Funding Programme: Lifelong Learning Programme 2007 - Multilateral project - Key

Activity 3 - ICT.

Deliverable 4.1:
Analysis of existing technology from the BONy’s partners

Deliverable Co-ordinator: Marco Bennardo

Deliverable Co-ordinating Organisation: P.M.F. S.r.l.

Contributors:
Manuele Manente (P.M.F. S.r.l.)
Alfio Gliozzo (C.N.R. I.S.T.C.)
Aneta Zydziak (4system Polska Sp. z.o.o.)
Aris Chronopoulos (IDEC S.A.)
Florencia Nava (INK Catalunya S.A.)

BONy is a project financed with the EC funds in the domain of "Lifelong

Learning Programme" managed by EACEA.
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BONy Consortium
This document is part of BONy project, financed with the EC funds in the domain of "Lifelong
Learning Programme" managed by EACEA, number 135263-2007-IT-KA3-KA3MP. The following
partners are involved in the BONy project:

• P.M.F. S.r.l., Catania, Italy. Project coordinator (www.pmfonline.net).

Via Mario Sangiorgi n. 37

95129 Catania (Italy)
Tel. +39 095 2936355
Fax +39 1782771686

• INK Catalunya S.A., Barcelona, Spain (www.inkcat.es).

Valencia, 279, ático

08009 - Barcelona (España)
Tel.: + 34 934 961 600
Fax: + 34 934 873 900

• C.N.R. I.S.T.C., Roma, Italy (www.cnr.it).

C.N.R. - Piazzale Aldo Moro, 7

00185 Roma
Telefono +39 06 49931
Fax +39 06 4461954

• IDEC S.A., Piraeus, Greece (www.idec.gr).

Iroon Politechniou 96
Piraeus 185 36
Tel: +30 210 4286227
Fax: +30 210 4286228

• 4system Polska Sp. z.o.o., Zielona Góra, Poland (www.4system.com).

ul. Botaniczna 70
65-392 Zielona Góra, Poland
Phone.: +48 (0) 68 451 08 88
Fax: +48 (0) 68 451 08 88 ext. 2

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Work package participants

The following partners have taken an active part in the work leading to the elaboration of this
document, even if they might not have directly contributed writing parts of this document:
• P.M.F. S.r.l., Catania, Italy. Project coordinator (www.pmfonline.net).
• INK Catalunya, S.A, Barcelona, Spain (www.inkcat.es).
• C.N.R. I.S.T.C., Roma, Italy (www.cnr.it).
• IDEC S.A., Piraeus, Greece (www.idec.gr).
• 4system Polska Sp. z.o.o., Zielona Góra, Poland (www.4system.com).

