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Table 3. continued
Criteria
Sub-criteria
Description/Ideal
Decision to use software within the project is driven by many non-functional issues such as support, adoption,
etc. - non-functional issues relating to the product. Ideal: does the product appear to have a supported, sustain-
able future?
The support model provided by the contributors. Ideal: is the software supported
through community or dedicated resources?
Support
Management
Information about the products future. Ideal: Is there a roadmap with support of
funding that defines the product's technical future?
Sustainability
Ideal: Does the software support mainstream specifications that are standards or
becoming standards?
Standards
But the results are sometimes not clear. There is
no doubt that 3*, 4#, 2| is better than 2*, 4#, 2|,
but it is not clear whether it is better than 2*, 6#,
1+. In the latter case, a further analysis has to be
conducted.
In (Graf & List, 2005), the authors have adapted
the QWS approach in a way that the essential
criteria are assessed in a pre-evaluation phase.
These minimum criteria cover three general us-
age requirements: an active community, a stable
development status, and a good documentation of
the platform. The fourth criterion incorporates the
didactical objective and means that the platform's
focus is on the presentation of content instead of
communication functionalities. At the beginning
of the evaluation, Graf & List (2005) have chosen
36 platforms and evaluated them according to
the minimum selected criteria. Nine platforms
(ATutor 1.4.11, Dokeos 1.5.5, dotLRN 2.0.3,
based on OpenACS 5.1.0, Ilias 3.2.4, LON-CAPA
1.1.3, Moodle 1.4.1, OpenUSS 1.4 extended with
Freestyle Learning 3.2, Sakai 1.0, and Spaghet-
tilearning 1.1) meet the criteria. Next, these nine
platforms were tested in detail. A questionnaire
and an example of a real life teaching situation,
covering the instructions for creating courses, man-
aging users, and simulating course activities, were
designed and applied to each platform. Finally,
Graf & List (2005) established eight categories:
communication tools, LOs, management of user
data, usability, adaptation, technical aspects, ad-
ministration, and course management.
While examining the results from a vertical
perspective, it can be seen that the adaptability
and personalization subcategories yield a broad
range of results. The majority of the platforms
were estimated as very good with regard to
extensibility. In contrast, adaptivity features are
underdeveloped.
As a result, Moodle can be seen as the best LMS
concerning adaptation issues. Moodle provides an
adaptive feature called “lesson” where learners can
be routed automatically through pages depend-
ing on the answer to a question after each page.
Furthermore, the extensibility is supported very
well by a documented API, detailed guidelines,
and templates for programming. Also, adaptabil-
ity and personalization aspects are included in
Moodle. The templates for themes are available
and can be selected by the administrator. Students
can choose out of more than 40 languages (Graf
& List, 2005).
3. MULTIPLE CRITERIA EVALUATION
AND OPTIMIZATION OF
LEARNING SOFTWARE FOR THE
PARTICULAR LEARNER NEEDS
A complex decision problem often requires to
explicitly consider several points of view. The
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