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Ask HN: I'm building an open source LMS. What features you would like to see?

5 points by codextremist ↗ HN
Our team will start building today an open source LMS. We'll charge only for a cloud-hosted version and per-transaction if one decides to use our payment gateway (users may use any other if they want to).We'll make sure that self-hosting the service is simple and well documented. Our LMS will be api-first and build from ground up to integrate with services and apps in a marketplace. What are the missing features on competitors? What is currently your preferred LMS?

7 comments

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tsjq
What is LMS ?
alexc05
Learning management system.

Effectively a platform that runs corporate online training.

codextremist
Learning Management System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system).

E-learning providers such as Udemy, Skillshare, Pluralsight or Coursera have their own "embedded" learning management system. But this piece of software can also live alone as some instructors prefer to build their own audience and hence control the distribution (which usually happens through social networks). The advantage over using a marketplace (like Udemy) or selling the content to e-learning providers such as Pluralsight or Linkedin Learning, is that they mainly can sell their courses for much higher prices

alexc05
You posted twice so I'm picking the older one to reply to.

I don't work in e-learning, but the agency I work at used to have a whole line of business around learning solutions.

Lots of talk of SCORM and the like.

I'll trawl through my LinkedIn for people who might be able to help you build your feature set.

I can't promise they'll have time for it, bit I can try for you.

Do you have a link-back or place on the web where they can reach you?

If I make a post on LinkedIn for you, is there someone I can refer them to?

I'm not certain the educators and executives in the LMS space will want to create an account on HN to talk to you, but the might send a note on LinkedIn or an email.

codextremist
Thanks @alexc05! I deleted the old ones. HN was giving me a damn "submission error" message every time I tried to post, but it turned out that I was actually sending each one successfully. Pls reach me at felipe.japm@gmail.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipejordaoapm/
alexc05
teh first question I got from one friend who is planning on stopping by the thread when he gets a chance (but I'll ask on his behalf in case he gets busy) is "why not just use moodle?"

It's the most popular open-source LMS out there and "does all the things" (direct quote)

How would your platform differentiate from that one other than charging for hosting? Why not set up a specialized hosting business called "managed moodle" or something and maybe contribute features back to the mothership?

codextremist
My main criticism goes to the product itself. The idea of building an LMS came up after talking to several instructors. Although there are many LMSs on the market, many instructors have never considered using Moodle and ended up using paid products. Hotmart and Teachable are examples of paid LMSs that are doing really well.

I think that the added value of those products is that the instructor not only has access to the creation and hosting of his courses, but has also integrated checkout and the ability to create landing pages and promote their courses. My idea is to offer the same product, but for free! The hosted version will only cover our costs. Our business is actually focused on the distribution (https://classpert.com), which we believe is by far the hardest problem to solve.

Now back to Moodle, in fact, I've considered extending it before. They already have a community (including a large directory of plugins) and appears to be used by many instructors and institutions. However, looking from the outside, I don´t think that extending Moodle will be that easy. I´m not an expert in PHP, but I found the codebase messy. Also, the interface is old, ugly and difficult to use and that is a symptom of bad product to me.