Current Trends on Digital Technologies and Gaming for Teaching and Linguistics

2.1. Learning management systems

Acoording to Kasim and Khalid (2016), a “Learning Management System (LMS) is a web-based software application that is designed to handle learning content, student interaction, assessment tools and reports of learning progress and student activities.” Its basic functionalities are (i) users management; (ii) course management; and (iii) monitorization of students’ progress. Among the most outstanding characteristics of a LMS are interactivity, scalability, flexibility or usability. Most LMS include the ability to:

a. Define the educational activities to be carried out for different environments (including blended learning).

b. Enable participants to collaborate on certain activities: forum, wiki, etc.

c. Prepare, deliver and manage score tests.

d. Provide reports for students, teachers, and administrators.

Some of the most used LMS today are listed below, along with a brief description of their main characteristics to support distance learning.

a. Moodle (moodle.org) is an open-source learning platform providing an integrated system with many features with a simple interface for educators, administrators, and students. Moodle includes drag-and-drop features that facilitate the management of courses, and an active development community of users and developers offering well-documented resources. Moddle has a modular configuration and interoperable design enabling developers to create plugins and integrate external applications to achieve specific functionalities. With a default interface compatible with mobile devices and cross compatibility with different Internet browsers, the content on the Moodle courses is easily accessible from different browsers and devices.

b. ATutor (atutor.github.io) is another open-source LMS solution enabling us to develop and manage online courses. ATutor provides functionalities enabling educators to organize, package, and provide educational content to conduct online courses. It is also possible to import pre-packaged content. ATutor users can use functionalities to create a network of contacts, manage interest groups, communicate with other users through private messages, setup a network profile, and link remote gadget applications into their networking environment. ATutor also provides some analytics features, such as used statistics that can be used to identify gaps in content coverage, learning tendencies for specific learners, etc.

c. Dokeos (www.dokeos.com) has an approach based on learning through interaction, so it has virtual classrooms and tools that facilitate collaborative learning. It allows you to create, edit and configure courses. It allows users to create custom training modules, create exams using quizzes, place multimedia content, surveys and assessment, agendas, calendars, forums, chats, new surveys, and wikis (all of this with SCORM content support).

d. “.LRN” (dotlrn.org) is an open-source initiative from the MIT focused on enabling not just e-learning, but also the operation of digital communities. This platform provides functionalities to administer “classes” or “communities.” It also enables users customizing the portal layout, choosing the language, setting the time zone for their class, or including portlets with specific functionalities. The platform supports different roles such as students, professors, and administrative staff.. LRN also provides a variety of default applications such as: attachments, bulk-mail, calendar, FAQ, file-storage, forums, general-comments and news.

e. Sakai (www.sakailms.org) is another fully open-source platform, created by and for educators. It can be used to support face-to-face sessions or online learning. As previous platforms it includes several synchronous and asynchronous tools for messaging, discussions, social connections, and collaborative work. A special feature of this platform is the availability of an API that can be used by developers to create native integrations with third-party applications. It provides high-stakes testing, formative assessment, online assignments, and rubric-based scoring.

f. Chamilo LMS (chamilo.org) is another open-source virtual campus available under the GNU/GPLv3 license. It offers a complete suite of teaching and administrative tools, providing a very simple interface for teachers and students while maintaining a dynamic structure for those developers who want to make modifications to the code. Chamilo has a large number of tools aimed at facilitating learning, such as wikis, spaces for group work with collaborative group resources, classroom blogs with assignable tasks, scoring forums, internal social network for promotion of the informal exchange of knowledge, and a mixed grading system (virtual and face-to-face). All these tools are provided along additional tools such as instant messaging, glossaries, links, announcements, etc. It also offers student files with detailed monitoring and the possibility of controlling absences, online assessment, and assignment of scores.