FenixEdu, a open source academic and learning management system | Hacker News Reader

FenixEdu, a open source academic and learning management system

fenixedu.org

40 pointsarturventura10 comments

I can't tell from the site, but how mature is this lms?

I recently toyed around with Canvas[1] and found it to be really stable and feature-rich without that messy feeling that Blackboard or Moodle give you. What were the motivations to develop this system instead of enhancing or forking another lms?

[1] https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

FenixEdu has been in use for the last 10 years, and in continuous development over that time, so I would say it its mature.

It didn't started as a LMS, actually started as a Academic Management System. We needed a system to control all the academic administrative operations. Later we developed the LMS system connected with the AMS.

Right now we are on the process of replacing our old LMS with a new one. We have very cool ideas that we are developing right now (timeline based view for the students, tools for interactive presentations, transparent support for MOOCs, etc.)

Would you mind highlighting the differences between FenixEdu and Canvas?

I've never tried Canvas, but from what I could gather it seems it is just a LMS. FenixEdu is a combination between a Academic Management System and a LMS. It has course pages, but also manages the diploma emission, teacher credits, room management, scheduling, Erasmus, etc. all the other backoffice stuff a school has to handle.

Loving the LMS-centric material today!

Also, I like the subtle pdf color-change. I'm reading the paper at the moment https://ciist.ist.utl.pt/projectos/Fenix.pdf

If you want to start the system, take a look at this one http://fenixedu.org/dev/fenixedu-bible.pdf . We finished it last week, its just draft, but might be also interesting, particularly if you want to test the system.

This is an amazing project and I'm really impressed by the overall quality both in the documentation and the web design. It looks very promising, in an ideal world this would be implemented in every institution.

Looks very promising, a bit complex maybe. It is much more than a LMS,it is a student information system, the two cannot be compared.

With the "...edu.org" domain, I hope you are prepared for confusion with phoenix.edu

Someone who can't spell "phoenix" is rather ill prepared for college, don't you think? Also, it's more likely that they'll put the term into a search engine first, which will get the correct page for the school.

The school itself advertises frequently with the correct spelling.

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