of forks
42

43. 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
43

44. 2004: fork 1
original 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 !!!
44

45. 2010: fork 2
the community wants to break free
45

46. 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)
46

47. Build and Manage
a Community?
47

48. Development
Linus 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."
48

49. Book published under
Open Publication License
19 lessons for open source
development
Commercial development
= Cathedral style
Open Source development
= Bazaar style
49

50. The Cathedral and the Bazaar
about developers
1. Every good work of software
starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
2. Good programmers know what to write.
Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
50

51. The Cathedral and the Bazaar
about users
6. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route
to 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 quickly
and the fix obvious to someone.
11. The next best thing to having good ideas is
recognizing good ideas from your users.
Sometimes the latter is better.
51

52. The Cathedral and the Bazaar
about 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 coordinator
has a medium at least as good as the Internet,
and knows how to lead without coercion,
many heads are inevitably better than one.
52

53. Aim BIG !
Chamilo
in 8 months time
376 installations
in 26 countries
14964 courses
119601 users http://version.chamilo.org/comm.php
53

54. Be multi-lingual !
54

55. Communicate
open and directly
➢ website
➢ mailing lists
➢ users
➢ dev-team
➢ board members
➢ user days
➢ developers meetings
55

56. Give the users a forum
56

57. Make it easy to contribute !
➢ Offer
➢ centralized source code management
➢ modular design
➢ plugin possibilities
➢ translation tools
➢ collaborations tools for development
57

58. Build trust
Give a growth path
58

59. Analyse and monitor
your performance
59

60. Automated Chamilo analysis
by Ohloh.net
60

61. 61

62. 62

63. 6.5 years of Chamilo code activity in 2 minutes
code_swarm : organic information visualization
made by Yannick Warnier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY3d9-B6ikk
63

64. Create a democratic structure
➢ Chamilo is a non-profit association
➢ General assembly
➢ Members (admitted – effective | 25€ – 6000€)
➢ Working groups
➢ Board of Directors
64

65. Foster an ecosystem
➢ Users
➢ Developers
➢ Official service providers
➢ certification
65

66. Advantages for university
proprietary → 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
66

67. Advantages for university
open sourcing own developments
➢ Get contributions from others
➢ Start new collaborations
➢ Broaden the expertise
➢ Sustainability
➢ Reputation
➢ Ethical
➢ It's fun!
67

68. DARE
TO SHARE
68

69. 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

70. Active/Manipulative - Collaborative - Complex - Constructive - Contextualized - Conversational - Intentional - Reflective
Questions? Comments?
谢谢
See also http://questier.com
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