OLAT: The Swiss Open Source Learning Management System

Abstract

This paper presents the open source learning management system (LMS) OLAT (online learning and training) that has been developed by the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Universities and educational institutions use it to set up and manage e-learning courses, to provide collaborative tools to student groups, and to run electronic assessments. OLAT became the strategic LMS of the University of Zurich in 2003 and was released under the Apache open source license. Today more than 50'000 students at Swiss universities use OLAT for their studies. Thanks to an active translating community OLAT can be used in 17 languages. Using the open source XML framework eLML (eLesson markup language) authors at our university create e-learning content that can later be integrated into OLAT.