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Greetings, I am a new member and am not a tech person. I would like some guidance on selecting a VLE for a venture I am setting up to provide quality online learning to students in Pakistan. The objective of the venture is to bring a significantly higher quality of education to students in developing countries. A major gap in education provision that many developing countries face is the poor quality of teaching. We are looking to fill this gap by providing technology enabled learning to improve the quality of education at an affordable price in developing countries. We will offer blended online-offline learning - where content is delivered off a technology platform into a physical classroom environment in which teacher-supported guided learning takes place. We will initially focus on core subjects: Maths, English, Sciences, and at primary level (year 1-6). Later we will grow the offering to other subjects and higher levels. I have been looking at a number of VLEs to find one that is best suited to my needs. My main criteria, in addition to the functional and technical capabilities listed below, are ease of use (should not require a lot of technical support); nice look and feel; affordable pricing; and no lock-in (if I decide to switch VLE later). I have explored Frog, Fronter, StudyWiz, and Moodle - and thought that StudyWiz would best suit my needs (although the UI was not as good as some others). But i have recently seen some new VLEs on the market at BETT (e.g. kite, My Learning UK, firefly). The demos I saw of at least two of these looked very good, so I am now reevaluating my earlier choice. I would be very grateful for comments and reactions to this, to help me to select. Thanks. The functional requirements for the VLE are listed below: 1. Instructor • Create online courses using: o Open source web-based instructional content, including streaming videos (e.g. through links to websites, embedded content in VLE) o Proprietary instructional content (self authored and licensed) o Exercises (Q&A) – using self-authored and licensed content • Automatic grading of exercises o Automatic scoring (e.g. Measuring both accuracy of answers and speed to complete) o Provide students with "rewards" (e.g. Stars, publicity, etc.) for good performance – e.g. successful completion of different levels/exercises • Track student performance through Teacher Dashboard: o Track individual student performance over time o Track group performance (able to compare multiple students selected by teacher) o Create performance reports for students • Add administrative notices, e.g. student reports, changes to centre hours, etc. o For entire class, sub-group of students or individual student • Interact with students online o Asynchronous: threaded discussions at topic level, group level or individual student level o Synchronous: online chat and videoconferencing with individual students (not necessary in first release) 2. Student • Access individual learning home page o View the entire course curriculum and student’s own specific position in the course (what has been completed successfully and what he needs to work on now) • Access courseware o Click to particular topic that he needs to work on • View instructional material • Complete online exercises • View score on exercises completed and suggested next steps • Receive rewards automatically if student completes exercise at specified level of accuracy and speed • Access choice of publicly available online games (pre-selected to each level of competency – e.g. mathletics) accessible through VLE o Interact asynchronously and synchronously (not in first version) with remote teacher • Private, so others cannot see communication • Public, accessible to others (asynchronous) • Access course forum where students can interact (teacher moderated) around specific topics o Interact asynchronously and synchronously (not in first version) with other students at similar level in course • Selected sub-group, e.g. by topic or level o Able to contribute to course related discussions via threaded discussion o Able to publish video content to course forum (e.g. explanation of concepts, worked out examples, etc.) • Access individual performance reports o See ongoing record of awards on students’ individual home page o See top performer awards on class web page 3. Parent • View student performance reports o Showing student progression, skill level for each topic completed, rewards received o Printed and sent to parents periodically (e.g. quarterly) o Online access The technical requirements include: • Customisable User Interface o Simple, user friendly look and feel with required functionality (not too overloaded with functionality that is not necessary) • Application o Modular and extendable o Easily scalable (features and design) o Interoperability with multiple platforms (Windows, UNIX/LINUX) o SCORM compliant o Integration with multiple industry standard CMSs • Data o Ability to easily create content o Ability to easily extract data from VLE whenever required in standard format files • Hardware o High availability (99.9%+) o Managed servers o Option to have local and remote hosting (to reduce internet access problems)