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Reviews History

Version Date Modifier Remarks

0.1 30/03/2008 Bennardo First draft

0.2 31/03/2008 Manente Comments

0.3 29/06/2008 Bennardo Second draft

0.4 30/06/2008 Manente Comments

0.5 29/07/2008 Bennardo Draft + Partners feedbacks + Questionnaire results

0.6 30/07/2008 Manente Comments

0.7 31/07/2008 Bennardo Final version

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Executive Summary

Analysis of existing technology from the BONy’s partners. The aim of this Deliverable is to analyze
the existing technology that partners would leave at disposal for the BONy’s project so as to define
the final architecture of the BONy’s system. A questionnaire to assess existing owned or open
source LMS as been developed and submitted to consortium member in order to value and select
the best e-learning platform for the BONy use-case.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 7 
2. Specification of the criteria for the choice of platforms ......................................................... 7 
2.1.  BONy Partner Survey ........................................................................................................... 7 
2.2.  LMS Criteria Survey ............................................................................................................. 7 
2.3.  LMS Features Survey ........................................................................................................... 9 
2.4.  Survey Delivery .................................................................................................................. 11 
3. Candidate Learning Management Systems ........................................................................... 11 
3.1.  Dokeos ................................................................................................................................ 11 
3.2.  E-Logos ............................................................................................................................... 12 
3.3.  Moodle ................................................................................................................................. 12 
3.4.  WBTServer .......................................................................................................................... 12 
4. LMS comparison ...................................................................................................................... 12 
4.1.  Standards Compliancy ...................................................................................................... 12 
4.2.  Usability, User-friendliness, Multilingual Support .......................................................... 13 
4.3.  Developer Documentation, SDK, Community ................................................................. 13 
4.4.  Integration with other Systems ......................................................................................... 13 
4.5.  Cost of Ownership and licensing ..................................................................................... 13 
4.6.  Scalability & Security ......................................................................................................... 14 
4.7.  Search Engine .................................................................................................................... 14 
4.8.  Application Portability ....................................................................................................... 14 
4.9.  Features .............................................................................................................................. 14 
4.10.  Summary Table .................................................................................................................. 14 
5. Conclusions and recommendations ...................................................................................... 15 

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1. Introduction

This report gives an analysis of the state of the art of existing technology from the BONy’s partners
to fit to the project’s requirements and provides a support definition of BONy’s system architecture.
To accomplish this task the project team decided to evaluate the Learning Management System
used by the partners. For the evaluation of the e-learning platforms, several criteria were collected
merging and consolidating the results from the questionnaire and from previous evaluations by the
project partners.
On the basis of these results information was gained on which platform would meet best the
requirements of the future steps.

2. Specification of the criteria for the choice of platforms

The aim of BONy is to develop a cognitive Learning Management System ( LMS ) allowing users
to find and learn the units strictly requested and strictly necessary to achieve their training
experience. Due to costs and time to develop a new LMS, the project team decided to study an
existing platform in order to implement only the necessary modules. The software modules
developed will interact to LMS with defined communication protocols such as API or Web Services.
For these reasons the platform choice is strategic for the whole project.
In this paragraph we exam the evaluation criteria in order to find the best LMS solution from the
partners.

2.1. BONy Partner Survey

In order to gain information from BONy partners we have delivered a survey specifying e-learning
platform technical and functional requirements.
The survey was divided into two parts. In the first part, the LMS general criteria are analysed, while
in the second part we looked at the functionalities offered by such LMS.
In order to evaluate the specific criteria some questions were given to partners to analyse better
the platform used. Every criterion is studied against a scale of evaluation, going from 1 indicating
poor results to 5 indicating excellent results. Survey participants will be required to answer all
questions and will also have the chance to support their answers with feedback.
As not all criteria and functionalities have the same importance within BONy project, every criterion
was given a different rating.

2.2. LMS Criteria Survey

Criteria Question/Rating
Standards Compliancy Does the LMS adhere to specifications like SCORM, IMS, OKI,
AiCC?

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Can the LMS import and manage content and courseware that
complies with standards regardless of the authoring system that
produced it?
Is XML support available?
Usability, User- Will the program require lots of training or is it fairly intuitive to
friendliness, Multilingual use?
Support
How available is documentation, how useful are guides, training
and online help?
How long will it take for faculties to set up their courses at a
basic level?
Does the system support additional languages?
Developer Documentation, How available is documentation for developers?
SDK, Community
Is there a support community?
How available is Source Development Kit ( API Web Services
etc )
Integration with other Does the solution allow for ready integration with other
Systems systems?

Cost of Ownership and What are the costs for licensing, software, hardware and custom
licensing development requirements?

How fast can the LMS be up and running?

What level of expertise is required?

What kind of support and assistance are available?

Scalability & Security Is the program suitable for both small and large installations?

How easily does the solution allow for growth of users, content,
functionality?

Search Engine Has the LMS an integrated search engine?

Application Portability How efficient is the LMS support portability to PDA phone?

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2.3. LMS Features Survey

Features Feature Statements

Administration Manage user registrations

Set curricula, chart certification paths Administer internal

budgets, user payments, and chargebacks.

