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Course Platform Evaluation Report

Products

Ilias 3.4.1

University of Cologne (Germany) and open-source community: http://www.ilias.de/ios/index.html
The product is the result of the ILIAS open source community. Project coordination and most development are done by the University of Cologne.
Last major evaluation update: June 2005

About product
ILIAS is a web-based learning content management system (LCMS) and collaboration platform.

About producer
The product is the result of the ILIAS open source community. Project coordination and most development are done by the University of Cologne.

Strengths

  • Open hierarchical structure of the repository.
  • Flexible role-based access control system allows complex organizational and didactical course scenarios.
  • The integrated online authoring tools can be made available to students. This makes for a very valuable pedagogical tool.
  • Multiple clients can be hosted on the same installation.

Weaknesses
Usability is a big issue. Some functions are difficult to find, too many clicks are needed to do simple things. Confusing amount of possiblities for designers. Objects can be linked everywhere, but no course templates.

An unstructured group of developers contributes to the overall project, resulting in a platform of uneven quality with serious usability issues.