Picking a Project
This semester our team was tasked with choosing an open source project to run on a local ubuntu OS. The project has to meet certain criteria such as, being able to compile on our local machine, having a certain amount of documentation to follow along, and we must be able to run certain tests on the methods of the software. With taking all of this into account, we came up with the three candidates that you see below.
Moodle is a popular free learning management system (LMS) that is designed to provide educators with a "single robust, secure and integrated system" for creating personalized learning environments. It is primarily written in PHP and a very active project.
We are considering Moodle for our project for several reasons, including the value we see in the project in its mission of providing a free and robust LMS (especially in these times), the popularity of the project, and the extensive documentation for both users and contributors.
- Extensive Documentation
- Worthwhile Project
- Large Project
- PHP
Wheelmap is a web application that allows a user to find wheel chair accessible utilities such as bathrooms, shopping, transport, etc... It is built with React.js as the front end and Next.js as the back end.
Our team loved the idea of working with a project that was for disabled users. It also offers a pre built testing suite and decent documentation on how to use it. The only problem we see down the road is possibly having a hard time navigating the file structures due to lack of documentation in some areas.
- Seems easy to set up
- Pre built testing using BrowserPack
- No wiki page
- Purely front end
- Read.me seems short
Canvas is a learning management platform used by over 30% of higher ed institutions. It’s an open-source, paid software written in Ruby and distributed by Instructure.
Because of how familiar we are with OAKS through Brightspace, our team thought it would be interesting to work with a different learning management system and see the similarities and differences. It’s also a very well-documented and well-managed system thanks to its widespread usage.
- Detailed wiki with installation guides
- Very real-world application; software has many daily users
- Some features are omitted in the open source code
- Can be intimidating due to its breadth
We ultimately chose Moodle, because of how attractive the documentation was to us and how popular the platform is.