Claroline is a collaborative eLearning and eWorking platform (Learning Management System

Learning management system

A learning management system is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content...

) released under the GPL Open Source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 license. It allows hundreds of organizations worldwide ranging from universities to schools and from companies to associations to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces over the web. The platform is used in more than 100 countries and is available in 35 languages.

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 :

• 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

Multi-platform

Claroline is compatible with GNU/Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, Mac OS

Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

 and Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. It is based on open-source technologies like PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

 and MySQL

MySQL

MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

.

Development

Claroline is based on 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's development and diffusion extensively.

Partners

Initially started in 2000 by the UCL

Université catholique de Louvain

The Université catholique de Louvain, sometimes known, especially in Belgium, as UCL, is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It is located in Louvain-la-Neuve and in Brussels...

 (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.

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
  University of Liège
  The University of Liège , in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium, is a major public university in the French Community of Belgium. Its official language is French.-History:...
  
  , 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.

The 5 founding members of the Consortium are :

• Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
• Haute Ecole Léonard de Vinci, Belgium
• Universidade de Vigo, Spain
• Université du Québec à Rimouski, Canada
• Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile

See also

• Learning management system
  Learning management system
  A learning management system is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content...
  
  
• Chamilo
  Chamilo
  Chamilo is an open-source e-learning and content management system, aimed at improving access to education and knowledge globally...
  
  - a second generation fork of Claroline