Claroline

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Claroline

Developed by	UCL/IPM, ECAM
Latest release	1.8.9 / Feb 12, 2008
OS	Cross-platform
Genre	Learning Management System
License	GPL
Website	www.claroline.net

Claroline is a collaborative eLearning and eWorking platform (Learning Management System) released under Open Source license (GPL). It allows hundreds of organizations worldwide (universities, schools, companies, associations,...) to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces through the web. The platform is used in more than 80 countries and is available in more than 30 languages.

1 Tools
2 Multi-platform
3 Development
4 Partners
5 See also
6 References
7 Links

[edit] Tools

The Claroline platform is organized around the concept of space associated to a course or a pedagogical activity. Each course space provides a list of tools enabling the teacher to ^[1]:

Write a course description
Publish documents in any format (text, PDF, HTML, video...)
Administer public and private forums
Develop

(also by e-mail)

Propose assignments to be handed in online
See the statistics of the users activity
Use the wiki to write collaborative document

[edit] Multi-platform

Claroline is compatible with GNU/Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. It is based on free technologies like PHP and MySQL.

[edit] Development

Claroline is based on strong pedagogical principles coming from the literature on the added value of the technologies for training. Since 2000, Claroline development teams have been focusing on the code stability and the development of features in line with the user's needs. The main concern of the developers is not to build up a large number of new features, but to concentrate upon a few elaborated tools concerning the pedagogical approach and the interface offered to the users. Besides, a large worldwide community of users and developers contributes to Claroline development and diffusion extensively.^[2]

[edit] Partners

Initially started in 2000 by the UCL (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium), Claroline has been developed following teacher's pedagogical experience and needs. Claroline is now financially supported by the Région wallonne for its development through the WIST programme^[3].

Within this programme, Claroline associates three Belgian partners :

The CERDECAM, Research and development centre of the ECAM, Brussels
The LENTIC, Research centre on new technologies, innovation and change of the ULg, Liège
The IPM, University pedagogy and multimedia institute from the UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve

The Claroline Consortium was born on May 23, 2007 during the second annual conference of Claroline users that was held at the Vigo University, Spain. This international non-profit association mainly aims at federating the Claroline community, coordinating the platform developments and promoting its use^[4].

The 5 founder members of the Consortium are :