OpenOLAT

OpenOLAT

Developer(s)	frentix GmbH
Stable release	11.4.0 / May 3, 2017
Repository	hg.openolat.org/openolat/
Written in	Java
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Available in	English, German, French, others
Type	Learning management system
License	Apache License 2.0
Website	www.openolat.org

OpenOLAT is a web-based learning management system for teaching, education, assessment and communication. The name OpenOLAT stands for Open Online Learning And Training, highlighting its open source and online nature. OpenOLAT is open source software and is being developed by frentix GmbH since 2011. OpenOLAT is based on the LMS OLAT developed by the University of Zurich.

OpenOLAT originated from the open source project OLAT. In 2011, the University of Zurich initiated a massive refactoring project with the goal of redesigning the complete code base and switching to the Mercurial version control system. With the start of the refactoring, repository access for contributors from the OLAT community was revoked, making further contributions impossible. Since then, the OLAT developers practice open source only in the form of publishing finished source code, but lack any kind of community involvement. Because of these changes to OLAT, the OpenOLAT fork was initiated in 2011. OpenOLAT is an alternative to OLAT that follows an open development process and encourages community involvement. The initiator of this new project is frentix GmbH, a spin-off of the University of Zurich, which was founded by one of the founders of OLAT and which provided commercial services for OLAT up to 2011. Since frentix was founded in 2006, the company has contributed major features to the OLAT code base and was responsible for a large part of the bug fixing.

For commercial customers, frentix provided OLATpro until the end of 2011, which contained features that were not a part of the public release. With the inception of OpenOLAT, many of the frentix features from the pro OLATpro release were ported to the public OpenOLAT open source release.

In release 8.2, the group management system was significantly improved. Release 8.3 added the OpenMeetings integration, and release 8.4 brought major changes to the chat infrastructure while also improving the performance and stability of the whole system.

Release 9.0 replaced the JavaScript framework ExtJS with the more light-weight jQuery, for which the whole JavaScript layer was refactored. In addition, the question pool was introduced, which allows collaborative creation and sharing of test questions.