Create standard and customized reports on individual and group

performance. Reports should be scalable to include the entire
workforce.
Print Certificates.
Build schedules for learners, instructors, and classrooms.
Misc. Comments
Security Encryption
Authentication
Misc. Comments

Access Individual/Group Login and Password

Manage user profiles, define roles. Assign tutors.
Browser accessible
Course Authorization. Instructor approves enrolment
Registration Integration. Prerequisite Screening, Cancel
Notification
Misc. Comments
Integration with Other Integration with HR Systems
Systems
Integration with CRM. Student listing. Maintain student
information.
Misc. Comments
Course Design, Customizable look and feel
Development and
Integration
Support for classroom and virtual courses
Course templates
Use and access to Learning Objects
Web authoring

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Support multimedia types

Accessibility Compliance
Instructional design tools
Curriculum Management
Easy Navigation/linking
Easy Course structuring
Extensible Architecture
Support style sheets
Misc. Comments
Course Monitoring Course Listing/Catalogue
Course Descriptions
Schedules and Availability
Usage Tracking
Misc. Comments
Assessment Design Creates Test Questions and Facilitate Test Administration
Automated Testing and Scoring
Course Path Maintenance
Competency Mapping/Skill Gap Analysis
Self-assessment
Misc. Comments
Online Collaboration and Email
Communications
chat rooms
help desks
file exchange
wiki
blog
whiteboard
discussion groups/forums
Misc. Comments
Productivity Tools Bookmarks
Calendar/Progress Review
Orientation/Help
Search

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Work offline/Synchronize
Misc. Comments

2.4. Survey Delivery

To deliver the survey to the partners we chose an online tool. The survey-tool in use is located
online: http://freeonlinesurveys.com/

3. Candidate Learning Management Systems

The project team has collected and merged the information on the basis of the results gained from
the above mentioned criteria. The evaluation focussed mainly on the open-source platforms (due
to monetary reasons), but the commercial platform as e-Logos and WBTServer were incorporated
too.
Not all partners took part in the survey as some of them do not work with LMS as one of their
corporate core businesses.

BONy Partner LMS Licence Type Vendor Url

P.M.F. S.r.l. Dokeos 1.8.5 Open Source N.A. http://www.dokeos.com/

e-Logos 2.0 Commercial VITECO S.r.l. http://www.elogos.it

INK Catalunya None
S.A.
C.N.R. I.S.T.C. None
IDEC S.A. Moodle 1.8 Open Source N.A. http://www.moodle.org
4system Polska WBTServer Commercial 4system http://www.4system.com
Moodle 1.8 Open Source N.A http://www.moodle.org

3.1. Dokeos
Dokeos is the Open Source platform proposed by P.M.F. and developed by the Dutch company
Dokeos. The project was developed from a previous version of Claroline (a fork) and became in a
short time a project with its own character. The main aim is to help teachers create pedagogical
content, structure activities while using learning paths, interact with students and follow their
learning advacement through the monitoring system. Dokeos has quickly met great enthusiasm
among users in MNEs, federal administrations and universities in some 60 countries for a total of

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1,000,000 users. It’s an LMS easy to use and very reliable at the same time. It supports the
SCORM standard and incorporates tools for contents generation.

3.2. E-Logos
e-Logos ® is the commercial solution offered by P.M.F. The platform was developed by an Italian
company called VITECO S.r.l. and presents as main characteristics the high usability and
userfriendliness. The software was developed with the ASP, II 6 and MySql technology, and
adapts very well to small-scale e-learning projects. This LMS supports the SCORM standard 1.2
and as it has been marketed only in Italy so far, it does not provide a multilingual support.

3.3. Moodle
Moodle is one of the most used Open Source LMS solutions presented in the e-learning market. Its
community of users and developers is spread all over the world and in comparison to other
systems it is renowed, among all its applications, for the high quality of pedagogical aspects
provided, in accordance to the constructionist theory. This LMS possesses all required
characteristics needed for BONy implementation, it is translated into 70 languages, it complies with
the SCORM standards and its functionalities can be developed by using hundreds of plug-ins.

3.4. WBTServer
WBTServer is an LMS developed by the BONy partner 4system and it helps to manage the remote
learning process (effective online education) with ease and coordinate e-Learning trainings. Using
the WBTServer platform allows to fast and easily access the content as well as to quickly
communicate with the system users. Thanks to the structure of WBTServer, it is possible to adjust
the functionality of the learning platform to individual needs of the Client. It is SCORM compliant
and offers many types of customisation.

4. LMS comparison
The project team decided to give more relevance to open source solutions to engage development
team and to have support from community. Moodle got the highest ranking in this criterion.
All LMS proposed are SCORM compliant, in particular with the SCORM 1.2 .
Another relevant criterion on which the final choice was made is the availability of an integrated
search engine. Among all platforms Moodle WBT Server e Dokeos provide such a module.
The explanations below show comparison details for each criterion.

4.1. Standards Compliancy

The LMS need to adhere to specifications like of e-learning industry like SCORM, OKI, IMS. It is
very important that LMS can import existing courseware developed with an e-learning standard. To
manage the LO metadata descriptor LOM (Learning Object Metadata) the LMS need to support
XML. All LMS proposed are SCORM compliant in particular with the SCORM 1.3, except e-logos
which is compliant to the older SCORM 1.2. This is one of most important criteria because the
project aims to embed SCORM Meta data with ontological information.

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4.2. Usability, User-friendliness, Multilingual Support

The project team wishes to chose an easy and intuitive software for users and administrators too.
Features like "course preview", "help-functions" and "training-requirements" were focused on. At
first sight, there are no significant differences between the LMS about the offered functions, but
looking at each system as a whole it became apparent that some applications are not user-friendly.
Not the number of the offered functions made the difference, but ease in navigation through the
system and finding the desired function did. Also due the multilingual nature of the project we need
to consider the availability of LMS languages.
The best LMS solution seems to be Moodle thanks to more than 70 languages available. Dokeos is
designed to multilingual implementation too, furthermore it has a translation tool (Dokeos
Language Translation Tool). At first sight, there are no significant differences between the
Learning Management Systems in regard to Usability and User-friendliness, but looking at each
system as a whole it became apparent that Moodle is not as user-friendly as Dokeos. Not the
number of the offered functions made the difference, but ease in navigation through the system
and finding the desired function. Dokeos clearly offers the best user-friendliness system in
comparison to the other tested systems.

4.3. Developer Documentation, SDK, Community

To develop XML-based e-learning services it is important to have all the necessary documentation.
Guide, source code, examples are the bases to develop and know the LMS framework. Existing
developer community could give ad advantage for the coders.
This requirement was evaluated with maximum weight. The largest developer Community in the
world is the Moodle Community involving University, companies and developers. The Dokeos
community is rapidly expanding in Europe and gives an useful support with help services and
documentation. Given the commercial scope of other LMS proposed, there are not any
communities of developers for WBTServer and e-logos even if they have excellent documentation.

4.4. Integration with other Systems

Because the LMS needs to be integrated with other system like Social Network Framework, CMS,
ERP, it is important to investigate if the LMS provide Web Services, API to retrieve users and
training information. The Learning Management System WBTServer, Dokeos, can be customized
to work with other systems such as CRM, ERP, SAP. There are few implementations of Moodle
integrated with other systems. This aspect is very relevant to interface the LMS with the OWL
engine. Moodle has more than 1000 plug-in web services and Moodle API based, this grant
implementation of others. Dokeos follows a philosophy of a small basic nucleus with pluggable
extensions and customizations. This gives developers the opportunity of easy design plug-in and
tool.

4.5. Cost of Ownership and licensing

In order to evaluate maintainability we need to consider the cost of ownership. The Open Source
solutions could be a good option because there are no license costs. Also the setup support and
administration are different from an LMS to another.
As described above, the evaluation focused mainly on open source platforms due to costs of
license and following patent problems. We have choosen Dokeos instead of Moodle because
project team “know how” can be cost-effective.

