ERPNext school LMS module

For both Library Management System and Learning Management system, we can choose to provide integration mechanism with key open source products instead of building entire functionality. Moodle will be a good choice for integrating a learning management system. Will post more detailed note in this regard.

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Hi @Shrikant
I think we should keep both the options available. As integrations with some renowned open source LMS project like Moodle can be done, still we should keep this as the last option. Third-party integrations don’t give smooth user experience as we have seen in other connectors. As LMS isn’t kind of much-needed module in the Education domain right now, so we have time to work on this module.
If someone is up for sharing the design and functionality of the LMS module, we should give it a try.

@spoojary you should share the design for the LMS if anyone from the community is willing to work on this feature at least he can use your design as the reference.

Hi Manas,

I agree.

If we are planning for developing LMS functionality within ERPNext for schools, I would suggest following features, which are widely used:

  1. Facility to share subject-specific study material, primarily PowerPoint slides and notes (Word docs) with students.
  2. Facility to conduct online quiz, primarily MCQ type, for internal assessment.
  3. Facility to grade uploaded assignments (word/ppt files) for internal assessment.
  4. Facility to make groups of students so that group submission of assignments can be allowed.
  5. Facility to send email to all students of the course (aka announcement).

LMS like Moodle or Blackboard provide quite a few features, which are really useful but are used by tech-savvy teachers only. Some of these advanced features include peer assessment of assignments, structured learning trail, journal, etc.

Since open source LMS like Moodle are available, I am not sure how we can arrange funding for above-mentioned most-used features of LMS.

Regards,

Shrikant

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I think Library Management System is a good addition to ERPNext as it is just a specialized inventory. However Learning Module System is entirely different and it is better kept separate with seamless integration. The best way to start that is by providing an integration to a good software like Moodle.
I did try building a basic LMS by adding courses/chapters/course content etc. But it was lot of work and the result wasn’t very smooth. For course content we have to use TextEditor which doesn’t look well suited for this usecase. Agree, we can do everything in software, but whether it is worth using our resources is the question. IMHO, we are better off providing integrations than building everything into ERPNext, making it ‘jack of all trades, but master of none’.

The idea is not to build moodle-like functionality in ERPNext. Moodle is quite feature-rich LMS. However, teachers use only fraction of the feature set given by Moodle. I have not done a scientific survey but based on whomever I have spoken in academic world, I have observed that most of the teachers use only few features. I have mentioned those features in my post earlier. In particular, the facility of sharing subject-specific study material is the most widely used feature of LMS. Rest of the features in that list are useful for those teachers who are allowed to conduct their own internal assessment by their institutes.

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That is great to hear. Except (2), others don’t look that difficult to implement to fit pretty well with ERPNext.

I agree that Library Management System will be easier than Learning Management System as we already have the Stock module in the ERPNext which can be tightly integrated with the Library Management. But also we shouldn’t forget that other good software like Moodle isn’t very user-friendly. I take lots of user efforts to implement these.
Now if we are willing to develop the Learning Management System, it won’t be easier and can’t be done out of the box using the current framework. But it’s worth giving a shot as only the most useful features will be implemented in the first go. Also, the end user doesn’t have to take the pain of multiple deployment and maintenance of some other LMS only for the few good features.

Suggest we develop topmost LMS feature (facility to share subject-specific study material with students) more generically as development of document workspace sites. The business use cases could be as follows:

  1. As a privileged user (teacher / site owner), I can create document workspace site so that I can share files with selected users (enrolled students) on that site.
  2. As a privileged user (teacher / site owner), I can edit document workspace site (like wiki) so that I can provide text with links to files uploaded by me. (Note: Uploading files is an existing feature of ERPNext.)
  3. As a system user, I can view document workspace site (text+files) if authorized by the site owner / teacher.

Comments please!

I recently tried to upgrade my desktop, which went bad resulting in losing all the work I did in this area. I haven’t looked at school module for a while, but this was my idea:

We have the course concept already in school module. Adding another doctype called ‘Course Content’ will help in building basic LMS features. Like
Course: name, description, course_chapters
Course Chapter: Description, summary(for class notes), References
References: Description, Reference Type(online link, video, embedded files), Reference
‘Course Content’ will be shared with everyone enrolled for the course. Any updates to the course content should trigger a notification to all saying what has changed.

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Can we plan to organize a code sprint to initiate the development?

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Yeah, that will be great, we can have a code sprint for the same in December.

@spoojary, Yes you are correct. Right now, adding two doctypes will be sufficient for the first cut.
Course Chapter: This will include the course link, description, reference, books, common study material link
Course Content: This can be some article, link to video/audio or any file or quiz or assessment.

So the structure can be something like this

   Course
       '---- 1. Chapter One
                       '---- A. Basic Introduction or Article
                       '---- B. Some embedded Video
                       '---- C. Any file
                       '---- D. Etc.
       '---- 2. Chapter Two
       '---- 2. Etc.

Regarding the user access, this can be edited in the desk via the assigned Teacher role. He can determine the type of the course content and related permission like whether the students can comment or not.
For the student, we have to build the Student portal with some interesting UI so that this all seems interesting and easy to use to them.

I would like to suggest one more feature to the list proposed by Shrikant…

Add facility to export the generated MCQ style test/exam paper as a pdf/word file.

When exporting there should be possibility for the teacher to select the format/structure according to which the exported document should be generated.

Like for example:
Question Format 1

Question Body

Opt1 Opt2, Opt3, Opt4

Question Format 2

Question Body

Opt1
Opt2
Opt3
Opt4

Question Format 3

Question Body Opt1 Opt3
Opt2 Opt4

Regards,

Hi All,

Any updates here?

Cheers!

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Hi All,

Any progress on the LMS integration initiative !!

Best !!

Hi @Vinob_chander_Ramasw
There isn’t any development on the the LMS module or any integration. You can create a GitHub issue for the same if you want that in the Education module.

How can I access the library management feature you mentioned here (training for developers). Interested in taking a look. Any further progress? Thanks

Hi @Aditya_Iyer
Library management is not available on the Education module out of the box. You have to create a new app, add appropriate doctypes and have it on your erpnext site. We have a prototype Library management system, created that way which is up and running for our department.

Hi @Vinob_chander_Ramasw
Could you contribute back the library management module to the ERPNext? If you contribute back then the library management will become apart of core ERPNext Education and will be beneficial for the community. If you need any guidance or help in that, please let me know.

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Hi @ManasSolanki
Let me know the repo so that i can push my contributions

@Vinob_chander_Ramasw GitHub - frappe/erpnext: Free and Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Also review the contribution guidelines: