In use by nearly half a million users, the .LRN platform was orginally developed to support universities, and now we also use it with schools, businesses and non-profit organisations.
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About the Spanish National University for Distance Education
UNED is the largest University in Spain with more than 180.000 students enrolled each year.
Why UNED chose .LRNUNED uses dotLRN in two different scopes i) Exploitation (Innova Group) and ii) Research (aDeNu Group) due to the integration capabilities, adaptivity, reusability and accessibility support. In particular, Innova chose dotLRN due to 1) Virtual community approximation, 2) User centred approach, 3) Collaborative spaces, 4) E-mail centred work and 5) Techncial efficiency. aDeNu group focuses on resarch, and uses dotLRN for its support for 1) Adaptivity, 2) Reusability, 3) Accessibility, 4) Internationalization, 5) Support for educational standards, 6) Friendly interface (more usable and accessible), 7) User tracking, 8) Blogs, 9) RSS, 10) Feeds, 11) Wiki pages and 12) Web services to facilitate the integration of external components.
What the UNED is doing with .LRN
Innova group has developed and maintanis aLF, the UNED customization of dotLRN. Statistics show that since 2000, aLF platform usage has increased according to UNED needs in terms of users and sessions but also of functionalities provided by the tool. aLF is currently hosting more than 350 courses and communities, providing services to 55,000 students, professors and tutors. The number of users is increasing year after year on 22% average. On the other side, the number of sessions is increasing more significantly, 33%, with an average of 4 millions transactions per day.
At aDeNu group, the management of aLFanet project in dotLRN was a great success, with more than 500 files uploaded, near 30 forums created, 70 members and 10 subgroups. For the following research projects, dotLRN was migrated to version 2.2, to benefit from the new functionalities and improved interface. Currently, there are 8 active communities in aDeNu platform to manage the different projects aDeNu member are involved. 165 users are taken part in them, contributing to more than 150 forums and 100 top level folders.
Future plans for .LRN at the UNED
Innova group at UNED will continue supporting proffessor and students with aLF.
aDeNu research group will continue using dotLRN for the coordination of current projects (FAA, ADAPTAPlan, EU4ALL, ALPE). Moreover, OpenACS/dotLRN framework is also being used as the basis for the project developments, which deal with adaptation, accessibility and educational standards support.
More information
A paper describing UNED use cases has been presented at FLOSS International Conference.
Why Using dotLRN? UNED use cases
Abstract: UNED uses dotLRN learning management system (LMS) in two different scopes i) Exploitation and ii) Research due to the integration capabilities, adaptivity, reusability and accessibility support. The paper introduces the main features of OpenACS/dotLRN architecture and provides an historical overview of the usage of dotLRN in Innova (exploitation) and aDeNu (research) groups. It details the reasons why OpenACS/dotLRN was chosen in both groups and presents a comparison among dotLRN and other LMS, with special emphasis on Moodle (the most commonly used open source LMS) to show their pros and cons. The paper describes how it is being used in each group and what contributions have been done to the community so far.
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