Metacoon

metacoon course screenshot with Firefox
Developer(s)	metaVentis GmbH
Stable release	1.9.6 (Ginnah) / Nov 2007
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Learning Management System
License	GPL
Website	metacoon.net

metacoon is a Open Source platform that can be used for online learning, cooperative work and for the creation of learning material. The system offers the functionality of a Learning Management System. The developer team also offers a range of authoring tools for the creation of learning material (e.g. QTIquestions and tests or SCORM ). The software is published under the GNU General Public License. The offline authoring tools are freeware.

History

The project started in 2001 as a project for the development of learning content at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. After being used as the internal platform of the project the system was used for online courses at the university in 2002. Due to the interest of other educational organisations it was published under the GPL in 2004.^[1] The name of the system derives from the Greek word meta and the word Cocoon (the Apache framework of the same name used in the project).

Features

Personal Desktop

The platform offers each user a so called "Personal Desktop" offering the following tools:

• list of courses / rooms the user is enrolled in
• list of courses available with sign in functionality
• profile data including password, userdata, address, business card / personal homepage, language, …)
• personal bookmarks, addresses, file manager, notes
• calendar
• messenger-system
• picture gallery

Learning Management

• creation of courses
• management of SCORM-courses
• implementation and management of learning material such as images, PDF, Office documents, videos, audio, HTML courses
• assignments (private, public)

Specifications

The requirements for the current version of metacoon are^[2]:

• PHP 4.x
• MySQL 4.x
• Tomcat and Cocoon for the rendering of the cross media publishing framework (optional)

A version supporting PHP and MySQL 5.x will be released in April 2009.^{[edit] See also}

Learning management system

References

1. ^ project page
2. ^ project page

External links

• Official website
• Demo