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DokeosDokeos is an elearning environment and course management web application. It is free software released under the GNU GPL, its development is an international, collaborative effort. It is also OSI certified and can be used as a content management system for education and educators. Its features for course management include content distribution, calendaring, progress tracking, text/audio/video chat, test administration, and record keeping. As of 2004, it has been translated into 31 languages (in various stages of completion) and is used by more than one thousand organizations. The main goals of Dokeos are to be a very userfriendly and flexible system with an easy to use interface. It wants to be a tool for good learning, so that users have minimal notice of the tools and maximum attention for the content. Dokeos is written in PHP and uses MySQL as a database. The current stable release is Dokeos 1.5.5. The developer team is hard at work on Dokeos 1.6, to be released in June 2005 (beta May 2005). Dokeos.com is also a Belgian company providing hosting, support, and services around elearning and the Dokeos platform. The company contributes back to the community by paying several Dokeos developers. Standards The Dokeos code is written in PHP, using MySQL as database backend. It already supports SCORM import, and SCORM export is now in an experimental stage. User data can be imported into the system using CSV or XML files. Dokeos can add user info and authenticate through LDAP. For the next release (1.6) the Dokeos developer team is putting effort into complying with W3C xhtml and css standards. Some javascript is still required however, and using SCORM more or less requires the use of frames in the learning path module. Development The development of Dokeos is an international project to which several universities, schools, and other organisations and individuals contribute. The Dokeos development methodology takes elements from extreme programming, usability theory, and collaborative open source development methodology, like the ideas in the Cathedral and the Bazaar. Specifically, Dokeos is very open (Be open to the point of promiscuity). There is a forum, used by Dokeos users around the world for discussion, feedback and bug reports. The agenda and minutes of all developer meetings are published, and the roadmap] is also public. Users can ask for features on the forum, or edit themselves the dream map of possible new features. All designs and developer documentation are publicly available on the wiki. Everyone who registers can contribute. There are currently 21 developers with CVS write access, other people contribute by sending code through email, forum or wiki. Dokeos in numbers - More than 30 languages are supported (some translations are better than others)
- The largest known Dokeos installation (Ghent University) currently has 25.107 active users. (more information: http://icto.ugent.be or http://minerva.ugent.be)
See also - Moodle, also an elearning application but with a different vision: Dokeos is more or less neutral to the pedagogy used, moodle is built to support social-constructivist learning.
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