University Virtual Learning Environment 3.0

Decisions, decisions

We have been faced to decide whether to extend Moodle, an open source content management system written in PHP designed for classroom applications, or whether to create an altogether new one. Not included in the choices is the extension of the current UVLE, due to the decision of the Computer Center (too much hassle of maintenance, perhaps?)

With these choices, we have opt to go for the creation of an application from scratch, and instead of using PHP, the group opted for Java. The reasons of such decisions will be stated below.

Reasons why the extension of Moodle is not an option:
1.) There are many features that are expected from UVLE that are not in Moodle, many enough to discourage extension. This means that extension requires a decent amount of work. The effort is two-fold since a.) the developers must learn the code styles and engineering , and b.) after learning, the developers must code an approximate 40% of the current Moodle application.

2.) The developers are more familiar and are more specialized with Java and J2EE, and thus the developers can create better web applications.

posted by Ardee Aram @ 4:00 PM