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4.6. Scalability & Security

The solutions must be suitable for both small and large installations because there is no forecast
in the potential number of BONy’s users. We have to consider which level of security the LMS can
offer, if it can handle security or authentication schemes or have any tool for digital right
management DRM.
Dokeos is suitable for small or big projects. Since Moodle is usually used in Academic contests,
Dokeos implementation covers different areas as corporate, medical, and public administrations.
All tested O.S. platforms have high levels of security supporting SSL, XSS, CSRF, SQL injection,
and Browser vulnerability are dealt with and solved by using the latest version of code.

4.7. Search Engine

The Search Engine Tool is an useful function in LMS because it gives users the ability to find
digital content from learning repository. In particular BONy project aims to develop a semantic
search engine using ontology, so the presence of this module is very relevant for the survey.
Looking at the “Search Engine” in Moodle, students can search all discussion Forums in their
course and all glossary entries. Dokeos has search modules to find keywords in courses and
users.
None of LMS tested have Learning Object Metadata search capabilities.

4.8. Application Portability

One task of WP4 is to configure a mobile phone access to BONy e-learning platform, using a PDA
Phone as a client, so finding an LMS which support mobile access could be a necessary
requirement for the project. None of LMS viewed have native mobile implementation, although
there are some projects for Moodle and WBTServer.

4.9. Features
Almost all LMS provide a set of functionalities for cataloguing, managing and distributing contents.
Some platforms have richer sets of functionalities compared to others, and these can be explored
by using the “features” parameter, which looks at the various characteristics useful for project
implementation, for example the graphic customisation, content creation tools, access levels and
so on.
Looking at the “LMS features” more differences became apparent: Moodle and Dokeos were
especially designed for collaborative environments, which became obvious in the evaluation.
WBTServer offers a wide range of functionalities and flexibility. E-Logos as well as Sakai offer the
functionalities of a forum and a chat but without the flexibility which Moodle has.
Concerning the "assessment design tools", E-logos showed significant technical deficiencies. The
assessment and test-functions offered by Dokeos seem to be comparable with those offered by
Moodle. Dokeos has an useful authoring tool (Oogie) to convert Word and Powerpoint documents
into SCORM compliant courses. Comparing LMS about “administration tool” showed no significant
differences.

4.10. Summary Table

Dokeos Moodle WBT Server e-Logos
Criteria score score score score
weight
Standards 5 25 25 25 15

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Compliancy
Usability, User- 4 20 12 16 16
friendliness,
Multilingual Support
Developer 5 20 25 15 10
Documentation,
SDK, Community

Cost of Ownership 3 15 15 6 6
and licensing

Scalability & 3 15 15 15 9
Security

Search Engine 4 20 20 20 8

Application 4 20 20 12 0
Portability

Features 3 15 15 15 9

Total Score 150 147 124 73

5. Conclusions and recommendations

As described above, the evaluation focussed mainly on open source platforms but also considered
the commercial platforms WBTServer and e-Logos. Especially WBT Server offers a wide range of
functionalities and seem to be a good solution but because of license and maintenance costs, the
project team decided to exclude the commercial platforms WBT Server and e-Logos from the
analysis.
Taking into account the specific differences of the systems and looking at the systems as a whole,
both Moodle and Dokeos appear as good choices for BONy requirements.
Moodle has shown its strength in the communication sector for its diffused developers’ community,
but Dokeos is better for usability and authoring tools. Both systems appear to be secure, the
installation is easy and the system works smoothly.
Concerning user-friendliness and usability characteristic the Learning Management System
Dokeos is the best solution among the Open Source analyzed.
BONy project developers team suggest the adoption of Dokeos because its code appears to be
clearer and simple, furthermore the team possess more usage skills over this LMS which can
definitely grant overall project success.

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