Michael J. Coffey

Is there any fedi-friendly(ish), selfhost-able, foss-like, online course software that's better than Moodle? I know Moodle is out there but don't want to faff about with it if there's a better software I can put on my site and offer classes.

Edit: Nothing against Moodle per se, but looking for alternatives *like* it so I can assess options.

#education #edtech #selfhost

Mar 17 at 9:58pmWeb
Show threadafreytes 🇵🇷Mar 17

@michaelc Been a while since I kept up with ecourseware/elearning... but I feel like BlackBoard and MicroSlop Learn (or whatever it was called) killed any innovation happening in that space years ago.

But I hope to be way wrong. And I would love to know if something new and worthwhile has sprung up.

Show threadMichael J. CoffeyMar 17
@afreytes Yeah, I've used Blackboard and Moodle and Canvas and they were all...serviceable. But they all felt like I needed to shoehorn what I wanted to do into a ill-fitting template. And I don't know enough about all the back-end things necessary to attempt making my own the way I want it.
Show threadcognitively accessible mathMar 17
@michaelc I am plowing back into moodle as of today and would be more than glad to yoke along with you if you decide to mess around
Show threadcognitively accessible mathMar 17
@michaelc I didn't find options but I don't know what I am doing
Show threadMichael J. CoffeyMar 17

@geonz I've used Moodle, Canvas, and Blackboard in the (somewhat distant) past, so there are familiar bits but probably also good to assume I don't know what I'm doing either.

Also, I like your account name. I did some math curriculum work in the past, with a focus on student choice more than explicitly cognitive accessibility.

Show threadcognitively accessible mathMar 17
@michaelc I've been at community college for 25 years now as "staff" so I have tripped over chances to make things in Canvas with an OER adult ed project (but when they took 5-10 years to NOT make it possible to *copy a question* on a quiz, I bailed).
I know a lot about ways to structure basics and algebra for people who "don't get" math and several times almost got a course going in D2L here but I couldn't make it gel with our class infrastructure. I"m dabbling more w/ adult ed folks as well as our "developmental" ed (our math folks refuse to abandon it so far, YAY!!!) so I thought I would at least make a "learn your times tables" course as a learning exercise, and some "number sense" experiences. Moodle has some options for "6 + 7" or "7 + 6" are both right answers with a bit of Boolean ;) ... but I"m approaching retirement and want to share what shouldn't be secrets.
I had a few weeks where we were working on an approved "for everybody!" Moodle course under the college's auspices, but then the "right" higher up tech people saw it and nixed it. It's spring break and I decided to dig it up ;)
Show threadAria.DNE [grim]Mar 18
@geonz @michaelc Noting as well that D2L as a company is fully AI-pilled. And the CEO drives a cybertruck.
Show threadcognitively accessible mathMar 17
@michaelc
I have had a website since 1998 and can run a Moodle course off it.
I have gotten awesome help from the Moodle community (if only because my questions are different :P ). I asked about "drag and drop" to drag a number somewhere and somebody answered by figuring out how to make a puzzle with a flower ;)
Show threadThree plus or minus fiveMar 17

@michaelc
There is LON-CAPA, but it’s horribly dated and a serious pain to run and administer, and requires getting authenticated into their network to be able to see other collections. It broke ground in the early days of randomized physics homework.

I mention it to show how people cared about this, but the magnitude of the problem is large.

What parts are you after? Sometimes simple tools strung together can get you a long way.

Show threadThree plus or minus fiveMar 17

@michaelc
In fact, I think that’s the better model for FOSS: some basic toolkit to do authentication, and a whole bunch of web tools on top of it.

For example, an email address that dumps PDFs in an assignment folder so you can grade them with tablet and pen; a grade sheet that shows students their current grade. Latex scripts to build assignments out of problem libraries. I had a bunch of these.

Show threadThree plus or minus fiveMar 17

@michaelc

.. but it was all hacky and bespoke, nothing unified or documented.

Show threadJayMooreMar 17
@michaelc maybe check out what Liz the dev uses for multiverse school
Show threadMichael J. CoffeyMar 18
@jaymoore I don't think so. I couldn't find anyone involved with the school that even *had* a fediverse related link, and everything seemed focused on "AI" including several classes that appeared to be just a link to ChatGPT, which is a nonviable approach to actual education of humans. Plus, looked through the code of the course listings and didn't see anything that would suggest it's a self-hostable package that someone else could use (like, it might be just a custom code for Liz et al).